An experienced executive manager, consultant, trainer, facilitator and business coach who has worked successfully for over twenty years with a wide range of corporate, mid corporate and professional services clients. He has held senior management and training roles in the commercial sector working in a number of areas focusing on sales management, training and business development.  He is a Member of the Institute of Personnel and Development (MCIPD).

 

His career began with the Littlewoods Group as a management trainee, where after five years he managed a number of their high street stores, moving on to Scottish and Newcastle Breweries, then a FTSE 100 company, where he held a number of positions including Account Manager, Sales Manager, Director of Sales, and, finally, Group Sales Training Manager where he was responsible for the training and development of everyone involved in selling across the Group. During this period Bob was successful in qualifying as a Member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

Bob then joined a large training consultancy in London as Training Director, delivering a range of open Sales and Marketing programmes across the UK. In addition he worked with many individual clients identifying their training needs and designing training programmes to meet those needs. Clients were a blend of Blue Chip companies and SMEs.

He then in conjunction with a large Accountancy Practice (now part of a top 10 Practice) formed a training consultancy in the North West of England, delivering a similar range of programmes. These were delivered to the clients of the Practice, internal training to their 20 Partners and 250 members of staff and to individual clients, a number of who became clients of the Practice. He eventually bought out the business and ran it as an independent business, still providing training to the Practice. He then merged the business with a top 10 UK marketing consultancy where he was  the Director responsible for all internal, external training and organisation development design and delivery

During this time he recruited and led a team of independent consultants on a PHARE project in the Czech Republic, writing, delivering and gaining accreditation for a management consultants’ training programme. Once completed this programme was translated into the Czech language and delivered by Czech-based accredited trainers    

This association with the Accountancy Practice has enabled Bob to work with a number of other Accountants in the UK. These have included a 10 Partner practice in Cumbria, a three Partner Practice in The Medway towns which is experiencing significant growth through market expansion, a large city centre Practice in Manchester and Haines Watts a National Practice,

 

Particular Areas of experience and expertise include:

Whist with Scottish & Newcastle Breweries he designed, developed and prepared sales operations procedures, protocols and training programmes to accelerate the performance of sales teams and support senior management to maximise sales performance in the drinks industry. The processes covered the entire spectrum of recruitment, induction, initial training and performance assessment through to a two year development programme for the entire sales force.

He has written and delivered a wide range of personal development programmes including performance coaching, negotiations, sales and selling skills, performance management

He has worked with senior, middle and front line teams helping them implement strategies, sales processes manage change, improve communications and facilitate innovation and ideas as well as improving profitability through effective selling. He has extensive experience of working with high growth entrepreneurial businesses and their owner managers, working as a coach, business improvement consultant and trainer. He is also currently a non-executive Director of a marketing consultancy supporting their performance management team

Government Projects  

Bob has been a project manager and lead consultant on a number of Government sponsored business development programmes. These include:

‘Winning Business’ was a programme of strategic and practical sales and marketing support developed and delivered on behalf of the Welsh Government and designed after review of a Wales Economic Strategy. The business development outcomes from this programme, which focused on working with business leaders and senior managers, made it outstanding.  Working with more than 200 Welsh companies, final independently audited results showed that the programme helped to generate £90 million worth of new business for those companies and has created or safeguarded 880 jobs.  This programme, which ran for more than 10 years, won the Management Consultancies Association National Gold Award for Best Marketing Practice.

‘Raising the Marketing Game’ was a direct European funded programme via the Welsh European Funding Office.  The programme built on ‘Winning Business’ and the measurement of the effectiveness of this intervention, as well as follow up research with companies, were instrumental in the success of this bid. Working with 36 companies and generated £10.5 million worth of new business for those companies and created 79 new jobs and safeguarded 278 jobs.

Bob was the Project Leader for ‘Business Process Excellence’ a Welsh Government programme of strategy, sales and marketing to assist SMEs within South East Wales to improve their sales and marketing processes.  The content of the programme was designed based on research with companies in the target areas (which included a dynamic economy in Cardiff as well as regenerating economies in the Valleys) and was informed by Heads of the Valley’s 2006 Strategic Framework. Working with 14 companies over a six month period developing their sales and marketing capabilities.  The project generated £1,853,800 in profit growth from additional sales plus £4,858,000 of additional sales in pipeline opportunities.

He also project managed the delivery of a three year ‘Investment Readiness’ programme on behalf of Finance Wales (the investment arm of the Welsh Assembly Government).  The design of this programme of Pre-Investment Support to SMEs was based on the DTI’s national pilot programme, tailored to meet the needs of the Welsh economy which has a historically low level of businesses seeking equity investment.