Paul Sloane is an entertaining, thought provoking, motivational speaker and a recognised expert on sales, 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.

Frank Rowe, UK Group Sales Performance and Development Director, SIG plc - Sales Academy

Frank has worked in the construction industry for more than 30 years and has an extensive knowledge of this market. Starting his sales career with Hilti GB, Frank has worked with many Blue Chip business in the past 30 years, namely ITW Construction Products, American Tool Companies EMEA and SIG Plc where he joined as UK Sales Director for SIGF and now holds the post of Group Sales Performance and Development Director. Frank has a passion for selling and sales management and as a result was asked to start  the SIG Sales Academy nearly 3 years ago. Frank says “selling is a profession and the recognition we give to the learning and development of our 1300 sales staff through the ISMM is critical to their development”

Franks loves the challenges of taking raw young talent and moulding them into sales professionals, as they are the future for our business.

Andy Perkins, Director of Partner Development, Miller Heiman

As Director of Partner Development, Andy is responsible for supporting indirect sales channel partners to coordinate resources to increase sales, profits and market share.

After graduating with an Honours Degree in Business Studies, Andy spent a number of years in a fast moving and competitive business-to-business environment.  Since joining Miller Heiman in 2003 as Marketing Executive he was soon promoted to Marketing Manager to continue the development within the marketing department.  In 2008 Andy was promoted to Partner Marketing and Sales Operations Manager for EMEA and subsequently became Director of Partner Development in January 2012. Since joining the team he has gained extensive experience in driving sales, profitable growth and building brand awareness through sales channel partners and is particularly skilled in determining sales and marketing strategy. 

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.

Gary runs a marketing and sales business.  He has previous management consulting experience with 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 and visiting professor at various universities.

Gary is founding Editor of The Service Industries Journal, the first services management academic journal in the world, founded in 1981.

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.

Duncan Wood, Product Manager, Sage UK Ltd

Duncan Wood has been working in CRM for over 14 years. He has worked in the field as part of a CRM implementation team, trained Business Partners on CRM implementation and currently works as the UK CRM Product Manager for Sage. He is passionate about CRM - how it can benefit customers and the businesses that serve them.

Gurjeet Dhillon, Managing Director, Campaign Master (UK) Ltd

Having graduated in Chemical Engineering in 1987 from the University of Glamorgan, he decided this was not really the career path for him.

Sales and marketing overtook as the passion and has been his career for over 20 years.  He worked at MYOB (now known as Wolters Kluwer CCH) and started work in a Telesales role, progressing to Field Sales then National Sales & Marketing Manager, to finally European Sales & Marketing Manager.  He set and apparently still holds the target for consistently hitting and over achieving the monthly sales target for a consecutive 49 months!

Responsible for setting up a Midlands office which became the most successful and profitable office globally even before the first year of trading was complete.

Now as MD of Campaign Master (UK) Ltd, he continues to develop, lead and nurture his team of expert email marketers in the digital marketing arena.  His focus now is providing robust, reliable e-marketing solutions into all vertical markets coupled with the invaluable support and guidance of a fantastic, knowledgeable team.

An avid supporter of Liverpool Football Club since he was a young boy, so if he runs out of things to discuss on e-marketing… there is always plenty to talk about when it comes to football.

This would be the 5th annual BESMA event in a row that Gurjeet has judged and presented an award.

Andrew Hayward is Managing Director, m-hance

m-hance is the UK’s fastest growing provider of innovative business solutions to organisations in the mid-market. Since being appointed as Managing Director of m-hance, Andrew Hayward has led the company through a period of unprecedented growth following the acquisitions of several leading businesses including elements of Maxima Holdings plc, Touchstone Group and Calyx Software. Andrew has been with m-hance (albeit under different brands) since 1999, firstly as a sales professional and then as a business head. Prior to becoming involved in the business applications arena, he worked in an accountancy practice and also in the motor, leisure and logistics industries.

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 national 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  leading insurer LV in November 2010 as Head of Protection Sales.  He heads up a highly professional and experienced sales team that incorporates both field based Business Development Managers and Telephone Account Managers. The team have performened exceptionally well over the last 12 months in a challenging marketplace and have experienced significant market growth. They have also won a number of industry recognised awards. He brings with him a wealth of experience from over 24 years in the intermediated market place (namely Fidelity, Swiss Life and Royal Liver).

In the past Mike  hasenjoyed 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 , along with members of his team being both runners up and winners of Sales Professional of the year.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'

Myfanwy Quine, Managing Director, Mvision Events

Myfanwy Quine joined the hotel trade aged 18 and was handed a 4-star hotel to run by the time she was 23. 18 months later, Myfanwy was asked to join The Cheshire International Hotel as Conference and Events Sales Manager. It was here she got a real look into how corporate events were run, both from client and service side. She joined m62 visualcommunications in 1998 as Event Consultant.

