Tony Lewis, Nissan GB’s corporate sales director, has been promoted to the position of director sales and marketing, light commercial vehicles (LCV) business unit at Nissan Europe.

Lewis was instrumental in building Nissan’s LCV operation in the UK after his appointment in 2008.

Nissan has been reducing the amount of dealerships it has in the UK that specialise in fleet sales.

This is in order to help specialists make bigger returns from fleet sales, in turn encouraging them to invest more in the business and their people to improve the service offered to fleets.

Already 80% of Nissan GB’s fleet sales go through around 35 business centres.

Nissan improved its margin structure on fleet sales to raise dealers’ interest last year.

Further focus has been placed on Nissan’s light commercial vehicle operation, with the addition of four new dealerships to take its LCV network up to 66 locations in 2010.

These include the first dedicated solus Nissan LCV centre, opened by Pendragon’s Chatfields division in Birmingham.

The other additions are Imperial in Hull, Crossroads in Rotherham and Swansea Truck Centre.

James Douglas, Nissan’s current fleet sales director, has been promoted to replace Lewis.

Douglas joined Nissan in 1998 as area fleet manager and held several sales and marketing roles within the company before becoming fleet sales director in 2007.

Andy Woodhall takes on Douglas’ previous role as fleet sales director. Woodhall was previously a regional sales director for Nissan.