Eight questions to… Mark Ballance, general sales manager, McLaren Leeds

The opportunity to oversee operations at a completely new dealership is something that doesn’t come along [that often], especially with such a young and upcoming brand and a family-run business. One of the key things for me was getting the aftersales operation up and running, because we know there are McLaren customers in the area who previously had to travel to Glasgow, Manchester or Birmingham. The other thing was raising awareness, but there is a very clued-up customer base here and as soon as we set up the temporary facility, we had a steady flow of two or three people a day coming in and introducing themselves to me and Nick (Strong, McLaren Leeds sales executive and a former JCT600 colleague of Ballance’s). During my time with Parks, I have employed some key staff members who were keen to move forward with me and I’ll be responsible for ensuring they are in a position to oversee the departments as and when the new showroom is ready.

How quickly the market can change. There are so many contributing factors that are out of your control. We’ve been experiencing strong demand so far in Leeds and have really high hopes for the facility when it opens, but it’s impossible not to have an eye on Brexit and the economy at the same time.