Experience

• Get the Edge Associate
• Inspirational Motivational Speaker
• Performance Development Coach
• Mentor Facilitator Trainer
• Head of Group Corporate Sales – JCT600
• Regional Manager, Northern England – Budget Rent-a Car EMEA
• Regional Manager, Reg Vardy Plc. Head Office, Sunderland
• Group Corporate Sales Manager, John Martin Group, Edinburgh
• District Manager NE Scotland Peugeot Motor Company
• Fleet Sales Manager, John Martin Group, Edinburgh
• Fleet Sales Manager Peugeot, Glenvarigil, Aberdeen
• Finance Business Manager, VW Audi John Clarke Group Aberdeen

From his experience of working as a Craniosacral Therapist, John has developed Mindfulness workshops and courses for individuals and organisations, running highly successful programmes which promote staff wellbeing. It is from this that he has developed the belief that we all have the capability of improving our wellbeing and optimising our health: physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually.

John is a Registered Craniosacral Therapist (RCST), member of the Association for Neuro Linguistic Programming (ANLP) and founder of holistic healthcare specialist, Natural Health.

John regularly undertakes further post-graduate training in order to continually develop his knowledge and skills as a practitioner.

Barry has worked at a senior level in the hotel industry for 29 years.

Barry has formed, inspired and lead a diverse range of teams across the hotel, pub & restaurant and holiday accommodation sectors; across the UK, France, Spain & Portugal.

Starting from the shop floor, Barry quickly progressed through operational management roles, to General Management and Board level positions, most recently running Stoke Rochford Management Ltd on behalf of its then owners, the National Union of Teachers. During his time at Stoke Rochford Management Ltd, Barry successfully lead a complete cultural and operational redevelopment project, to reposition the business as a premium Country House Hotel destination and ultimately achieve a profitable exit strategy for the previous owners.

Throughout his operational career, Barry has been involved in several successful business turnaround projects, focusing upon developing the hotels teams to maximise each individuals’ confidence, competence and engagement, to ultimately bring about bottom line profitability growth through excellence of service & hospitality.

Barry has previously supported hotel new opening & refurbishment projects and has operationally guided several businesses through successful mergers, rebranding projects and new acquisitions.

Over the years I have had the pleasure of working with; Hilton Hotels, QMH, Corus Hotels, Whitbread Hotel Company, The Real Hotel Company, Crerar Hotels, Menzies Hotels, Shearings Holidays, Mark Warner and Bass Leisure Retail.

Barry is a graduate of The Robert Gordon University and Member of the Institute of Hospitality

Nicola has spent her career working with Managers, Leaders and Directors within organisations across the UK and Europe. Her objective – helping them be the best version of themselves that they want to be in their organisation. She has gathered a rich experience, working with clients within international businesses, local authorities, academic institutions and not for profits to help them progress their careers or organisations towards their future.

Nicola believes people have all the resources within them to be the leader they want to be, it’s just a case of harnessing those resources. So whether it’s confidence, belief, focus, or impact and influence amongst people – I experience the clients I work with moving towards what they want, often unlocking resources they didn’t even know they had.

Nicola supports our coaching and leadership retreats

The Get the Edge team are delighted to have Nick Horton with us working as an Associate Partner on many projects.

Nick brings an extensive retail motor industry experience that spans a period of 25 years and the ability to design and deliver bespoke programmes that get results and add impact to the bottom line.

His experience within the retail sector of the industry focused primarily on sales operations and included fulfilment of several key roles including Sales Executive, Business Manager, Sales Manager and General Sales Manager.  Within this time, he was nationally recognised for his achievements as a Business Manager and also on a more local scale for the performances achieved by his sales teams.

This experience is key when Nick facilitates Training workshops as he and the delegates are able to relate to each other on a scale that creates a clear understanding of the everyday situations that sales personnel find themselves needing to adapt to.

