I really appreciated working with Alasdair. He is a very focused person, great leader and really able to motivate others. His experience in communication is substantial and based on a long participation in the agency environment. Since he has been in the Middle East for many years now, working with multinational and local clients, his knowledge is absolutely valuable in any direction. I really appreciated working with him and hope our paths will cross again one day.
Manuel Schmidt
Managing Director
1000heads
This is a personal testimony for Mark Garrod who operated as our Consultant and Facilitator for approximately two and a half years. I have always been very impressed with Mark during the time he has worked with us. Mark is professional, authentic, experienced and able to connect with people from a range of cultural and professional backgrounds.
Mark invested a significant amount of time prior to the program getting to know our business strategy, products, culture and my objectives for the participants. This enabled him to bring the program to life in a very relevant, interesting and practical way for the team. The feedback we received was very positive, making it clear Mark had adapted very well and had employed a style that was a very good fit for our people.
Shortly after this we engaged Mark to run the national rollout of the first two key programs of our new Sales Training Curriculum – . Foundational Selling Skills and Key Account Management. Mark lead the customization of the Key Account program to suit our specific requirements and delivered all of these programs up until his departure.
His commercial experience combined with his intimate understanding of the program and the subject enabled him to create strong credibility and connection with each of the groups he worked with across our business. These programs were extremely well received by both our frontline sales representatives, and our senior sales leaders.
In addition to Mark’s obvious strengths delivering the programs, the participants particularly noted that he had personal experience in sales and managing key accounts, and could bring this experience to the programs. They felt Mark understood their challenges and issues, and was able to provide relevant knowledge and tools to build their capability.
Mark is determined that participants leave the room feeling they are equipped with practical skills and tools, and that they feel confident in their use, having been well drilled in exercises and simulations. It is a testament to his enthusiasm and skill that he has been able to gain the engagement and commitment of participants to whole heartedly experiment and learn through role plays, not always something they are comfortable with.
We also engaged Mark’s extensive background in executive coaching to work with one of our Business Unit Heads. I was confident he was tackling the core issues that lay at the root of the challenges this individual was facing. I was also pleased with Mark’s ability to engage with this individual and encourage him to take the step into coaching in the first place.
In working with Mark I have found him to be thorough, well prepared, engaging and professional. Mark manages to maintain a high level of professional credibility while still being friendly and connecting with people on an individual level. It has been an absolute pleasure to work with Mark.
Gilly Brooks
Capability Development Manager
Syngenta
Mark Garrod is an exceptional trainer and facilitator whose insights and business acumen are an asset to any business. In my role as Organisational Development Manager at Thomson Reuters, I worked with Mark for over 4 years to implement and deliver our sales and communication skills programs. Mark has a truly consultative style, and was able to provide valuable insights and solutions that delivered tangible results.
Mark is incredibly knowledgeable, client focused and responsive. Mark brings a great energy to everything he does and is able to establish a connection with his audience to help bring out the best in them, build their skills and provide them the tools to increase their effectiveness back in the workplace.
Tarryn Donaldson
Organisational Development Manager
Thomson Reuters: Legal, Tax and Accounting
I have known Mark for 6 years. Mark worked with myself and the team to strengthen the capability of our sales and marketing area. His clear passion and genuine desire to help drive better individual and team performance enabled him to create a high level of engagement and openness with the group. This made people comfortable with his direct and insightful feedback. It also enabled him to challenge the way we did things and this enabled the team to gain extremely valuable and practical learnings.
In addition, Mark helped us think differently about our approach to pitching for large and critical sales opportunities. Subsequently we re-engaged with Mark to develop our pitching strategy. As a consequence of this work we won numerous pitches (to the value of approximately $10M) and the approach learned is now standard company strategy and has contributed to numerous additional wins.
Justin Roia
Chief Executive Officer
AS Harrison & Co Pty Limited.