Nick Ellse

Following university Nick spent 3 years in exporting, working overseas for much of that time. In 1981 Nick joined the board of a start up business involved in asset based lending and successfully built that business during the 1980's until it's sale to the TSB group in 1994. Nick spent the next 12 months integrating the business with TSB resulting in new revenue growth of over 500% within 12 months.

Following the success of the TSB integration Nick was approached by Barclays to support the turnaround and integration of their asset based lending business. At Barclays Nick directly led a team of over 70 people through restructuring, realignment with the Barclays group and successful reversal of 5 years decline in market share.

In 1997 Nick was approached by Ernst & Young and joined their corporate restructuring group as coach / facilitator to the partner / manager group and as a member of the management team. This led into Nick running extensive skills transfer programmes for the group then the wider firm, building the skills base for the partnership to grow revenues to meet its goals. Highly credible, he also became the internal director of choice to run programmes in the international arena.

In 2000 Nick joined a London based consultancy as a director and shareholder, with responsibility for leading the executive development business, and continuing sales training and executive coaching.

Nick co-founded raising the bar in 2002 with Mike Lunnon-Wood (who sadly passed away in March 2008)  and now splits his time between coaching senior executives and teams, sales and sales management training, designing and facilitating group strategy events and helping businesses develop and implement innovative, customer led solutions.

Nick works with major companies (FTSE 100, Fortune 500) ranging from investment banking to the music sector and from IT to pharmaceuticals and has extensive involvement in professional services.

[back to top]

Brian Hawkins

Brian joined raising the bar as a partner in April 2005, and since then has been part of our core delivery team working with our clients on programmes, both designing and delivering the training.

Before that he was the most senior of the Account Directors at Ernst & Young having worked with the firm for 10 years.

He had a team of 28 sales and marketing professionals working for him covering Scotland and the north of England. His personal clients included Damovo, Thus Plc, iSoft Plc, MyTravel and Kwik Fit. He was a member of the national sales board of Ernst & Young UK and a member of the regional management board.

His sales role was based around sales coaching and facilitation, enabling Ernst & Young teams to work with client teams creating solutions to complex issues and challenges.

Before joining Ernst & Young he worked for TMI, the largest management-training organisation in Europe. A graduate of Edinburgh University, Brian is a certified NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) Practitioner.

[back to top]

Mike Jones

Mike has more than 20 years experience of selling professional services.

A Psychology graduate of the University of Western Australia, Mike has held senior sales and marketing roles in some of the leading professional services firms including Zurich, St James's Place Capital and Tite & Lewis.

He was also sales director of Ernst & Young before going on to become founder of Intrinsic Values Limited. Mike has led many assignments and is a recognised leader in the field of sales and business development. He was the world's first law firm Sales Director and has built a reputation as one of the most influential consultants in the professional sector. Mike is a well-known conference speaker and has published a number of articles on selling professional services.

Mike has worked with the raising the bar team for many years, having first worked alongside the founders at Ernst & Young in the UK. Mike is a true leader in the field of sales and business development and adds real depth to our professional services expertise, having led significant training and consulting projects for a large number of the world’s biggest law firms and accounting firms.

[back to top]

Laurence Peltier

Laurence Peltier runs raising the bar France based in Paris and has over 16 years experience in selling financial services and investments in both wealth management and investment banking to corporates, institutional and individual investors in New York, Paris and Hong Kong.

Laurence started her career in the early 1990s as an Analyst in corporate finance in New York.  She became an Associate then a Director in the Equity Capital Markets Team at Banque Indosuez in New York and Paris, and at Indosuez W.I. Carr Securities in Hong Kong where she was responsible for marketing to corporates in the Asia ex-Japan region, and  for facilitating sales of primary and secondary equities by the global institutional sales force.  She is experienced in successfully presenting in “beauty contests” and knows how to handle one-to-one meetings with a tier 1 institutional investor and tough individuals.

Laurence founded So’ French Limited, the exclusive representative of Les Marchands in Hong Kong, a Paris-based retail consulting firm, where she developed business and managed relationships with major companies in the luxury and commercial property sector. Laurence facilitated strategic workshops and customer role plays with senior management at client companies and won substantial accounts for Les Marchands.

Prior to moving back to France, Laurence became a Director at UBS Wealth Management in Hong Kong where she was in charge of business development and selling comprehensive investment solutions and services to senior executives and entrepreneurs.  At UBS, she was a leader in client and prospect initiatives and events.

Laurence is an MBA graduate of ESLSCA Business School in Paris, and of Pace University in New York.

[back to top]

Jeff Matthews

Jeff left Loughborough University with an Honours degree in Management Science and subsequently held various roles in Sales and Marketing with Avon Rubber, Avon Medicals, the AA and AA Financial Services before becoming Marketing Director for TMI (Time Manager International).

In 1993, he started-up The Madison Group and his clients include Barclays Bank, Lloyds TSB group, IKEA, British Aerospace and the public sector.  He has also worked in professional services with accounting firms and alongside GC’s and in-house legal teams within law firms.

Jeff is a trained therapist, primarily as a focus for constantly improving his coaching, training, facilitation and understanding of behavioural skills. He is also a great facilitator, trainer,  coach and coach supervisor.  He brings raising the bar a blend of pragmatic business and strategic skills, linked to a deep appreciation of what gets in the way – the conscious and unconscious blocks.

His style is a blend of energy, enthusiasm and wit, combined with a deep understanding of the dynamics of human interaction.

Jeff and Nick have known each other for over 15 years; in fact Nick was one of Jeff’s first clients!

[back to top]

Jessica Warman

Jessica joined raising the bar at it’s inception in 2002 and provides full back-up and support to the raising the bar team. She handles day-to-day queries and enquiries and will very often be your first point of contact when calling the raising the bar office.

Jessica will also be your raising the bar contact for training course and coaching bookings with overall diary management for both Nick and Brian and our associates worldwide. Through liaison with your administrators, she will ensure that all the logistics and specified materials for each of the programmes are correct and ensure that the delivery of the programme/s conform to the agreed contract detail. Following the delivery of coaching and training, Jessica will then issue the appropriate invoice to you and will liaise with your team regarding payments.

[back to top]