DAIMLERCHRYSLER is planning to expand its field force personnel by a third in a bid to raise the profile of its brands in the corporate sector.

And an extensive database of Mercedes-Benz customers will soon be helping pinpoint potential sales leads for Chrysler Jeep and Smart, it was revealed this week.

Under an initiative to be approved in the next few days, the German-US group is to focus greater attention on business motorists and instruct Mercedes-Benz staff to work more closely with colleagues at sister brands.

'The time has come for us to be more professional in the way we do things and step up our level of contact with the fleet market,' said passenger cars director Dermot Kelly. 'Mercedes-Benz UK has introduced two substantial changes in the size and structure of its corporate sales department in the last two years, but the third part of our evolution will put fresh focus on customer relations.

'We want to step-up our contact with leasing and blue chip companies and achieve synergies with our other brands. These will come from supporting brand-facing staff with administration and database facilities.'

Kelly said increasing the number of corporate sales staff from 21 to 28 across the brands would improve the quality of DaimlerChrysler's service. 'This development will be of particular benefit to Smart, which will soon be relaunced as a right-hand drive product. The plan is to grow expected sales of 5,000 this year to 20,000 annually by 2005 as a result of the introduction of the roadster model in 2003 and the launch of the four-seater car in 2004.' he said. 'As far as Mercedes-Benz UK is concerned, we are increasing the size of our corporate demonstrator fleet from 70 to 500 units and staging more fleet meetings and lease conferences.'