For Titan, Dealers Can’t Miss a Beat

CARMEL, CA – Nissan knows it needs all hands on deck if it is to increase the sales and awareness of its Titan fullsize pickup.

That includes its dealers, who a brand executive says could use some brushing up on their knowledge of the truck, as well as its segment.

“They’re better now than when we launched back in December, but (dealers) still need to progress in terms of their capabilities in selling trucks,” Phil O’Connor, Titan chief marketing manager, tells WardsAuto here in an interview.

That’s why Nissan is incorporating dealer training into its marketing activities for the second-generation Titan, which began its rollout last December with the diesel-powered heavy-duty XD.

An 11-city Titan tour is planned in September to coincide with a major ad campaign around the half-ton, crew-cab model. The tour will give not only media and potential customers the chance to learn about and drive the new Titan, but Nissan’s own retailers will get a close look as well.

“We’re going to bring dealers and dealer sales consultants to these events, and they’re going to drive our products and our competitive products and learn in a very hands-on way what our advances are, and learn about the segment, frankly,” O’Connor says.

Because of the traditionally high turnover of dealership sales staff and Nissan’s goal to establish Titan as a serious player in the fullsize-pickup segment, any training surrounding Titan must be ongoing, he notes.

“We need continuous training, (and) we need to make sure our retail sales channel has the capability,” O’Connor says. “Our domestic competitors have been selling fullsize pickups for (a long time). Their sales consultants rely on their fullsize pickups for their livelihood.

“The inertia they have in the segment is huge, so we can’t afford to put off any of those efforts,” he continues. “It has to be a continuous process for us. So that’s just top of mind for anything we do when we talk about Titan.”

Although Nissan has been successful in the compact-pickup market with its Frontier, selling a fullsize model has been tougher.

The first-generation Titan debuted in 2003 and burned out quickly, never reaching Nissan’s 100,000-unit annual sales target. The brand sold 12,140 Titans in the U.S. in 2015, according to WardsAuto data.

Nissan dealers, most familiar with selling cars and SUVs, were blamed by industry watchers and some Nissan officials for the model’s lack of success, although that criticism was a 2-way street, with dealers accusing Nissan marketers of not promoting the truck sufficiently.

Another reason cited for the original Titan’s weak sales was the broader reach of the Detroit Three’s retail network.

While Nissan has 1,100 stores in the U.S., Ford and Chevy, which both have been selling large pickups in the U.S. for nearly 100 years, have roughly 3,000 stores each.

O’Connor says he’s not overly concerned about the discrepancy, with Nissan well represented in the biggest metropolitan markets. However, he sees some lack of coverage in smaller rural markets where large pickups reign supreme.

“I used to call on the Ford dealers in rural Iowa, and they were a gas station with a Ford sign and a car. And that was the dealership. That’s an advantage,” he says.

While Nissan can’t replicate those small-town stores, often run by the same families for generations and staffed by sales and service people who know everybody in town, O’Connor remains bullish.

“There’s probably some business in some of those small towns that we’re going to have a difficult time capturing initially, but as we build momentum we’ll see.”

Meanwhile, O’Connor says dealers are getting a great sales opportunity with the new ’17 single-cab Titan, available in half-ton and XD variants and going on sale in late fall.

Nissan will market the vehicle to commercial and fleet customers via advertising and trade shows, making sure its dealers are prepared and can “speak the truck language” that group of buyers is fluent in, he says.

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