Ogilvie Fleet Creates New South of England Sales Team to Further Expand Business

Fast-growing Ogilvie Fleet has embarked on a further phase of expansion with the creation of a new South of England sales team.

The team, which will be led by newly-appointed director of sales – South, Jo Clark, who has a near 30-year contract hire and leasing industry career behind her, means Ogilvie Fleet now delivers truly UK-wide coverage as it builds towards a 20,000-strong fleet over the next few years.

It also marks the company’s fourth and final expansion development in recent months following:

• The appointment of David Raponi as business development director to lead Ogilvie Fleet’s growth in to the UK’s larger fleet market 
• The recruitment of Richard Jessop as head of its new salary sacrifice solution 
• The appointment of Paul Griffiths as head of sales in Northern Ireland to further expand corporate sales in the province. 

Ogilvie Fleet managing director Gordon Stephen said: “For the last few years we have wanted to have a sales presence in the South of England covering London and the South East and South West. We have felt for some time that the multi award-winning high quality service that we provide to our customers would be well suited in the South where service rather than pricing can be more important. There are also a vast number of quality customers that we are determined to attract.”

He continued: “This development is the last piece in the jigsaw in terms of sales coverage and means that Ogilvie Fleet is now truly a national leasing company.”

Meanwhile, in a further development, Andy Stephen, the company’s longest serving employee with a near 23-year career behind him, has been promoted from business support manager to business support director and joins the Ogilvie Fleet board.

The promotion of Andy, Gordon’s brother, is recognition of the critical role that IT has played, and will continue to play, in delivering innovative and efficient solutions to fleet customers and their company car and van drivers.

Gordon said: “Ogilvie Fleet is, and will continue to be, at the forefront of delivering technology solutions to fleet managers and drivers and Andy has been responsible for developing our systems: online reporting and driver apps among the initiatives.

“With data warehousing the projects are getting bigger and, as a result, the role is becoming more senior. It was therefore felt that the job was deserving of a board position. Delivering the best customer service in the industry is key for Ogilvie Fleet and part of that is using technology to provide what fleet decision-makers and drivers are demanding.”

Andy, who leads a five-strong system development department and has attended board meeting for many years, said: “IT investment has been a key issue for the company in recent years. System development has been the engine room behind the scenes in terms of business growth and providing meaningful management information to fleets and drivers with the ability to access company car policies online.”

Although Ogilvie Fleet, which operates a fleet approaching 13,000 vehicles, already has a large number of South of England-based customers it did not have a sales team specifically targeting businesses and public sector fleets in the region.

With the appointment of Ms Clark, Ashley Crookes, previously national sales manager, becomes director of sales – North. Both report to Nick Hardy, Ogilvie Fleet’s sales and marketing director.

Ms Clark started her career in sales administration and progressed into field sales with Trimoco Leasing, which was subsequently acquired by the Hartwell Motor Group where she held a number of senior positions including becoming its youngest and first female director. For the past 15 years she has been employed by the Arnold Clark Group where she helped to establish, develop and grow its Activa Contracts brand.

Most recently sales and marketing director at Activa Contracts, Ms Clark said: “Ogilvie Fleet is a major force in the fleet market highlighted by its multiple awards success due to its commitment to customer service excellence and investment in market leading IT systems.

“Ogilvie Fleet, as a very forward-thinking and innovative company, continually strives to lead the industry. Heading a new team that will focus on growing the business in the South of England is an exciting opportunity and I am delighted to be working with Nick and the team.”

Supporting Ms Clark will be a newly recruited team of sales managers and the first to join is Mike Wynn, who becomes area manager – South, and has a 26-year fleet industry career behind him.

He also started his fleet industry career at Trimoco Leasing, then spent a decade in the fleet department at Vauxhall Motors before enjoying five years at Toomey Opticar and latterly was employed by Activa Contracts for five years most recently as area manager for the Midlands and North West.

Mr Wynn said: “Ogilvie Fleet is an ambitious company and so am I. I have an opportunity to be involved at the start of an exciting new project that will help expand the company’s presence in the UK fleet market.”

A further three or four appointments to the home-based South of England sales team are expected over the next 12-18 months.

Mr Hardy said: “The creation of a new South of England-based sales team is a further exciting development for Ogilvie Fleet as we continue to focus on expansion and take our award-winning customer service and IT developments to more customers.”

In recent years Ogilvie Fleet has invested heavily in the driver and fleet manager experience with industry-leading systems. That has seen its reputation for customer service recognised with a string of awards, notably becoming the first vehicle leasing and fleet management company to win a Fleeteye CSI (customer satisfaction index) award five times in succession.

Mr Hardy added: “Ogilvie Fleet has IT systems and customer service support in place and allied to the desire and capability to expand we believe our product offering will prove attractive to fleets of all sizes and in all sectors of the market

“Our fleet size continues to grow month-on-month and, while we have a desire to expand further, we are determined that growth will not be at the expense of our ability to deliver fantastic levels of customer service. It is our industry-leading customer service supported by our innovative IT solutions that are under-pinning current growth and will be the catalyst for future expansion.

“We have massive capacity from our IT and technical capability to support fleet growth and now we have an expanded sales team to deliver on our expansion ambitions.”