It’s the second time in three years that Skoda has been named Most Improved Fleet Manufacturer at the Fleet News Awards.

It scooped the award in 2010 (the first year it was introduced), while Renault picked up the accolade last year.

Skoda’s latest success comes on the back of record sales figures. It increased its fleet registrations by 31% to a total of 22,000 last year.

The majority of that growth was in “true fleet and local business”, according to the brand’s head of fleet sales Martin Burke.

“That was pleasing because our strategy is to grow with genuine customer relationships,” he says.

The brand wants a presence in the rental market but never more than 10% of the total volume.

Last year, out of total sales of 45,000, rental accounted for 4,200. In Motability, Skoda had just 0.9% market share in 2011.

Burke puts Skoda’s sales success down to three things: “a fantastic product range” (the Superb was named Best Estate Car in this year’s awards and was highly commended in the Best Upper Medium Car category, which it previously won in 2010 and 2011); “a focused network” (the brand has launched a ‘Fit for Fleet’ initiative with 40 of its 132-dealer network focused on fleet); and “a great team within Skoda UK and the factory over at Skoda Auto” (the fleet field team is doubling from four to eight permanent members of staff. Burke says the factory is “aligned” with the Fit for Fleet initiative).

Growing the fleet sales team allows Skoda to “knock on more doors and get more people to sit in our cars”, according to Burke.

“Whenever a member of the fleet sales team calls on a customer they insist that the customer comes to the car park, walks round the car and sits in it,” he says. “And we’ve had great success with that.”

Fleet News: Tell us about your Fit for Fleet initiative.

Martin Burke: We want a number of our retailers to have a fleet mindset and have the right resource and people in place.

That’s where things like the Fleet Service Level Agreement – which gives fleet customers confidence they will get great service – live and breathe.

They will have additional demonstrators for test drivers, there will be specialist fleet people in place and we will help support and develop them.

But I’m keen to stress: you don’t change that overnight, it does take time.
 

FN: How are the dealers chosen?

MB: They have to submit a five-year business plan and present to us why they should be chosen. Every year there is an opportunity to apply to become a Fit for Fleet retailer, but we want it to be when the time is right for their business and when they feel they have the opportunity.

It’s not something we’re trying to force upon our network. We’ll get a much better buy-in and take-up if it’s natural and they’ve got the motivation.

But it’s not an exclusive club that says you can’t sell fleet if you’re not part of Fit for Fleet. We want prospecting through the rest of our network.

FN: Tell us about your annual leasing survey.

MB: We did a survey in May last year to find out what leasing companies think about Skoda and what their customers are saying about the brand, our product and our network.

The overall feedback was they really like doing business with us. But there were areas to focus on in terms of developing more of our network to focus on fleet. And that’s where the Fit for Fleet initiative links in.

FN: What challenges do you face in the fleet market?

MB: I think all of us are faced with the challenge that the retail market is currently very quiet so fleet is becoming very competitive. It’s where your brand and your products have to stand up against the best. I’m confident we have that.

FN: What is appealing about the Superb?

MB: It’s the size and practicality of the car combined with real quality and value for money. If you look at the top-of-the-range Elegance you get everything specification-wise but with a realistic value.

FN: Many of your cars tend to straddle segments owing to their size. Have you got any plans to restructure the range?

MB: Not now we’ve got Mission L coming around November. It will sit between the Fabia and Octavia.
We’ve also got the new Citigo launching in May which will be in the city car segment.

What is important is that we get the industry influencers to understand where those cars fit. We work very hard on taking the influencers out to our factory to see our models and they help us with the positioning and spec of the cars for the UK market.

That’s something we’ve done now for the past three years. When we launched Superb we took a group of 12 over to see the car. That’s where we got our spec S, SE and Elegance and why the Superb was called a hatch and not a saloon because you get an uplift in RV – all those areas are important to us.

We’re planning in June of this year to take the industry influencers out to see all our new models – not just what we’ve got coming this year, but also our new Octavia and Superb, which both have a facelift next year. That’s something where we will ensure we get their feedback and position our cars correctly.
 

FN: Is GreenLine getting as much recognition as other eco brands?

MB: We are promoting our GreenLine range more heavily this year. We’ve got a local business offer through Skoda finance all year on our GreenLine range.

We’ve got some fantastic CO2 emissions. To have the Superb at 114g/km is a really great fleet proposition. That’s something we do need to shout more about.

FN: What are your plans for alternatively-fuelled cars?

MB: Everything that’s being developed at the moment we are doing on a Volkswagen Group basis. Clearly it’s a difficult one around what is the future – whether it’s electric, hybrid or alternative fuels.

This is where direction from the Government and European wide needs to come.

Fleet forms an important part of Skoda’s long-term growth plans (Simply Grow). The brand is aiming for 78,000 registrations by the end of 2015 with fleet making up around 38,000 of those sales.

The target this year is just over 27,000 fleet sales and a 2.7% fleet market share.

Burke believes it is “realistic growth” as Skoda has had a positive start to 2012.

In March the brand had a 2.5% market share overall while the fleet was at 2.2%.

What’s more, Skoda out-performed the market (the fleet market was down 0.7% in March while Skoda was up 13.3%).

“We are some 2,700 units ahead of this time last year. So in a market which is more or less staying the same our brand is having more appeal,” Burke says.

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