Myfanwy, now 49, has been leading events teams for the last 15 years, most recently directing an events division for a leading UK event management company. But her goal has always been to run her own production company, delivering five star customer service and exceptional events. In May 2012, she realised her ambition and set up Mvision Events.

Myfanwy has led, run and managed events teams for some 7,450 events across her 30-year-long career in the hotel and events industry. She has been responsible for £45m worth of events spend.

Mvision Events has offices in Manchester, London and Birmingham; with eight divisions delivering event production, technical, creative, digital, video, communications and translation services.

Throughout her career, Myfanwy’s worked with Coco-Cola, Kraft, E-on, Michelin and Lloyds TSB to name a few. Her standout event was for Jaguar, communicating the merger with Ford and launching a new car to their 20,000 staff. Given just six weeks to organise, the event was a real highlight for Myfanwy.

Hugh Stafford-Smith, Sales Director, Salesasessment.com

For the last 27 years Hugh has been successfully selling and leading in complex IT businesses.  The majority of his working life has been spent in the pursuit of revenue generation. In the course of his career, he has worked in both the small independent business sector and for large, publicly listed organisations; whatever the level of seniority, he has always enjoyed success in delivering results and exceeding expectations.

One of the things he has learnt is that sales effectiveness is not just about good process and structure – it has to be underpinned by talented people.

“Sales talent has always been the weak link - sales teams are able to deliver sustainable and profitable growth when they contain the right people, in the right roles supported by the right processes.”

Hugh is the principal of SABA (7) Consulting, an organisation delivering a holistic approach to sales effectiveness.  The focus is identifying and developing sales talent and helping them reach their potential in order to positively impact sustainable growth in the businesses they work for.

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 Recognised 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 provide the SSQ (Sales Skills Questionnaire), a general knowledge sales test.

Karen Spillane, Senior Training Consultant, BSkyB

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 UK retail sales routes to market including working with third parties to maximise sales opportunities and provide a great customer experience.

David is responsible for the team at Huthwaite that focuses on 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).

Dr Andreas Jonason, Director in Energy and Engineering, Simon-Kucher & Partners.

Dr Andreas Jonason manages Oil, Gas and Nordics at Simon-Kucher and Partners who are a Global Marketing and Sales management consultancy and are considered to be the world's leading pricing advisor.  It has over 650 associates across 23 offices worldwide.

Andreas having completed his PhD from the Royal Institute of Technology in record time then moved into various sales and strategy roles over a period of 8 years with Royal Dutch Shell. Amongst others responsible for the Sales strategy of the Premium fuel V-Power and the company's global fuel card strategy. With Simon-Kucher his projects have ranged across a multitude of Sales, Pricing and Strategy disciplines. For instance, re-engineering the business strategy of one of the largest manufacturing companies in Scandinavia to compete with Chinese low cost competitors; Another example was leading the rebuilding of how the B2B division of one of the Oil majors executed Sales in its largest market.

Andreas publishes his work frequently in both academic and business literature. He is also a frequent speaker at International conferences and works as a guest lecturer at Copenhagen Business School and the Royal Institute of Technology.

Nick Chandler: Head of Sales, SLKids division of Sound Leisure Ltd, Leeds.

In a sales career spanning more than 30 years, having gained invaluable experience in the early years with major names such as Philips Electronics and Nortel, Nick has gathered a range of talents that have enabled him to achieve success in a variety of industries and locations.

Nick likes a challenge. He worked in Dubai and Lusaka while in the Satellite TV industry, setting up a distributor network in Sub Saharan Africa which ultimately enabled over 15 million households to get low cost TV for the first time.

Having once more settled in the UK, Nick is firmly set on achieving even greater levels of success with SLKids, a division of Sound Leisure, a well-established family run firm in Leeds, with whom he’s been working for over a year. Here, the biggest challenge is bringing modern sales & marketing methods and putting them into practice on an every day basis.

Sam Oldman, Sales Learning Partner, E.ON

Sam is a Learning and Development professional specialising in Sales having worked previously in the Financial Services and presently Energy.  Sam also spent 12 months consulting, designing and delivering ILM and Microsoft approved Training Packages

Sam has been at for E.ON for almost 4 years and during that time has worked as a commercial section manager, managed 32 training consultants in 5 different sites across the UK, and most recently worked closely with the E.ON sales director supporting the development of the ever challenging task achieving sales in an ethical, flexible and environmental way.

