Paul Sloane is an entertaining, thought provoking, motivational speaker and a recognised expert on innovation, lateral thinking and leadership. He is the author of 20 books on lateral puzzles, creativity, innovation and leadership. Over 2 million copies of his books have been sold. He was described in the Independent as the 'King of Lateral Thinking Puzzles'.

He is an expert facilitator and course leader. He gives after-dinner talks and keynote addresses. His talks offer a unique blend of puzzling challenges, humour and hard-hitting business messages. His workshops provide practical techniques to improve leadership and innovation. Clients include AA, ARM, Bayer, BT, DWP, EADS, GSK, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia, Reckitt Benckiser, Shell and Skandia.

Paul took a first in Engineering at Cambridge. He joined IBM where he came top of Sales School. He was part of the team that launched the IBM PC in the UK. He went on to be MD of the database leaders, Ashton-Tate. He became VP International for MathSoft Inc. and CEO of Monactive Ltd.

As Miller Heiman's Vice President of Marketing and Sales Operations in the UK, Lynda Marston is skilled at implementing marketing strategies that closely align to sales channel objectives. She is closely involved in the positioning and management of Miller Heiman's global presence.

Lynda joined Miller Heiman in 2000; bringing with her an impressive 16 years of experience in operations and business management. Lynda is responsible for the operational management of Miller Heiman, including marketing, human resources, lead process management, and the European CSO Summit event series.

Chris Garrett has worked in 9 cities for 6 different organisations, the vast majority of that time in B2B sales. He joined his current employers (Allianz Insurance PLC) as a senior salesman, later becoming a Key Account Manager - looking after some of the Company's largest Accounts. From there he moved to head up a £240M Distribution Channel.

Insights transformational learning solutions help major global customers like Microsoft, BP and Philips improve their people effectiveness in areas such as team-building, sales skills development and leadership. Lynne-Marie joined Insights in 1998 as an Account Manager and managed accounts for British Airways, British Telecom, Securicor and Masterfoods. She is now Director of Sales and Marketing and has responsibility for the development, promotion and implementation of the Insights offering across the world.

Mark McCarthy is founding director of Meta-Lucid. He has extensive knowledge in sales strategy and sales leadership in the B2B environment which has come about from over 20 years of sales management experience and is a Fellow of the ISMM. Meta-Lucid are practitioners and help organisations achieve improved performance with a focus on strategy and execution; how to get people to become adaptable and achieve beyond their current limits, making high performance become a discipline in your company.

Gary runs a marketing and sales business (www.akehurstonline.com). Previous management consulting experience (Deloitte and Price Waterhouse) and at various universities, specialising in marketing, sales management, and service businesses recovery. He is now emeritus professor of marketing of Aberystwyth University, part-time professor at Rotterdam School of Management and Winchester University, and visiting professor at various universities.

Editor of The Service Industries Journal, the first services management academic journal in the world, founded in 1981. Chair of the Examiners, Institute of Sales and Marketing Management, since 2003.

At Reed Learning, the largest provider of soft skills open courses in the UK, Eleanor has two key and overlapping areas of responsibility:

• The development and management of the Faculty of trainers (permanent staff and associate pool) and overall quality of training delivery.
• The design, development and continuous improvement of all Reed Learning training programmes, professional qualifications and other learning products; through our internal Product Development team and building strategic partnerships.

Beth Rogers is author of "Rethinking Sales Management" and runs the sales education programmes at Portsmouth Business School, including their flagship MA Sales Management. She was chair of the UK National Sales Board (2005-2009) which was responsible for launching National Occupational Standards for sales. She is an advisor to the committee of the Global Sales Science Institute. Before joining Portsmouth Business School, Beth was Group Business Development Manager with an international IT company.

Martin Hutchins is Managing Director, founder and Principle Lecturer at Cambridge Professional Academy, the UK's leading ISMM qualifications provider. With a career spanning over 20 years in senior sales & marketing he revels in the ups and downs of running a business and seeks to energise, inspire and motivate everybody he works with.

Martin is also regularly asked to speak at various conferences and events on a wide range of subjects including online strategy, sales, motivation and financial management skills.

Jeremy Strang is the Market Research Manager at DHL Express UK. He has worked at Volvo Car UK and Experian since starting his career in 1997. Since joining DHL in 2005, Jeremy's expertise has been gained through a number of sales-supporting roles such as managing the SME Sales Channel and working on projects such as the Customer Onboarding process.

The latter was the basis for Jeremy's BESMA submission for 'Best Use of Sales Automation' which Jeremy won in 2007. This year is the 3rd in a row that Jeremy has joined our judging panels.