This essential combination of experience and on-going association with current dealership personnel enables Nick to contribute tangible value to a wide spectrum of dealership personnel, including middle and senior management.

Whilst remaining focused to the workshop objectives, Nick’s style of delivery aims to engage all delegates in a manner that promotes confidence and a desire to want to deliver an improved performance upon their return to the dealership.

Andy started his career as a mechanical apprentice before progressing into workshop and aftersales management roles. For the past 21 years he has gained a wealth of knowledge and experience working with both dealer groups and manufacturers. This extensive experience covers a broad range of vehicle brands throughout the specialist, prestige, volume and multi franchise sectors. The majority of his management time has been with brands that include Mercedes Benz, BMW, Porsche, VW, Ford and Vauxhall, more recently and for the second time in his career as head of group aftersales covering two market areas with the Mercedes Benz brand. This diverse range of experience has given him the opportunity to understand business from all stakeholders’ points of view, B2B and B2C.

These roles have developed Andy as a keen and experienced advocate for building relationships that are mutually beneficial to all parties in order to drive performance, achieve targets and deliver key KPIs. The experiences gained has also given him the understanding of different levels of brand challenges as well as colleague and customer expectations.

Andy is a specialist with all Aftersales systems and key performance areas such as customer retention, customer satisfaction and areas of influence, delivery of retail service hours, internal preparation process, parts per hour, hours per job card, service care plans, internal / external parts sales and accessory sales, trade spend analysis and stock control.

Over his career Andy has turned around many underperforming Aftersales businesses and achieved this by getting his team of people to be being brilliant with the basics, evolving them surrounding the constant changes of modern-day retailing. With his unique style of coaching, training, communication, and people skills, he has turned underperforming departments in to year on year top end performers.

The future of retailing is changing rapidly and in his previous role Andy was responsible for the planning and implementation of a new customer journey to facilitate these changes. This involved an evolutionary concept of development and regeneration of the aftersales team for the mutual benefit of customers, staff and brand partners.

As an active member of the Mercedes Benz steering group committee board, Andy was part of a team that was engaged with strategic planning and network development, delivering new projects and driving the dealer network business forward. In his previous role Andy  and his team increased aftersales fleet volumes and also won the national Lex supplier award for the second year running, 2017 and 2018.

Aftersales Solutions

• Management through People, Action Centered Leadership
• Communication, Negotiating and Selling Skills
• Leadership and Team building
• One to one coaching, motivation and people development
• Business planning and business development
• Customer journey and workshop development
• Up-selling and converting VHC
• Selling Service Plans
• Delivering excellent customer service

We are delighted to have Matt as one of our key associates

Matt has significant experience in researching, developing, delivering and evaluating training at both wholesale and retail level in the motor industry, having worked with and for Manufacturers, Importers and large Plc’s. He has expertise in sales, aftersales and management development and have worked on developmental programmes across the globe.

He is working with us on a joint venture to help deliver the Leading through change retreat
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Matt has led the following programmes:

Wilo (UK) Ltd
Design and delivery the leadership development programme for all line and senior managers
within the UK operation to enhance their personal effectiveness

Jaguar Landrover
Working with JLR on the development, pilot and T3 of the Global Aftersales Service Advisor
Learner Journey

Aston Martin
Design and delivery of a Global Sales Excellence Programme in the UK, Europe, Middle
East and Far East

Mercedes-Benz UK
Design and delivery of a Management Development Programme for emerging talent from Mercedes-Benz UK, Mercedes-Benz Financial Services and Mercedes-Benz Retail Group

Daimler A.G
Delivery of a suite of training solutions to support individual career development planning
training for top talent within the Daimler businesses in Europe

Pentagon Group
Design and delivery of a Management Development Programme to support the Group
acquisition strategy to enable current Sales and Aftersales Managers to make the
progression from their current role to General Manager

Portakabin
Design and delivery of both an introductory sales programme and an advanced selling skills
course to drive forward volume, profit and customer satisfaction.