09 February 2020

Honda has shrunk its fleet sales activity following the departure of corporate boss Mark Samuel, head of cars Phil Webb told Auto Retail Agenda.

“We no longer split corporate and retail, we have an overall sales team, and fleet responsibility now falls to me,” he said.

Phil Webb, Honda

The corporate sales team has been organically halved because “we’re not interested in big, expensive fleet deals. Corporate is not the market we’re going to be in going forward”.

Any fleet activity will instead be based around its Platinum Programme. “We’ve relaunched this over the last three months. Half a dozen dealers are looking at the bigger corporate picture, and the rest will be working with the field team to look at local opportunities.”

The firm focus is on retail, with 25k annual sales “not changing. Our strapline is ‘to sell a profitable retail car’ and this will be reiterated at our annual meeting with investors on 11 February.”

Honda also plans to continue allowing retailers to set their own sales targets.

Mr Webb said the success of this approach is proven by continued interest in the Honda franchise. “Marshall recently took on another two. Vertu constantly wants more. The Brayleys Group took over Thames Group, and wants more. New investors also still want to talk to us.”

The planned reduction in the Honda network continues. “We are down to 144, from 159. Every dealer that needs to have a conversation has been spoken to. In the next 18 months, we’ll reduce further, to around 118. It may be 110, it may be 120 – we’re happy to have those conversations, so long as area responsibility is right and the dealers’ overheads are met.”

Tags: Honda, Marshall, Phil Webb, Vertu