In his 37 years at Perrys Motors Sales, Darren Ardron has experienced a lifetime of industry transformation. He discusses the changing skill sets required in retail – and why he has never had itchy feet.
You’ve spent the duration of your career with Perrys, progressing to managing director. Talk me through your career path and why you have remained so committed to the business.
Going back to the beginning, I first joined Perrys in 1988, although technically it was December 1987 because I was so excited about getting into the sector that I volunteered to go in the week before Christmas because I knew it would be a busy period and I would learn so much.
I originally trained as a technician at school but quickly realised that I didn’t want to spend my life underneath a vehicle. Back then, schools offered opportunities through the Youth Training Scheme and I was seconded to an MG Rover dealership at the age of 15, working in their sales department. To my surprise, I sold quite a few cars, which gave me a taste for the job. After finishing school, I worked briefly as a technician but then bumped into my old sales manager at the MG Rover dealership by chance. He encouraged me to consider sales again and, before I knew it, I was offered a role on the spot. I was 17 at the time.
I started out selling cars at the dealership and stuck at it for two years before being promoted to sales controller/business manager. A couple of months later, my sales manager announced he was leaving. He asked me to join him at a Honda dealership but I decided to stay put and was asked by my general manager to hold the fort while they looked to recruit a replacement.
After two or three months, my managing director called me in, thanked me personally for keeping things afloat and said he wanted me to be the first to know who the new sales manager was going to be. It was me. I remember protesting, ‘But I’m only 21,’ but he replied, ‘So you are young enough to learn and fail.’ That really resonated with me and has stayed with me ever since.
After a few years, I was given my first general manager role at the age of 26 and, from there, things really accelerated. I was given the site where I had cut my teeth, then another in North Yorkshire. In 2001, Perrys went through a buyout, moving from public to private ownership. The new owners had also acquired Henleys and I was told to pack my bags because I was going to run it. Looking back, that was the biggest but most rewarding challenge of my career. I went from running a small site with 30 people to being responsible for a huge operation with 180 staff that was losing around £700k a year. At the time, I didn’t know the full extent of the problems and might have had second thoughts about taking on the challenge if I had. But it turned out to be a hugely significant career move for me. I restructured, reorganised and relocated the business and, by 2003, I had turned the site around to the extent that it won AM Online’s Largest Dealership award two years running.
In 2004, I stepped into my first regional director role, overseeing eight sites that quickly grew to 28. I stayed in that role for around 10 years before the managing director, Ray Sommerville, called me in one day to tell me that he was retiring and to encourage me to apply for his job. I did so successfully and took over as managing director in January 2015.
Looking back at my career, I’ve never really had itchy feet but I’ve always been ready to embrace new challenges. Today, I’m responsible for around 50 sites across the group. Many are multi-franchise, so, while we have around 28 physical locations, the operational footprint brings it up to about 50.
How did you approach your transition to the managing director role? What were some of your priorities in your first few weeks?
I really wanted to establish my own style of leadership. I think I was quite fortunate that I already knew everybody in the business, including colleagues who I had worked alongside at my level of seniority, so there was already a solid foundation there.
In my first two weeks, I did one-to-ones with everyone – an hour or so with each team. These conversations gave me a very different perspective compared to when I was their counterpart. It’s amazing what people tell you. I also shadowed Ray, the outgoing managing director, for around two months. This was intended to last six months but Ray kindly made the decision to step away early to avoid stepping on my toes.
I made a point of doing one-to-ones with our OEM partners as well. For me, those relationships are vital when running a motor retail group because it’s essential to find common ground. Over the past 10 years, I’ve spent a lot of time building those relationships with key partners. When times get tough, you need have a close rapport so that you are able to pick up the phone and ask for support.
We also started looking at the things that frustrated me operationally. Gradually, I began to adjust and tweak processes. Overall, the transition was very smooth and we did not encounter any major issues. A real testament to that is that, up until last year, I hadn’t lost a single member of the senior team in nine years. Last year, we had a couple of retirements following Covid, and one regional director left to set up his own business outside the motor trade.
Recruitment was never an issue. In fact, I always found it very straightforward. For one regional role, we had an immediate successor, and for the other, I drew on my 15 years of networking on the dealer council to bring in someone who I knew was keen on a move to Perrys.
You’ve witnessed the industry shift from traditional sales models to digital-first retailing. What has been the biggest challenge in leading Perrys through that transformation? How have you adapted as a business, and how do you see retail evolving in the future?
When it comes to the agency model, I’ll be honest and say that I always thought it would never happen with some brands. Not only is it over-complicated, why would an OEM want to take all the risk? I understood why brands like Mercedes and Volvo went early, but I remember sitting in a Stellantis work group on the subject and thinking it would never get off the ground. There was so much scepticism across the industry – from dealer groups, from manufacturers, even internally. It felt like a big cultural shift as much as an operational one.
Ultimately, you can only control the controllables in this industry. If it was going to happen, then we had no choice but to go with it. That meant adapting our processes, our training, and the way we interact with customers, often much faster than we initially expected. More recently, the focus has been on EV targets, so we’ve done a lot of work internally around training, ensuring our teams understand not just the technology, but also how to communicate the benefits to customers. As it stands, we’re hitting those targets, which is a testament to how quickly a business can pivot when it has the right mindset and support.
In some cases, I think certain manufacturers would actually have been better off moving to agency, whereas for others, the opposite is true. Some OEMs were simply never going to make it work. It’s a complex picture – what works for one brand doesn’t automatically work for another, and that’s why flexibility and adaptability have become such key parts of running a retail business today.
In 2024, Perrys increased profits despite lower revenues. What choices or strategies made the difference, and how do you generally approach navigating market changes and making decisions under pressure or during uncertainty?
