For a brand that’s already achieving a 2.9% market share in the European fleet market, Nissan is far from being a minor player. But as the brand rolls out its mid-term business plan, dubbed Nissan Power 88 and focused on achieving a global market share of 8%, fleet is becoming even more of a focus to the brand.

To that end, there have been some significant developments in Nissan Europe’s Fleet & LCV Corporate Sales department this year, including the appointment of Jordi Vila Onses, who takes on the newly created role of general manager, with responsibility to help Nissan grow its fleet sector channels. 

No stranger to the brand, Mr Vila Onses has over 20 years’ experience of Nissan in various headquarter and local roles across Europe, including in sales operations, network development, customer quality and four years as the chief marketing manager of pickups and LCVs.  

Commenting on the reasons for the changes to Nissan’s fleet team, Mr Vila Onses explains: ‘It is not a one-off idea but part of the bigger Nissan Power 88 plan to expand our overall market share. In Europe we are looking to grow towards 5% market share – we ended up last year at 3.4% and we are nearly now at 4%. 

‘One of the fundamental elements is to have a proper presence in the fleet channels. It’s not that we’re not present in the fleet market but the truth is that our presence in private channels is bigger than in the fleet channels. We don’t want to end up with the reverse either but the direction is to line up the fleet penetration with the average penetration in the market. That’s fundamentally the goal.’

Mr Vila Onses’ appointment comes as part of a raft of changes to the Fleet & LCV Corporate Sales department to give the existing fleet activities a broader dimension.  

Mr Vila Onses explains: ‘In particular we are reinforcing three areas. One is all the activities that are already incipient, which is all the international key account management, all the developing of the relationships, especially with the major leasing companies, and also of course with the major daily rental operators. 

‘The second group of activities covers what we call piloting our operations with our dealers throughout our Regional Business Units. And also we have a particular focus with LCVs as a model category and we are handling this some operational marketing activities and events – for example we have an event with all the operators at the end of November. 

‘Then there’s a third group that is more product offer orientated and is in charge of product conversions so to meet professional customer demand; it looks at what will be the policy in the countries but also what we propose centrally to help our customers and our dealers with the offer.’

He also explains that Nissan has a number of strings to its bow, explaining: ‘We may not be today a bigger player in Europe but we are a Japanese company – we have very good assets. One is that we have a big base of production in Europe and the other is that we have a very broad line-up that encompasses passenger cars and LCVs. I think that’s our strength.’

Then there’s the fact that the carmaker, along with its Alliance partner Renault, has been one of the first to venture into the electric vehicle market. Launched initially in the UK, Portugal, Netherlands and Ireland, the LEAF EV is now being rolled out throughout Europe and, says Mr Vila Onses, is proving very successful with fleets, which make up 60% of sales.

He explains: ‘There are two things here. One is that we have a genuine demand from some companies that we are managing. There is also significant interest from big companies and even government companies that need to have an emission-free vehicle – or in average reduce their CO2 emissions of their fleets.

‘We believe that growth of EV sales and leasing will be exponential in coming years – especially as LEAF will become a European-produced vehicle from 2013, which helps us have an even broader discussion with our customers.’

Given the latest changes at Nissan, it looks likely that Nissan will not be short of topics to discuss with its customers. 

Summing up the changes, Mr Vila Onses says: ‘The key issue is that there is a change in Nissan, not because we are corporate sales – we are corporate sales because there is a change in Nissan. This is not about one-off deals, this is about having a proper fleet strategy and a long-lasting organisation that more and more can add value to our company and to our brand.’