Sam is responsible for the L&D strategy and implementation for over 2000 people from Senior Leaders to front line. Sam has previously nominated Eon employees for BESMA’s as well as participating in our corporate events.

Gordon Glenister is Director General of the British Promotional Merchandise Association

The bpma representS £300m of member turnover AND just under 600 professional suppliers and distributors of promotional merchandise.  In existence since 1965, the bpma promotes best practice and the value of promotional gifts. Gordon has headed up the bpma for the last 5 years, prior to that he has run his own incentives and rewards agency.  He has had extensive sales and marketing experience with leading FMCG companies , Bryant & May, Grants of St James and H P Bulmer.

Ian Luxford, Learning Services Director, The Grass Roots Group UK Limited

Grass Roots is a business services company that helps clients to increase sales, improve customer service, build loyalty and grow productivity. Its areas of expertise include performance measurement, communication, reward, digital marketing and workplace learning.

Ian Luxfordis responsible for the development and implementation of workplace learning programmes for a wide range of corporate clients including Ford Motor Company, Mitchells and Butlers, Whirlpool and Wolseley Group. His experience spans selling, marketing and information management. 

He has worked in the field of learning and development for over twenty years (including four years on the executive of the government body Investors in People UK) and is qualified to Masters level in this field.

Matthew Reed, Managing Director Intermediary, AXA Commercial Lines

Insurance is Matthew’s second career having previously spent 12 years travelling the world with the Royal Navy and then working for the United Nations in Sierra Leone.

Following his return to the UK, Matthew joined broking group Howden in 2002. He worked his way up the group to become director of sales and marketing at its parent, Hyperion. 

He joined Towergate in October 2008 as Sales and Marketing Director of their Broking Division and was responsible for Marketing, e-commerce, CRM and Product Development.

Following his 12 months at Towergate, Matthew joined Powerplace as their CEO and led the business for 18 months.

Matthew joined AXA Commercial Lines in August 2011 as Managing Director of Intermediary, primarily focussing on enabling AXA Commercial Lines’ branches to trade more effectively with their local customers.

Matthew is a keen cyclist, and has previously completed the L’Etape du Tour, which he is taking part in again in 2012 in aid of Help the Hospices.  The tour sees cyclists compete in one of the toughest stages from the Tour de France.

Steve Sampson, Director – Ginicam / Paradise Wildlife Park / My Rewards Company / Sussed

Steve’s family owns the multi-award winning Paradise Wildlife Park in Broxbourne, Hertfordshire. They also own the Big Cat Sanctuary in Kent, which is home to the charity Wildlife Heritage Foundation. Last year was an exceptional for Steve with major projects for Tesco in conjunction with Sony Pictures release of the film Zookeeper through Sussed, contracts for MyRewardsCopmany.com with AXA, Skandia, Renault, YouGov and Sainsbury, the building and launch of a new welcome centre at Paradise Wildlife Park and the set-up of Ginicam at the University of Hertfordshire. Ginicam.com is a new Internet platform that allows users to engage on a one to one basis or with an unlimited people in real time via web-cams for free. It also allows people to charge in real time for services. Steve told us that his family have developed a reputation for going into industries and creating new ways for doing business.

Stephen Broadhurst, Managing Director, Mitre (a division of Berendsen and The Sunlight Service Group)

Stephen has spent the last 16 years in a sales environment in varying roles, beginning as a Sales Executive in distribution moving onto Sales, Commercial and Marketing Director roles in Saint Gobain -Jewson and latterly working for Berendsen and The Sunlight Service Group.  He is now the Managing Director of Mitre which is a direct sale business selling textiles and soft furnishings to the hospitality market selling to B2B and proud holder of The Royal Warrant.

During the last 5 years Stephen has led a group wide Sales Leadership Forum involving sales leaders from across the Sunlight Group, 24 in total, who are all regular attendees of the ISMM Conference. Peak performance and learning from the greats in leadership like Shackleton and Churchill have inspired the group to be the best version of themselves and has seen the group reach record sales in recent years, bucking the trend of the markets in which they serve.

Phil Stewart, Director of Customer Service, Virgin Media Business (the largest B2B organisation in the worldwide Virgin group)

Phil is responsible for Customer Service, Service Management and Customer Relations. This responsibility is across the entire UK wide customer base of Corporate, Public Sector and Wholesale organisations.

Phil has always worked closely with customers in technical and commercial roles. He was appointed to this role in May 2009 to lead the Customer Service strategy of developing Virgin customer service values and performance across this newly formed Virgin organisation.

He loves his job, but when away from work, you will find him supporting Newcastle United football club, playing acoustic guitar in his kitchen or running around the streets of Lingfield, Surrey in his new found hobby of running. Its a 40+ thing!

