Mazda is putting an increasing emphasis on local fleet business through its dealer network in 2008.

The Japanese carmaker has historically used its fleet specialists to target larger companies, but is putting more focus on educating dealers to deal with enquiries from smaller organisations.

Steve Jellis, Mazda UK’s after sales manager, said: “We want to encourage our dealers to work more closely with the local fleets and our fleet department has set up an arrangement which gives dealers specific support in this area.

"That means they can do their own thing rather than rely heavily on the very big fleets, which we tend to handle through a handful of fleet specialists.”

Mazda’s fleet director James Hopkins has been meeting with dealers and presenting ideas that will enable them to better understand the needs of smaller firms.

“We’re encouraging them to be more proactive with smaller fleets and we would welcome the attention of the small fleet manager,” Mr Jellis said

“It’s still in the very early stages. We only started discussions at the end of last year, but it will develop through the next six to nine months.

“Our fleet community looks at business across all the channels from major daily rental down to the small business users.”