How to find people with fleet manager responsibilities (because often, they don’t have “fleet” in their job titles!)
When using prospecting software, many people look for fleet decision-makers by choosing job titles with “fleet,” “fleet maintenance,” and “transportation.”
But a warning: If you search only for these job titles, you will miss most people who make decisions about fleet vehicles.
Why?
Because …
Only about 1% of all companies & governments with fleet vehicles
have a dedicated fleet job title.
Surprised?
There’s a few reasons for this:
- Most fleets are small. 80% of fleets in the U.S. have less than 5 vehicles. Usually, fleet managers are hired after a fleet has dozens of vehicles. Most fleets are not big enough for a fleet manager.
- Many other job titles now oversee fleets. So the person with the fleet manager responsibilities doesn’t have a fleet manager job title.
Fleets need to be a certain size before a fleet manager is needed
This might be a few dozen vehicles. Even then, many businesses will try to juggle fleet responsibilities until they can’t. Only then will they hire a dedicated fleet manager. Or, outsource to a fleet management company.
Before then, the person overseeing the company’s vehicles is most likely the business owner, general manager, operations, finance, accounting, purchasing, or administration job title. Sometimes it can be warehouse or facilities. In small businesses, it might even be the office manager.
- If your fleet market includes fleets with less than 25 vehicles, definitely choose owner, president, CEO. Also choose general manager, operations, finance, and purchasing job titles in addition to fleet.
Diverse decision-makers and influencers on buying committees
Fleet managers work closely across many management and executive roles.
They work with the business owners, until a certain point in business size.
They work with finance, accounting, controller, or comptroller (we include all variations of finance job titles in ProsperFleet’s Finance function).
For fleet technology purchases, they might coordinate with IT.
In larger businesses, fleet managers will coordinate with procurement, purchasing, supplier relations, vendor relations – whoever is involved with vendor and supplier decisions.
Fleet managers may work closely with safety and compliance roles, and even dispatch roles.
Fleets that are large enough for in-house maintenance, service, and parts purchasing may have a fleet maintenance supervisor or manager, or even more generic titles like shop foreman, parts manager, service manager. (We have algorithms to include these job titles in ProsperFleet’s Fleet Maintenance function.)
Some or all of these people may be involved in purchase decisions, depending on what you sell to fleets.
- Include job titles from across company departments in your contact search. Include the people who likely work with fleet managers on vendor selection and purchasing decisions.
- If you don’t find a “fleet manager” or “fleet director” job title at a company that you know has many vehicles, try contacting someone with another job title that likely works closely with the fleet manager. These people should know who has the fleet management role. And they may give valuable insight about fleet/vehicle business problems you can solve.
Some industries use different terms
For example in school districts, the person responsible for overseeing the school bus fleet often has “transportation” in their job title instead of fleet. Government agencies may have different decision-maker job titles than the private sector. For example “public works” job titles can oversee a fleet or work closely with the government fleet manager. Currently for fleet electrification, job titles related to federal and state grants may be involved.
- Know the decision-making job titles in your targeted industries, because they might be different than typical fleet job titles.
Your ideal customer profile may be specialized
Depending on what you sell, there may be additional specialized job titles: safety, DOT compliance, driver training, driver recruiting and human resources, risk management, asset management, field service, public works, freight, logistics, supply chain.
- Identify all the job titles involved in purchasing and using your specific product or service.
Large enterprise fleets with many locations are another ballgame
Large fleets that are distributed at locations across the U.S. may have either centralized decision-making at their headquarters, or they may have decentralized decision-making in regions or districts. You might find fleet manager and fleet maintenance job titles across the country for these fleets. In this case, seek as many levels of job titles as you can, to create a picture of the company structure. Where are the VPs who oversee fleet? Where are the directors? Managers? Where are the maintenance personnel?
With enterprise accounts, it’s worth investing time to understand the landscape of all people involved in fleet at the company.
At some enterprise-level accounts, even though the fleets are large, the people overseeing fleet may not have fleet in their job titles. They may sound like more general operations job titles.
- For enterprise size accounts with the largest fleets, consider an Account Based Marketing (ABM) approach and get a deep understanding of your targeted accounts, rather than think of reaching them through “email lists.”
Fleet maintenance jobs might not have “fleet” in the job title
People who work on fleet maintenance may have job titles that say “Maintenance Manager” or “Director of Maintenance.” Now, if you are prospecting to trucking companies, these general maintenance job titles will likely be working on vehicles. But, at companies in other industries or diversified companies, these maintenance jobs could be working on building maintenance, assembly line equipment maintenance, all kinds of maintenance. Job titles might also have “parts,” “body shop,” etc.
- If your target audience is trucking or other industry that’s heavy on vehicle assets, try searching maintenance job titles that do not include the word “fleet.”
How to find fleet decision-makers in ProsperFleet
If you are using ProsperFleet, we recommend:
Depending on the fleet size you target and what you sell, we recommend you also consider choosing owner, president, CEO, general manager, operations, finance, and procurement/purchasing job titles in addition to fleet job titles.
This gives you many more fleet prospects. In the screenshot below, choosing only the “fleet function” found 5,600 companies and 11,900 contacts. And depending on the size of your marketing or sales operations, and who your Ideal Customer Profile is, this might be enough for you. If you need more, though, choose more job titles. We followed the recommendations above and found 340,400 companies and 402,600 contacts.
Also this is a national search of all fleets in the U.S., all types of vehicles, and all industries. If you target only certain types of vehicles, some industries, or some geographic areas like a few states, then these numbers will be smaller. And then it will be even more important to expand the contact job titles you’re looking for.
Remember, ProsperFleet credits are not based on the number of contacts you download.
Credits are based on the number of companies you download.
So, choosing more contacts does not cost more.
Director of Marketing & Customer Success at Valgen
Grew up by the Motor City. A spelling nerd, I wrote Chevrolet in chalk on our driveway. Thought I was a big kid writing a big word. Didn’t stray far from cars: worked in transportation and fleet safety, preventing distracted driving. Now working with marketers and sales teams to connect with their next fleet customers.