Daryl Watson, Business Development Director - EMEA, Oliver Wyman Leadership Development

Daryl has worked in business development for over 20 years. He has extensive knowledge of building and managing complex global client relationships, and is an expert on the impact learning and development has at the strategic level within an organisation.  Since joining Oliver Wyman Leadership Development in 2008, Daryl has worked with several global organisations, working at all levels within the leadership pipeline and travelling extensively to meet strategic and behavioural change demands placed on those in executive and management roles.

Daryl has enjoyed success both in new business development as well as in senior account management roles and is therefore equally adept in hunting or farming.  He is a Fellow of the Institute of Sales & Marketing Management and a former BESMA finalist for Account Manager of the Year.”

Ian Rose,Training Manager (Sales & Management) Learning & Development, AXA Commercial Insurance

Ian joined Equity & Law Life Assurance back in 1981 and after a 31 year journey is still there as a part of the AXA group. 

Having had roles in Sales, Marketing and Learning & Development, he is currently the Training Manager for Sales and Management in AXA Commercial.  Ian worked in conjunction with the ISMM in late 2011 to develop what is fast becoming a highly successful Sales Academy.  The initial focus was on sales through brokers but this is now being extended to include the direct sales arm.   The success of the Sales Academy has been down to delivering learning through a number of different methods ensuring that it is embedded effectively.  

Ian is currently developing a Management Academy to rival the success of what has been achieved with sales.

Tony Hall, Account Director, Virgin Media Business

Tony is an Account Director with Virgin Media Business, the largest Virgin B2B brand in the world. Specialising in the Local Government sector, Tony has personally led some of the most prestigious projects the company has been involved with. This recently culminated in the £90m Hampshire & Isle of Wight HPSN2 framework, under which Virgin Media Business has built a county-wide IP network to bring together all of the local authorities and agencies to promote collaboration and shared services initiatives across the entire region.

Tony has been an advocate of the ISMM's work for many years now and was himself a runner-up in last year’s BESMA finals.

Susan Perry-Whitehead, Direct Sales Channel Director, DHL International (UK)

Sue Perry-Whitehead has been in Sales for over 25 years with experience that spans Royal Mail, Parcelforce, Parceline and for the last 16 years DHL Express.

Currently leading the Direct Sales force in the UK, she has also held leadership roles in Field Sales and Key Accounts as well as having European experience of Sales Strategy and Product Development.

She recently gained an MSc in Organisational Behaviour from Birkbeck UCL and has a special interest in people and all aspects of their behaviour in the workplace.

Chris Thomas, Group Advertising Manager, IOP Publishing

IOP Publishing is central to the Institute of Physics and provides publications through which leading-edge scientific research is distributed worldwide.

Since 1998, he has gained considerable business-to-academia and business-to-business sales and contract-management/contract business development experience across a range of magazines, such as Physics World and CERN Courier and websites such as brightrecruits.com (the global job site for jobseekers with a background in physics and engineering), and was instrumental in its successful relaunch, doubling advertising revenue in the period from 2010 to 2011. He has won IOP Publishing Company awards in 1999, 2001 and 2010.

He is fluent in French and has a command of German and Italian. Prior experience includes FMCG field sales in the South West.

Iain Critchley, Senior Training Manager, KPMG

Iain has sold, managed teams and led sales training across Pharmaceutical, Financial Services and Professional Services sectors for more than 10 years.  He currently leads the central UK Business Skills training portfolio working to further develop and deploy BESMA award winning training initiatives.

Ryan Ward, International Sales Director, Xactly

Ryan’s role involves developing new clients and partners to drive revenue opportunities and help establish Xactly’s presence in international markets. Prior to Xactly, Ryan was the first UK employee of salesforce.com in 2002, helping establish the company in the market.  He also has experience with key software organisations such as SAP and Oracle, and has experience in leading sales teams in new technology areas.

Lorna Leck, Director, The Sales Activator Ltd

Lorna has worked in Sales, Sales Management, Sales Training and Coaching for over 20 years with experience spanning IBM, M.A.I.D. Plc, and Reed Elsevier Plc where she ran pan-European and global sales teams for 12 years.  Lorna was also one of the founding Directors of Silent Edge Ltd, the Sales Performance Authority, and during her 9 years there worked to drive performance improvement and return on investment for countless clients.

Currently one the Directors of The Sales Activator Ltd, suppliers of an innovative sales coaching and development toolkit designed for Sales Managers to enable them to coach and reinforce best practice selling skills.  Lorna is responsible for the strategic direction of the company and driving sales through direct channels and a global distribution network.