Andrew Richards Email & Phone Number

Portsmouth, United Kingdom

Bringing 10+ years of senior management of high performing sales, marketing and training teams to the recruitment industry. I set up Activ8 Recruitment to provide a value driven recruitment service to the IT and technology sectors principally in sales, operations and training.We offer permanent and contract placement, as well as outsourced recruitment process.

Portsmouth, United Kingdom

Creation and management of a warehousing & logistics business with user-friendly online interface- We operate a trusted partner network enabling us to also offer Point of Sale (POS), merchandise and uniform creation.IN year 3 we pivoted to a predominantly SaaS based solution that can plug into our customers' existing physical warehouse, whilst still realising the benefits of team ordering, tracking and inventorising.

Reading, United Kingdom

Working with Microsoft (on behalf of McCurrrach) to increase brand and product advocacy and reduce customer consideration time across computing, gaming and cloud business solutions.My teams were focussed on:Retail - Adding incremental sales through physical retail presence, digital interruption, social awareness and brand ambassador programmes. (Team size 45-60)Commercial - Driving sales of cloud, SaaS and computer hardware in distribution and resellers through field and tele based business development managers.During my tenure I won a second 5 year term with Microsoft in a competitive tender, expanded the UK operation to include the republic of Ireland, Won the consumer-facing sales team from a competitor agency and won bids for two commercial accounts that added 20% revenue to the account and subsequently grew by a further 30% in the first 6 months (team size 10)

London, United Kingdom

Working on behalf of Mccurrach, I Designed and managed the successful pitch for the HMD (Nokia) account.Designed the field team shape and recruited all level of personnelIntroduced E-learning and Events Vendors to NokiaDiversified the field team by adding BDM positions within the first year of operation.Won best product launch at the FMBE for launch of the Nokia 8 in contact centres and retail. (Team size 7)

Bracknell / Kingston Upon Thames

Working on behalf of REL - Strategic lead on the Nikon account from pitch win through to delivering over £8.5M retail revenue in year 2 of the contract.The activity was centred on consumer facing sales with a team ranging from 30 - 80 sales people across John Lewis, Dixons and Jessops.Accurate forecasting saw us hit 101% of retail revenue target driving average sale value and unit uplift in a declining sector.

Bracknell / Basingstoke

Strategic lead working closely with Motorola (contract via REL) to realise their retail objectives. This transcended the period of Motorola to Google to Lenovo ownership resulting in a change of team dynamic and deliverable as we moved from a product focus to a brand awareness/education strategy.At various times the account included:A retail training / advocacy teamCall centre impact and awareness teamDigital training teamConsumer facing active selling team (for key phone releases)In addition we ran localised events / a 700+ retail employee ambassador/seeding programme / regional events to drive footfall into store / phone launch events / MWC support / online learning portal consultation.

Swindon / London

Managing a team of sales/marketing executives (on behalf of infinite) who implement TomTom's field marketing needs. This covers, training, sales, events, incremental space increase and consumer shows.In addition I was responsible for reporting, data analysis/insight and call file management.Tactical costing, briefing and implementation of short term compliance fixes also fell into my remit

Swindon / London

Managing retail implementation of new release DVD (on behalf of infinite). Included client relationship management and team management of 80 retail merchandisers.

Cape Tribulation - North Queensland - Australia

I operationally managed an ecologically focussed zipline tour in the Daintree Rainforest (North Queensland), in addition to being part of the tour team for the zipline and conducting guided rainforest walks.Managed every operational aspect of the ride from being part of the build team through to the 10,000th customer and beyond.Team management of 6 guides by day, and self-managed ecological night-walk guide by night.I implemented all safety and operating procedures for safe and successful running of the zipline, and introduced scaled remuneration packages for fairer guide pay.