Pendragon has expanded its Stratstone BMW and Mini has corporate sales team with five new appointments in a bid to grow its fleet volumes with SME and big business.

The AM100 group’s premium division said that it was looking to grow its corporate offering around each of its BMW and Mini retailers, adding that the appointment of Neill Richards to head up a team of eight business development managers would help drive the move.

The newly-created team will be focussed on “growing sales among the local business community surrounding each site”, it said in a statement.

Richards joins Stratstone as national sales manager following a career with JCT600, as the Yorkshire retail group’s fleet sales director and LSH Auto, where he was corporate and fleet sales manager.

Joining Richards as business development managers across the network of retailers are Tracey Hill, David Heaney, Rob Murray and Andrew Clark.

Stratstone said that its new team members have “a wealth of knowledge and experience within the fleet and B2B sector”, having over 94 years’ experience between them.

The team has been charged with growing the corporate sales across Stratstone BMW and Mini as well as identifying opportunities in the SME sector and larger corporate accounts.

Richards said: “I am delighted to now have a full team in place, which will provide us with a great foundation to take our corporate business to the next level.

“We have a clear and challenging plan to follow and I am delighted to welcome the new additions to the team, some of which I have had the pleasure of working alongside before, at such an exciting time.”

Stratstone’s parent company, Pendragon, has a number of senior appointments to make in 2020.

Top of the former AM100 number one retail group’s targets will be a new chief executive to replace Mark Herbert, who left his role in June last year after just three months in-post.