Honda dealers boost fleet business in small firms

Honda dealers have benefited from a boom in fleet business since the manufacturer began targeting smaller businesses.

The corporate strategy focusing on firms with less than 100 employees is now in its third year.

“We have seen explosive growth in B2B sales,” Honda’s national dealer corporate manager Dave Girling told Motor Trader.

“Our 2007 figures increased 57 per cent over 2006, while in 2008 they have grown another 32 per cent over 2007.”

Girling said the unprecedented growth in 2007 had made it imperative to set up a corporate strategy more heavily involving dealers in the programme.

“We were selling so many cars off the strategy we needed an infrastructure to back it up,” he said.

The brand has now launched the 2008 Corporate Charter focusing on dealer resources, their levels of activity and the standards they maintain in targeting small businesses. The initial 45 dealers signed up to the programme have now grown to 92. More than 100 dedicated dealer staff work with a field team of four operating out of Honda’s head office in Langley near Heathrow.

Honda launched its strategy by commissioning a study to identify the level of fleet opportunity among the sub-100 companies located in a dealership’s territory, compared to the national average, and the results threw up some surprises.

While Arnold Clark Honda in Manchester presented the greatest opportunity and Wandsworth Honda, London, rated second highest, third in the table was De Vries Honda in Stockton-on-Tees.

“Manchester was in there, London of course, Liverpool and Birmingham, but places such as Stockton-on-Tees are not the first places we would have thought of going to,” Girling said.

According to Girling sub-100 companies now represent almost half of the brand’s corporate business whereas in 2006 it was just 10 per cent; “We are selling consistently now to six new fleet customers a day and that’s constantly growing – we’ve made more than 12,000 appointments for dealers since the programme started.”

Honda expects further fleet opportunities from its new Insight, an “affordable hybrid” family car due in showrooms in spring 2009.