‘Mandilas Motors committed to Toyota brand’

Basking in the euphoria of the dealership’s recent streaks of awards at the just concluded 2017 Toyota Dealers Awards in Lagos, Stephen Gladwin, General Manager, Mandilas Enterprises Limited, and Motors Division has attributed the company’s feat year to year to the teamwork and dedication of its staff to the Toyota brand.

It would be recalled that at the just concluded Dealers Awards organised by Toyota Nigeria Limited two weeks ago to appreciate its dealers that has remained committed to the brand in different categories, Mandilas Motors emerged winners in 9 out of the 14 awards it received at the event.

These awards includes best marketing manager, best parts manager, best customer service manager, best service manager, best service adviser, best parts team, best customer service team, best service team and best marketing team.

Other awards carted away by the decades old automobile sales and service company are Champion Toyota Nigeria service advisor skill contest – front office, overall 1 st runner-up best dealer, 1 st runner-up service advisor and second runner-up service advisor.

Explaining the secrets behind the dealership’s successes in the past years, Stephen Gladwin stated that the management team of Mandilas Motors division has over the years maintained an open door policy where members of staff freely express themselves.

In his words, ‘’If you look after your staff, carry your staff well and have an open door policy where they can work in freely anytime to discuss things of importance, concerns, ideas, suggestions, then your are on. But if you get stucked in the process, you don’t have a company No company can survive without the people ’’.

Describing the Nigerian automobile business climate in terms of sales as tough, Stephen Gladwin stated that forex has been a major player including the substantial increase in import duties which he said is having very negative effect on auto sales.

However, he expressed delight that things are beginning to improve this year as evidenced by a lot of more enquries from corporates compared to the last two and three years ago.

Reacting on what Toyota through the dealership can do to get improved market share in the light of improving demand for new vehicles, the general manager disclosed that Mandilas Motors has in the past four years increased its stronghold on providing good aftersales support to the buying public.

He described Mandilas Motors as the only Toyota dealer with 10 well equipped and functional workshops across the country, adding that the automotive subsidiary of the larger conglomerate is generating larger chunk of its revenue from workshop services and parts sales. Gladwin said this is its focus and it is working well.

Mandilas Motors is also looking at different schemes, a lot of freebies offerings and give aways as part of value added services to attract, increase and retain its retail customers and corporates.

Some of the package offered to the buying public include car tracking facilities which is availed to prospective customers that purchases new vehicles for one year.

In the workshops presently, the management is running a promo that has crashed the prices of auto services. For instance, Mandilas has slashed the price of servicing the Toyota Corolla from N27,000 to N15,000. This is part of the incentives we are offered in all Mandilas Motors nationwide branchessince last year and available to both who both their Toyota vehicles from Mandilas and those who did not.

MIKE OCHONMA