A Scania Polska customer has become the first Scania customer to buy one of the company’s trucks by using a new digital sales site. Styku Transport Łukasz Styczeń, a haulier based in north-western Poland, used the online tool to order a 4×2 truck tractor with 13-litre engine and Scania Super driveline, which was delivered in December.
It is the first sale to result from Scania Polska’s pilot of the new service, which is being developed by the Sales Digitalisation Team in Södertälje and aims to simplify the purchasing process for those customers who want the more straightforward truck specifications.
A proactive sales process for simpler sales
The pilot has seen the Sales, Pre-Sales and IT team in Poland identify likely customers who buy long-haulage truck tractor units, who are nearing the end of a lease period or have reached a certain mileage with their current vehicle. The team then sends them a link to a truck that they have proactively identified would suit the customer’s needs and tastes, allowing the customer to tailor about 30 different choices according to their need, ranging from vehicle components to R&M, connected services and payment method. This is how Styku Transport Łukasz Styczeń concluded the deal for its next truck.
“Buying online is coming. We need to embrace the benefits and not fear it,” says Bruce Atkinson, one of the core team of Concept Developers that have been working on this digital pilot since it was initiated in early 2022.
“Historically, our industry and our customers have been quite conservative when it comes to the customer digitalisation journey,” adds Emil Jungnelius, Senior Concept Developer at Sales Digitalisation, “but we all know digitalisation is happening and it will help all of us in different ways.”
Both Bruce and Emil also emphasise that the tool is designed to act as a complement to rather than a replacement for existing sales teams. By moving the simple deals online, it will free up Scania salesforce’s time and opportunities for working on the more involved sales that have multiple and complex customer specifications.
“With battery-electric vehicles coming through we’ll require even more time from the sales team to set up the vehicles, including the charging aspects,” Emil explains. “We want to help our sales teams and take some of the strain off them, so they can focus on the complex deals.”
Innovative Scania Polska
At Scania Polska, there’s a real sense of pride at having the first customer to buy a Scania truck online, according to Adrian Łapczyński, who is now a Sales Specialist but was previously a Product Specialist at the Pre-Sales department when the pilot began in early 2022.
“We are really proud of this milestone, and we are proud that we have such an innovative team. We also appreciate that our colleagues from Scania CV AB see us as an open market for this innovation,” he says.
“We’ve had great help from the Polish organisation in building and testing this, all the way from the MD Wojciech Rowiński down to the individual sales people,” adds Emil Jungnelius.
One by-product of this new process is the excellent feedback that the team in Poland has had from its customers about their existing relationships with Scania Polska’s salesforce.
In many cases there has been particular appreciation of the technical knowledge and support they get, and, while Adrian Łapczyński admits that there was a little bit of concern to begin with among sales colleagues about the new digital tool, the Concept Development team and the whole Polish organisation has worked hard to ensure that the sales teams realise that they are still incredibly important to Scania’s future success.
“We have had sales staff working for Scania Poland for 25 years. There are a lot of sales people with very long experience and good relationships with our customers, and we cannot lose these relationships,” he says.
“So this is just an additional way of selling for the simpler deals to free up the sales staff and give them more time for the other, more complicated transactions. I think this tool saves the customer time in these simpler situations. If you know exactly which type of vehicle you need, you can specify the vehicle in 10 minutes, then click, and then you’re done.”
Adrian and his Polish colleagues, plus Emil Jungnelius and Bruce Atkinson are all united in the hope that this new milestone marks the start of an important new way of selling.
“We’re working together to try to improve the digital touchpoint in the sales process for customers,” says Bruce, while Emil adds, “Perhaps some customers will still be reluctant to buy online, but we know that we need to try to find out the best way, and I think everyone in the industry is trying to figure out the same thing at the moment.”
The next stage for Adrian and his colleagues in Poland is to keep promoting this exciting new digital approach. “Scania Polska will be sending out more invitations to develop this tool because we would like to be ahead of our customers’ expectations in this new way of buying a vehicle,” he says.