Volkswagen is upping its contact with fleets, making a return to Company Car in Action essential, Mark Johnson, national fleet sales manager, told Fleet News.

Fleet News: What are your expectations for the rest of 2015?

Mark Johnson: We’re hovering around a 10% market share, which is strategically where we think we should be. We’ve got a lot of activity to try and win new business but ultimately it’s about making sure we do the right thing by our existing customer base.

In general terms, the market is getting more and more user chooser focused. About 75% of our customer portfolio is user chooser to one degree or another and that’s a continuing trend. Companies are not trying to save as much money as they were, they are trying to give employees more choice and offer a better retention tool, and therefore we need to be able to react to that. One of the key things is keeping abreast of fleet policies and making sure we’ve got the right car positioning.

Salary sacrifice is a growing area but I don’t think collectively the manufacturers fully appreciate how big that opportunity is. We consider salary sacrifice an area where we could do, and should do, quite well. Polo and Golf are obvious candidates for that market.

FN: Are you introducing, or have you recently introduced, any new initiatives for fleets?

MJ: We’re increasing the number of touch points we have with the market place. We have not been at Company Car in Action for a little while and attending this year is recognition from our point of view that we need to be taking as many opportunities as we can to have that contact both from prospects and customers.

We’re working to a plan of nine area fleet managers, as well as having a contract hire relationship team of three.

We’re also developing our fleet business partner network - our retailers who specialise in fleet. We have 40 fleet retailers out of a network of 195 in the UK. We’re managing the standard expectations we have of them in terms of what they do for prospecting, how they look after customers, and how they work with the area fleet manager team to collectively identify opportunities.

FN: What new fleet models have you launched/are you due to launch this year?

MJ: The all-new Passat and Passat Estate are really key to our fleet offering. When we launched we introduced SE Business, which has electric folding mirrors, parking sensors, privacy glass and navigation. The cost for that is £700 more than the SE but fleets get about £1,200 worth of equipment. We’ve also just announced a BlueMotion edition with CO2 emissions of 95g/km, which is available to order now with deliveries expected in August.

Later on in the year we have the new Sharan and all-new Touran MPVs.

The Passat GTE, which is our plug-in hybrid, is due to arrive in early 2016. It’s a real signal of intent. We are known historically for our diesel technology. That has carried us a long way and is still very much a part of what we’re doing but plug-in hybrid technology as well as pure electric are key.

 

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