The real killer in the industry now is cost. Margins are tighter than ever, and even small inefficiencies can have a big impact. I think we’ll see some very different results coming out in 2025, as the market continues to shift and the cost pressures evolve. From a skills perspective, it’s crucial to keep on top of what’s happening – you cannot be a master of everything, and the required skill sets are always changing. The types of people you need in the business today are different from 20 years ago. You need people who are customer-focused rather than purely sales-focused. Customers already know what they want; they know how much their car is worth. But walking into a dealership can still feel daunting. If they are greeted by someone bright, approachable and knowledgeable, it makes all the difference – that human touch is still vital even in an increasingly digital retail environment.
That said, I do think the business is less glamorous than it was 20 years ago. You can still build a great career from it, but I think many people are put off by all the legislation, compliance requirements, and regulatory oversight that now define so much of day-to-day operations. It’s no longer just about selling cars – there’s finance, data protection, environmental regulations, EV incentives – all of which add layers of complexity to what used to feel like a simpler, more straightforward business. Navigating that complexity while keeping the customer experience front and centre is, I think, the real test for leadership today.
What do you feel is causing the need for greater investment in people, and what initiatives have you introduced to address these challenges?
We have tried to do a lot around work-life balance, although, to be honest, it can sometimes feel like fighting a losing battle. We were actually one of the first dealer groups to close on Sundays. We analysed the numbers and saw the drop-off in sales wasn’t significant, so we made the decision to give our people that time back. The call centre still opens, so customers are still able to make contact, but the sites themselves are shut. We also reduced our opening hours, so we now close our sites at 6pm instead of 8pm.
Internally, we’ve put a lot of effort into engagement. We have introduced a new concept called “People First” – every so often we send money from the centre for things like team breakfasts. It only needs to be a small gesture, but it’s what gets people talking and helps bring departments together. In the past, putting service and sales together was like mixing oil and water, but now there’s more of a sense that we’re all one team.
If I were really brave, one day I’d like to completely rethink commission metrics. For me, I would prefer to pay people on the performance of the site as a whole, rather than on individual results. Everyone in the business has a role to play, but we have unintentionally created silos by setting separate budgets for each department. If we wiped the slate clean, I’d build a salary-based remuneration model that rewards results at the business level.
We also run Employee of the Month awards, and every six months I do all-staff Teams calls to update everyone on the business. I never hide the truth – whether it’s good or bad. That goes back to my Henley days, when I was thrown into a business in major loss without knowing anyone. I pulled the management team together and told them I’d judge them from that day forward, regardless of the past. Not one of them even knew how much the business was losing until I laid it out for them.
Thinking about your own career and the future of the industry, what advice would you give to the next generation of leaders, and what qualities or experiences do you believe will be most important for their success?
Out in the field, the biggest challenge by far is the transition to EV. If I pulled together a group of senior vehicle technicians, most wouldn’t be too bothered about EVs. One even said to me last year, “When you lift the bonnet and it says, ‘Danger of Death’, it’s a bit of a put-off.” You’ve got two types: the older generation who prefer taking things off and putting them back on, and the newer generation coming through. The challenge is attracting and training the right people. At the moment, 46% of our technicians are EV-trained.
On the shop floor, teams need to be more technically savvy. We have to bring in people who think differently. I’ll give you an example: I’ve got two sons, one just starting university and one in his third year. Both of them have worked in the business after school/university. My eldest, Josh, still comes back in his downtime and helps out at one of the sites. Just this weekend he said to me, “Dad, I joined this Facebook group, put a message out, and had 16 phone calls – sold four cars off it.” It was to do with the Motability scheme. He sold a car to a lady in Nottingham even though he was working in Aylesbury – all off the back of that post. That’s the kind of digital skill set we need now. We also need to be more AI-savvy. I’ll be the first to admit we’ve been a bit slow on that front.
The other big area is customer skills. Rapport still matters. People buy cars from people – that won’t change. If someone doesn’t give you the time of day or doesn’t know their product, it’s not effective. The basics haven’t changed since the ’80s and ’90s – good customer service goes a long way.
For my successor, I’d look for someone approachable, open-minded, and visible. I make time for people, and I think that’s important. You can’t just sit in an office – you need to be out there, seen and heard. At least two or three days a week I’m on the road, in sites, talking to people. And you can’t be afraid of failure. There are plenty of things in my career that I look back on and know I got wrong, but it’s those mistakes you learn from.
Who has inspired you most during your career, and how has that shaped the way you lead and inspire others today?
Going right back to my first meeting with Ivor, the first-ever General Manager I worked for, he obviously saw something in 21-year-old me. Ironically, I still speak to him once a year. Throughout my career, I have been fortunate to meet a lot of inspirational people.
I have always tried to look at what they do and learn from it. That applies to manufacturers too. For example, I have a great relationship with Rory Harvey – he started out as a field sales rep, and look where he is now, doing huge things. I don’t copy, but I adapt and take inspiration from people like that.
The number one piece of advice I would share is stick with it. You will have dark days and nights, you’ll face tough decisions, and it can honestly be lonely as an MD or CEO. Where do you go when times are hard? For me, I do a lot of reflecting on car journeys. The key is: don’t give up. And take advice when people offer it.
If I’m honest, I’ve been guilty of missing my kids growing up a bit. Sometimes I think, where have my little boys gone? So, I’d also say to future leaders: think about your own work-life balance. Don’t fall into the trap of believing you need to be on a Teams call at 7am just to be seen. Be effective when you’re there, but remember you can’t do this job without a strong family behind you.
Looking back, 36 years in one company is probably a little long – but I’ve been fortunate that every step has felt like an improvement. I’m very happy with where I am, but who knows what’s next? I love what I do, I love the challenges – but I remain open-minded.