Gary Garnett is Managing Director of The Readiness Company (TRC) which has provided Sales Excellence consultancy to Microsoft for 10 years. He was instrumental in designing and launching Microsoft's first Sales Academy, which is now endorsed by the Institute of Sales and Marketing Management (ISMM). Gary has vast experience in L&D, Executive Coaching and Sales Enablement programs and as well as being a Fellow of the ISMM, has also completed the education necessary to become a member of the Certified Institute of Professional Development (CIPD). TRC works with many of Microsoft's partners to develop Sales Excellence programmes and benchmark best practice.

Andrew's sales career began in the 1989 working as a recruitment consultant. After leaving this role he worked in both a sales and a training capacity with franchised business centres with responsibility for creating and implementing staff and sales plans throughout the South of England.

In 1997 Andrew became Training Manager for Select Appointments Plc, a multi-national recruitment group. Since early 2001 he has been Head of Training for the Recruitment and Employment Confederation, a professional body responsible for raising standards in the recruitment sector.

Andrew works with a select client base to design and deliver a range of learning solutions in either sales, interviewing and/or management.

Karen is a Learning and Development professional specialising in Retail having worked previously in Hospitality, Telecoms, Financial Services and presently Energy.

Karen has been at for E.ON for almost 3 years and during that time set up the Global Marketing, Sales & Service Academy for the Group based in Europe, and most recently headed up the Retail Learning & Development Division which means she is responsible for the L&D strategy and implementation for over 10,500 people from Senior Leaders to front line. Karen is a huge advocate of the ISMM and has driven internal accreditation for E.ON's Sales Programmes, which have been running for 3 years.

Roger has enjoyed an extremely successful career in the sales environment working in a number of diverse business areas including Financial Planning and Mortgages where having managed a peripatetic internal sales team, he went on to set up a new sales team in the Intermediary Mortgage market before heading up the Direct Telephony proposition with 500 staff.

He is currently Head of Sales for a business to business sales team providing Employment Law & HR services, Health & Safety and Environmental support and consultancy.

Mike Farrell joined LV in November 2010 as Head of Protection Sales. He brings with him a wealth of experience from over 23 years in the intermediated market place (namely Fidelity, Swiss Life and more recently Royal Liver).

It was during Mike's time at Royal Liver that he enjoyed the success associated with leading his team to clinching the 'Team of the Year' title at the prestigious British Excellence in Sales & Marketing Management Awards. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Sales & Marketing Management. He was also one of the pioneers of the award-winning online-only proposition 'Progress'.

Peter Rose began his sales career with The Birmingham Post & Mail Group of Newspapers in 1979. Moving to his current employers DHL in 1983, his expertise has been gained through a number of sales roles, eg, Field Sales Executive, Major Account Executive, Field Sales Management, Field Sales Training Management and today, his current position of Sales Coach for the Direct Sales Channel.

After gaining the Field Sales Trainer “Rising Star” award in 2005, Peter has gone on to become a regular member of our judging panels across a variety of categories.

Peter is a Fellow of the ISMM and lives in Sutton Coldfield with his wife Sally. They have one son – Samuel.

Paul has developed a successful career working for some of the country’s leading rental service solution providers, developing and leading highly engaged and successful sales teams, working for a number of diverse business’s including Digital, Warner Howard, Electrolux and latterly in the construction industry. Paul has recently joined Aggreko, FTSE 100 company and leader in the provision of temporary power solutions, to develop his career working for this Global provider.

Paul is a Fellow of the ISMM and has previously led his Sales Teams to winning BESMA “Sales Team of the Year” on two occasions, together with winning the (EHA) European Hire Association, Team of the Year award. Paul also was “Rising Star” in last year’s BESMA “Manager of the Year” award.

Royal Mail operates in a highly competitive environment and specifically in two market sectors – advertising and distribution. In the advertising sector, our objective is to sell the benefits of direct marketing and direct mail. In the distribution market we offer a range of fulfilment products and services, competing with couriers and other postal authorities.

Mike heads up Royal Mail’s Account Management team, managing a team of 82 people, responsible for 1800 clients with portfolios valued at £ 1.8 billion.

Ellis has been managing one of the UK’s leading event management and Hotel booking agencies for the last 22 years, specialising in offering a proactive outsourced conference placement and meetings logistics solution for corporate and not for profit organisations. Ellis is also chair of the Academy at the HBAA and is passionate about improving training and development within the meeting and events industry and manages a portfolio of Sales and management development programmes for the association.

Louise is the Managing Director of TACK International in the UK. TACK is a leading global sales training and development consultancy with operations in 45 countries, designing and delivering programmes in 25 languages. Louise is a Chartered Marketer with 15 years business to business sales, marketing and general management experience. She's an advocate of sales and marketing alignment, believing the best B2B marketers need first hand sales experience. So leading by example, she has developed and manages a number of TACK's global key accounts.

