Ford has made some changes to it fleet sales team with the appointment of Christine Wagner as General Manager Fleet and Upfitting. Wagner’s previous role was Mobility and Connected Vehicles Marketing Manager which provides some signals to the future direction of fleet vehicles and Ford’s plans to connect more with their fleet customers.
I spoke to Wagner and Ambrose Henderson, Director of Customer Experience, Growth and Sales at Ford, at the media launch of the E-Transit about the existing direction they are heading and the success they are having with the Ranger and winning new fleet customers.
“I am only recently appointed in the last few weeks,” explained Wagner. “I’ve been transitioning away from FordPass and connectivity which have been my remit up until now, and now concentrating on fleet. We’ve expanded our fleet operations which is actually a great time to let Ambrose explain why.”
Henderson started by providing some detail on his 16 year career with Ford which included time in the U.S. working in customer experience. He returned to Australia in this new role which was previously know as the Director of Sales which is a signal internally, and externally, that they will be focused driving customer loyalty.
“The second part of my title is growth and that’s where fleet absolutely comes in,” says Henderson. “Christine’s role is a new role, incremental to our fleet team as we invest further in that space.”
“We’ve had a fleet team for as long as I can remember, and we’ve been a very significant fleet team, probably since the inception of Ford in Australia. And it’s little known but we actually continue to be a really strong fleet player.”
“Internally, the way we look at fleet, we’ve hit some records since we’ve launched Next Gen (Ranger). And we see that there is a significant opportunity for us to continue to grow in fleet based on our product portfolio.”
“So obviously Ranger is very strong. Everest is now starting to grow in terms of fleet popularity, particularly as it is a you know a new generation five star ANCAP safety rated car and some of the other players in that segment are no longer rated.”
“We also obviously see that our other products have a huge opportunity as well. E-Transit, that’s one of them. But the Transit portfolio in total, is an extraordinary opportunity for us. We can sell everyone we’ve got so we’re really looking forward to growing that over the next couple of years.”
