How Pentland dominated the 2024 JLR Retailer Awards

Having your business recognised by a manufacturer as the best of the best is no mean feat and – let’s face it – something to shout about. But when you add in triumphs in sales, client care and new vehicle sales – not to mention praise on a group level – then a business is really onto something. And that’s before you take into account runner-up spots.

This was the case with the John Clark Motor Group’s Pentland business, which took away a total of eight honours at the JLR Retailer Awards, which took place in March. As Chris Clark, MD at John Clark put it: “These guys are simply awesome and I’m incredibly proud to count them and their teams as part of our business.”

Much of the success, although he wouldn’t admit it, can be put down to Jonathan Inman, divisional managing director at Pentland, who has overseen steady progress and improvements at each of the company’s six Scottish sites. “I’ve run Pentland for eight years and my main focus has been getting the right people in the right job,” explains Jonathan. “So now I’ve got six very good general managers and my newest one has been with me for five years – so they have all be around for a while.

“We grow our general managers from sales managers, so it’s generally internal promotions. We’re not a big ‘hire and fire’ company – if we’ve got somebody who’s not doing so well, we’ll find a better role for them than just get rid of them,” he says. “That continuity has given us very good CSI scores because the people are invested in the business and can see themselves being around in 12 months. In other environments, people can be quite transient.”

Jonathan says that there is a big focus on scorecards and he reveals that Pentland was one of the most profitable groups within John Clark last year, with the second-best return on sales, while internal sales were ranked high within the network, too.

Stable and secure

The wider John Clark Group is one of the reasons that staff stay in one place, says Jonathan – the fact that it is a successful family business resonates with them and people like working for them. “It’s a bit different to working for a PLC, because we’re a little bit more nimble and we can be more agile. Looking after the six businesses is manageable and I know everyone in the branches and, as a company, we can engage with them all by celebrating their birthdays, having family fun days and just treating them well,” he explains. “Staff retention is low compared with the rest of the industry and, at a management level, the people in place feel invested, which is important, particularly where we have the parts issues and breakdown problems and everything else that comes with Land Rover. It’s a very profitable franchise but it’s a very quirky car because it comes with challenges.”

Incremental improvements

Overall, standards have been raised across the six Pentland sites, which is very satisfying to Jonathan, especially in the case of one of the retailers. “In 2021, we won Group of the Year – our Sterling business was ranked 50th but we still won overall because the other businesses ranked pretty high,” he recalls. “That gave the head of business and the sales management team in Sterling a bit of a shake-up because they felt like they’d missed out. That pushed them to engage a lot more and work harder, which they have done because in 2022, they finished in the top 20 and last year they finished in the top 10.”

“So Sterling has improved, over the last few years, more than the others, but so has our Edinburgh East site – because there has been more focus there,” he adds. “But it’s hard to correlate that because there were all always trying, but they weren’t quite getting there. But certainly the last two years they have all imporoved and everyone is now in the top 10 – and that’s out of 112 sites in total, which is really impressive. That progress is purely down to people being very focused, driven and buying into the whole ethos of the business and the awards.”

Going for the quadruple

JLR’s retailer awards saw Pentland take the Retailer of the Year prize for the third year in a row, something that is an impressive feat, but also a lot to live up to. “We’ve created a bit of a monster for ourselves,” admits Jonathan. “We probably did win more than even I expected at the awards. But the nice thing is that the Group of the Year prize is that everybody who works at Pentland can take some pleasure in that. So regardless of if you’re the valet, the receptionist or any other role within the business, they can take some pride in that. That’s a USP, I think and why, in my opinion, winning that prize is more than one business winning a single award. They might not have had much to do with it, but at least they are part of it.”

Aside from the group prize, Jonathan says that Pentland Land Rover Dundee taking away the award for the best client care was almost as satisfying. “One of our USPs is really good customer service,” he states. “Pentland is synonymous with looking after customers and if you ask Jaguar Land Rover what we are good at that’s exactly what it would say. We get a lot of repeat business, which is really important to us. We haven’t got a reputation of being hard to do business and, if we do get a complaint, I take it very seriously. Generally, it costs me a few quid because I don’t want to be at an event where someone says we are horrendous to deal with. One unhappy customer tells 10 people; one happy customer only tells two people. We are empowered to put things right so that customers don’t go away thinking we are bad people.”

Jonathan’s tips for the top

Pick the key areas you want to improve in your business and keep focused on them.

Choose a manageable amount of areas you want to work on and concentrate on them. Don’t try and do 100 things at once, because it’s not possible.

Human beings aren’t as clever as we think we are, because we get distracted. So it’s better to do three things well than 10 things badly.