Key Personnel
Simon Wright - Director
Simon specialises in working with corporate partners in the financial services and distribution sectors. In addition to his general management experience he has a particular expertise in developing sales and marketing strategies which have been instrumental in the creation of several highly successful client ventures. This expertise has also been recognised outside of his client work – he has spoken at a McKinsey-organised symposium on sales coverage strategies and has been invited to speak as part of the MA course in Sales Management at Portsmouth Business School.
Prior to joining Tennyson, Simon spent nine years as a sales person and sales manager for the software division of a US multi-national. He holds a BA in Economics from Manchester University.
Guy Stanford - Director
After graduating from Edinburgh University, Guy spent seven years with the 10th Gurkha Rifles.
Guy then joined the audit team at Xerox and acquired an MBA before changing to a career in sales, eventually becoming the manager for Indirect Channels.
Guy founded Tennyson with Simon Wright in 1998 and now specialises in working with corporate partners in the healthcare sector.
Neil Rackham - Advisor to the Board
Neil Rackham is known throughout the corporate world as a seminal thinker on sales and marketing issues. Neil first gained international recognition in the 1970s when he led the largest-ever research study of successful selling and sales effectiveness. This massive project, supported by major multinationals including Xerox and IBM, involved a team of 30 researchers who studied 35,000 sales calls in over 20 countries. The research took 12 years at a cost, in today’s dollars, of $30 million. From the results of these studies he published the groundbreaking classics SPIN® Selling (McGraw Hill’s best selling business book ever) and Major Account Sales Strategy. His latest book, Rethinking the Sales Force has received critical acclaim from academics and sales professionals alike and is required reading at many leading business schools.
At Tennyson, Neil serves to strengthen the thinking of the board and directly contributes to development of the Tennyson Sales System.
Hayley George - Sales Manager
Hayley’s sales career has spanned 23 years and she has experience in many sectors, most notably in headhunting and media sales. She has worked on publication launches including Metro and Homes & Property.
Hayley comes from a creative background and her skills also include copy writing and design. This creativity comes to the fore when developing a sales strategy and makes for a formidable combination as it is underpinned by her solid sales and management experience.
She is skilled in working closely with our corporate partners to help them achieve their objectives.
Bio
In the summer of 1998, two young(ish) men were about to reach their thirties and with that milestone looming, and having imbibed several gallons of red wine, decided that life was too short to work for somebody else and that they wanted to do things their way. After the hangovers had subsided they took a leap of faith, set themselves up in a converted barn next to a ridiculously picturesque lake and a fledgling Tennyson was born.
Tennyson is a limited company owned by its management and by the Summit Group PLC. The backing of the Summit Group enables us to undertake projects of significant scale, despite our relatively small size. With 70 staff we don’t fit the stereotypical outsourcing agency profile. We like to think of ourselves as small but beautifully formed: big thinkers getting big results for big brands.