Alun Graves FInstSMM is a specialist Consultant and Coach for Sales Professionals on an International level. His experience both professionally and personally has taken him worldwide where he has seen his unique approach impact the lives and success of many professionals throughout Europe, USA and Central and Latin America, and Australia. With over 14 years experience in sales, in areas as diverse as IT, Telecoms, recruitment, and advertising.

Qualifying with an Education degree, Nigel's career started as a teacher in Secondary school. It was not long before the thrill of sales tempted him away. After cutting teeth in very tough property market, he moved on to sell insurance, intensive care equipment, pharmaceuticals, OTC medicines and then for a change of scene, new and used cars. Nigel then joined Mercuri International, and has worked with many sales organisations helping them focus on long term sales result improvement.

Andy Hanselman researches, speaks about, writes about and works with high performing organisations. He helps businesses maximise their sales and marketing, their customer care and their customer relationships. With over 21 years experience advising and helping business leaders and their people improve their performance he’s written two books and is a sought after speaker on customers, competence and competitive advantage and has developed a reputation for his entertaining, innovative, inspirational and stimulating approach.

Shaz Quereshi is founder of SOCA Management Consultants, an ISMM Accredited Centre delivering QCF Qualifications. Shaz has worked predominately in the technology and behavioural psychology sectors during his 25 year sales career. He has held Sales Director positions for blue-chip companies including Kenexa Corporation and Parity plc. He is author of the popular sales training courses and assessments at SalesTrainingOnline.com and his company also recently launched the SSQ (Sales Skills Questionnaire), a general knowledge sales test.

Julie works for Lex Autolease, the UKs leading fleet management and funding specialist company and recent winner of BusinessCar magazines headline award of Service Supplier of the Year 2011, and Leasing and Fleet Management Company 2011.

Julie's role in the company is in Business Improvement focusing on career and personal development, a role she has held for 4 years in Lex Autolease and previously a similar role in Lloyds TSB retail, specialising in Customer Service and Sales training.

Matthew Lambert is Managing Director of Nine Telecom, a £35m communications company which employs over 100 employees across three offices in Kent, Hemel Hempstead and Stroud. He has over 10 years experience in the telecommunications industry and at Nine Telecom who supply over 60,000 end customers across the UK for all their voice and data communication requirements via a channel of over 400 local dealer and reseller partners.

Karen is tasked with strategic thinking, having meaningful conversations and developing relationships both internally and externally to ensure effective training, learning and development interventions for all of our face to face sales routes to market including working with retailers to maximise sales opportunities and provide a great customer experience.

Jerry Ramsdale is the Managing Director of Lyme Media & Events Ltd, the event organiser for The Sales Management Expo taking place this year in partnership with the ISMM at the Ricoh Arena in Coventry.

David is responsible for winning and developing global enterprise business for all market sectors. Keeping abreast of current macro and micro sales issues and working closely with our consultants and our clients, David knows what it takes to increase sales and sustain long-term, profitable relationships in today's marketplace. David uses this understanding of the sales arena to assess the achievements of organisation, team and individual alike.

Huthwaite are behavioural change experts specialising in sales, negotiation and service performance improvement. We work with organisations and individuals to make sustainable changes in the behaviour and processes that lead to better business results for them and ultimately, their clients. Our skill models, which include the widely acclaimed SPIN® technique, are the result of over 30 years research into what the most effective sales professionals actually do. We are delighted to be sponsor of Sales Professional of the Year and to support those who continue to strive for excellence in sales, negotiation and service.

Martin has over 20 years B2B sales experience. He is Sales Director, UK & European Clients, at OneSource, the global business information company. Before joining OneSource, Martin ran his own sales consultancy business, and was instrumental in building the sales team at business intelligence start-up, StrategyEye, where he remains a shareholder. Prior to 2007, Martin was UK Sales Director at Forrester Research, the global technology analyst firm, and held a senior sales management role at Claritas UK, subsequently acquired by Acxiom (www.acxiom.com).

Ian has been in the hospitality & events business for over 20 years.

Latterly Ian spent 7 years at Zibrant leaving as Head of Sales to join De Vere in 2007. He has recently been promoted to Director Group Sales responsible for the team of 5 managing De Vere's relationships with HBA's3rd party agencies as well as running the newly established MICE team of 6 which will be managing relationships with corporate & association event planners. Ian is a board director for ITM & Vice Partner Chair of the HBAA.

Denise joined the ISMM just over a year ago. Previously to this she held a number of senior positions at Edexel working on qualification development.

Since arriving at the ISMM Denise has wasted no time and has overseen the development of a new suite of QCF sales and marketing qualifications. The response to these has been fantastic and organizations are keen to get them embedded into their sales training.

She is currently working with a number of organisations to develop their own sales academies.