It’s a busy next six months on the product front for Nissan, with the revised Leaf recently launched, the new Micra just coming through, the new Note on sale on 1 October and the crucial new Qashqai due next February.
However, the company’s corporate sales director Barry Beeston is also looking beyond the metal to try and smooth the entire customer experience to make sure existing customers are keen to come back for more.
“You buy a product based on the product itself and the transaction price,” he tells BusinessCar. “But three years in you have had a relationship and the car has been in for service. The fleet proposition we’re trying to build on at the moment goes beyond product and price – it’s a 360-degree view on dealing with us if you’re a fleet organisation and making sure we’re easy to do business with, and promotes the loyalty aspect.”
Beeston took over as Nissan UK’s corporate sales director in April after previous incumbent Jon Pollock moved up to the sales director role six months after rejoining Nissan from Toyota. Beeston has been with Nissan for more than 20 years, the previous six of which have been as fleet sales director.
“If you go to the customer and ask which are the easiest manufacturers to deal with, Nissan wants to be in the top basket,” he declares. “With the dealers and our staff here, we’re going back to the importance of the network not just to sell – our expectation is that the customer will be dealt with in a certain way.”
Beeston says that Nissan may not be in a position to go out to the industry and shout about its all-round post-sale service proposition until at least the fiscal year 2014. The dealer business centre programme is described as “key” and has been in place since June, while there are various building blocks that will come together to create a comprehensive customer service and retention plan. Nissan has a working group of around 20 dealers to evaluate its local business and smaller fleet activity, an area the firm sees as an opportunity.
“We’re taking it a step at a time. I want to ensure that, before we go out and communicate to the industry and wave the flag, the processes and back of house is there,” he continues. “We can run it with no promotion, put the systems and processes in, train staff and monitor what happens; we could run it for six or 12 months and gauge whether it’s making a difference and then go out and promote it.”
Another focus is SMR costs, and Nissan is developing a new tool so leasing companies and end-user companies could log straight into a real-time feed from Nissan’s European parts centre and download the latest parts prices and service schedules, knowing they had been updated every evening.
Beeston is also building a “more robust” customer relationship management system with the target of it being tailored to each fleet.
“At the moment, if a company takes a demonstrator then we follow up, and if we haven’t seen the company we will catch up, but it’s all generic not bespoke to the individual client,” he explains. “I want to develop a bespoke relationship with the top 400 to 500 fleets in terms of management of our interaction with them.”
These factors are all designed to help grow Nissan’s car fleet market share from its current level of around 5.3% at the 2013 half-year point up to break the 6% barrier in the medium term of the 2015 fiscal year. That growth will be achieved through product introductions, with Beeston quick to point out that just 2300 of the company’s projected 60,000 fleet sales this year will be into rental, describing it as a “negligible” part of the business.
“As an organisation we are very pro-RV management and a lot of discussion is around activity we should take to manage residual values proactively,” he says. “Part of that is channel mix – where to do business and in which channels to ensure the non-distress of our products.”
Although the firm is looking for growth, Beeston doesn’t see it moving further up the sales chart from its current sixth position, having passed Peugeot during 2013.
“We’ve only got the big players Ford and Vauxhall, and the Germanic brands [VW, BMW and Audi] ahead of us, so it will be very difficult to go above that,” he says.
“It’s difficult to predict the future, but for ourselves we’re confident in our business plan and sales mix and confident in the volume we do because we can recycle them into used vehicles and there will be demand,” he concludes. “We could purchase volume significantly today, but it would be down certain channels that are not accommodated in our business plan [short cycle and daily rental business]. If volumes are too high in that sector it will be difficult to maintain RVs.”
Leaf entering a new season
Nissan’s Leaf pure electric vehicle is entering a new phase of its development in the UK, with fleets that conducted early trial runs now coming back and ordering more significant numbers than they did initially when they wanted to see how it worked in a business car context, according to corporate sales director Barry Beeston.
“When we first brought the vehicle to market people were taking it on a trial basis in ones and twos. It seems we have moved into a new phase lately and they are now purchasing more in line with fleet quantities,” he tells BusinessCar, citing UK Power Networks taking 50 units and West Midlands Police ordering 30 cars.
Half of the 3000 vehicles registered so far in the UK have gone into fleet operations, with Nissan keen to ensure they go into relevant operations.
“It’s about putting the right product into the right company that will use it for the right reasons, and qualification is very important for us,” says Beeston.
Nissan has also recently added the option of battery leasing to the Leaf, cutting the upfront cost, although Beeston says the demand for that move came mainly from the retail environment: “With 90% of the product in fleet it’s on a buy-buy for the car and battery; one issue with buy-lease is nothing to do with the car but the complexity it adds with two contracts.
“With leasing companies it kind of falls into the ‘hard-to-do’ box as it’s out of the norm, and for the volume, some leasing companies look at the resource and administrations and decide it’s not worth it for the profit.”
