Sister firms Jaguar and Land Rover have separated and reorganised their fleet departments in a bid to improve sales.

The Jaguar corporate sales team will be headed by David Spencer, while Land Rover's will be run by Jon Wackett.

Speaking to Fleet Week at the British Motor Show last week, Jaguar's UK managing director Geoff Cousins said: "There's now one person running field, marketing and sales staff. We've still got close links to Land Rover but it is different from how we've previously done things.

"David Spencer's team of 10 people is being set up now and actually went live on July 1.

"The main change is that someone 100% Jaguar thinks 100% Jaguar. This will allow us to go after small business in the five to 50 car range. We haven't been able to go after them before."

John Edwards, Land Rover managing director, backed Cousins' comments: "We found that focusing on a single brand is better for growing sales in the market, but we always talk closely with Jaguar.

"Jon Wackett is in charge of a corporate team that's slightly smaller than Jaguar's."

Edwards added that Land Rover too was aiming to "focus on the small to medium market".

As revealed in Fleet Week two weeks ago, Jaguar used the motor show to launch the diesel variant of the XJ long-wheelbase and the supercharged version of the XK coupe and convertible, the XKR.

Commenting on Jaguar's sales performance in fleet Cousins said: "There are a lot of incentives in the market at the moment; we're trying to move away from volume. We're playing in the game, but not on incentives. We planned for X-type to be down and it is down, but revenue is up. We can improve on X-type and S-type RVs but it's when you get new product that you can start again."

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