Norton Way Corporate Sales has won the fleet dealer of the year award from AM's sister title Fleet News.

Operations director Richard Siney (pictured right) collected the trophy at the awards ceremony at the Grosvenor Hotel, London on Wednesday night in front of more than 1,500 people. It was presented by AM editor Jeremy Bennett (left).

Also shortlisted were CMS Kidderminster, Holdcroft Group Fleet, Lightcliffe Volkswagen Halifax and Sytner Group.

At the awards ceremony this week BMW was also named fleet manufacturer of the year, and green fleet manufacturer of the year, while Mercedes-Benz won a trophy for most improve fleet manufacturer.

Fleet supplier of the year winner was Autoglass, ahead of Kwik-Fit which was highly commended.

The Fleet News' judges said of Norton Way: "“Excellent downtime management and a marginal gains approach impressed the judges. Norton Way has a clear and focused approach to supporting fleets and leasing companies.

"It does all the core things well and has particular emphasis on offering the personal touch with its ‘one-size fits no-one’ philosophy. Norton Way is a customer-centric business whose success is underlined by a set of outstanding CSI scores.”

And the citation reads: The fleet-dealer relationship is one of the most overlooked partnerships in the sector. But without the support of a high quality fleet partner, companies will struggle when it comes to securing the best discount, minimising lead times and ensuring that they are a priority when it comes to aftersales services.

Norton Way Corporate Sales ticks all of these boxes, and more. Specialising in the sale of Mazda, Honda, Peugeot, Nissan, Suzuki cars and vans, it operates from a purpose-built corporate facility with aftersales services provided at its seven dealerships.

Its fleet customers range from SMEs to corporates and brokers to leasing companies, each with a bespoke service level agreement (SLA) which is monitored with regular reporting of KPIs. Those SLAs regularly top 95%.

According to Norton Way, there are two very important rules when considering customer service.

1. The customer is always right
2. If the customer is not right, then re-read rule number one.

This philosophy runs throughout the business, from directors to account managers. As the company says: “Fleet performance is of paramount importance to the business.”

Norton Way works on the margin gains theory given such prominence by the British Cycling Team (incidentally, it supplies cars to British Cycling). Attention to detail covers all individuals within the team and all processes within the chain as the dealer group seeks to maximise its performance.

It is constantly looking for the ‘next big thing’. Norton Way’s flagship Chiswick Honda dealership incorporates a conference suite for use by corporate customers that require off-site meetings, as well as wifi access for drivers who choose the while-you-wait service.

These services may be more commonplace now, but they were ground-breaking when Norton Way opened the outlet in 2002.

More recently, Norton Way has introduced hand-held devices to speed up and improve accuracy of the new vehicle handover process, and it worked closely with its fleet customers to overcome the issue of the DVLA office closures and tax disc provision.