Ford Pro Sales Director, Chris Muers: “We Must Always Focus on the Customer”

Our final interview is with Chris Muers, Ford Pro vehicle sales director for Europe, about her varied career at the company, why Ford Pro is a best-seller in Europe, and what gets her up in the morning!

Welcome, Chris, it’s lovely to meet you! Please tell us what you do at Ford Pro?

I’m all about vehicles! My focus is the planning and delivery of vehicle sales results for Europe. I primarily look after the EU20 – the big five markets of Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain, and the 15 other smaller European markets – and I keep an eye on the export markets that come under Europe where we look after vehicle sales delivery for Ford Pro.

What gets you out of bed in the morning and keeps you motivated?

I’m focused on achieving our eighth year as market leader in Europe among the leading CV brands. Knocking over the hurdles to get there is what gets me up in the morning and keeps me motivated. It’s all about people at the end of the day; I work with the CV leads and their teams in all the markets. It’s very much a team effort, it’s not a single person, we all work towards a common goal and celebrate and share the results when they come our way. Everyone is pulling in the same direction and delivering.

That’s great news! How has Ford Pro cemented its position as the number one for commercial vehicles and solutions in Europe?

We have great products that our customers love! In addition, we are leading the way in offering the customer a vehicle, telematics, charging, servicing solutions including FORDLiive, and finance, in one bundle. We’re way ahead of the competition in that aspect, and it’s exciting that we can go to a customer with a proposition that covers everything. And we have the unparalleled E-Transit and the E-Transit Custom coming shortly around the corner, which will add strength to our product portfolio.

It sounds like the perfect proposition for customers, but what challenges does Ford Pro face from a sales perspective?

The availability of semiconductors is a big issue. This has been a challenge to work with for quite some time. We have managed to keep the supply of vehicles coming but there are lots of external factors that impact our business on a day-to-day basis. You may have a plan, but you must keep replanning in light of challenges that pop up every day. There are also global capacity challenges in our logistics network which impacts our converter partners as well, making it difficult to provide customers with reliable lead times.

So please tell us, what’s the key to moving forward in this exciting but challenging marketplace?

We’re looking with fresh eyes at the future of our distribution network in Europe – how we go to market and how we take the Ford Pro services offering to our loyal and highly valued CV customers. Part of the challenge we’ve been set is to try and keep an eye on what the competition is doing with regards to their distribution plans. We must look at what our competitors are doing in light of our new products and services. It’s a very interesting, strategic part of the role, in that we must look forward as well as looking at day-to-day delivery of the business.

Let’s now take a closer look at Ford Pro – what is the most important message to relay when talking to fellow employees about Ford Pro?

If you think about our strategy for quite a few years it’s been to help our customers’ businesses thrive, and we are providing a solution through our vehicles, service uptime promise, telematics, charging, and finance. At the end of the day, we’ve got our customer in mind, and we must always focus on the customer and appreciate the fact that they have a business to run, and our part to play in helping them achieve success.

We understand that you have worked with everything from Fiesta to fleet sales – how has your varied experience at Ford helped you forge a successful career?

I would describe myself as a ‘Ford veteran’! I’ve been here for over 30 years. I started as a graduate in purchasing, then after three years I moved to sales and marketing. I have loved my career, from selling to fleets and working with our dealers. I was the Fiesta product manager in Britain for five years, so that feels quite poignant given that we’ve announced production of that iconic model is ending next year. As Order Fulfilment manager, I looked at order generation, production scheduling and delivery to each of our national sales companies, and then used that experience to bring into this role as sales director.

All of my roles have given me a background knowledge, which I’ve built on as I’ve gone through my career, to get to where I am now. It’s built up a huge network of people to talk to. I think it’s really important to have good working relationships with those around you, and when you’ve worked with people before, you know you can pick the phone up and ask for a bit of help.

Could you please tell us more about the flexibility Ford has offered to enable you to achieve a healthy work-life balance?

I had a five-year career break to have my family – I’ve got three children – and I think the career break for me worked because I needed a bit of time to devote to my children when they were young. I had the ability to come back into the company and pick up where I left off.

When I came back from my career break, I was fortunate enough to be able to work part-time, and steadily build up the number of days that I worked. It’s very difficult to juggle a young family and working but what I liked was that I had the flexibility and foresight of the managers I worked for to manage being a working mum.?

Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) is a key part of the Ford+ plan – how can a more diverse, equitable and inclusive workforce help Ford Pro?

I believe it can! At Ford Pro, we look at the many aspects it has to offer our customers, and we need people to work for us who have that lens of what the customer wants, so there are career opportunities in a host of different areas. It’s not just the vehicles, it could be on the software side, it could be on telematics; there are many different areas for a diverse workforce to help us understand if something benefits the customer.

Thanks for talking to us, Chris! Finally, what do you get up to at Ford, outside of your main role?

I’m involved in the Women of Ford workstreams and one of the leads on the Ford Pro global Women of Ford panel that’s just been set up. As part of that, I work with our national sales companies and help Women of Ford in local markets. I share aspects of my career with them to help develop their teams. I’m also a keen supporter of mentoring because I think it’s really important that our younger employees, who are relatively new to the company, get support and help through the development of their careers