building commercial confidence in sales teams:
meet the blueprint experts

An MBA Commercial Economics graduate, Erik started his commercial life as a sales promoter for Rothmans, moving up the career ladder through field sales, account management, sales & marketing management and general management for Rothmans, Cadbury Schweppes and McCain Foods. He shifted his career to Learning and Development and ran the Global Commercial Learning department in McCain for 3 years.

Erik was joint founder of Blueprint Europe and has been involved with an important suite of Blueprint activities over the last 5 years in a number of countries with a wide range of customers from different sectors. His language skills are fluently speaking Dutch, English, German and Spanish, combined with his vast, wide and international commercial experience and a natural ability to develop and maintain strong customer relations, allows him to coach and consult customers and train the Blueprint suite of programs in various industries in many parts of this world.

Nigel’s extensive customer management skills & experience were gained in a variety of markets & trade channels. His practical, results focussed approach developed during progressively senior roles in sales, customer marketing & category management to Director level within Procter and Gamble, Courage, Golden Wonder, Danone and United Biscuits.

Since entering consultancy he has applied and built his sales capability expertise across multiple sectors including, FMCG, Foodservice, Healthcare, Drinks & Finance.  He has accumulated considerable international experience, having worked in nearly 40 countries throughout Europe, (including CEE), Middle East, Africa, Australia, Asia & North America on a vast range of projects. This depth and breadth of experience in highly competitive trading environments leaves Nigel well placed to support the needs of Blueprint clients.

Mark has extensive experience in food, drink and non food both FMCG and distribution industries, with customer knowledge spanning multiple grocers, high street, independent trade, cash and carry, wholesale, hotels, restaurant, pub, club, leisure operators, local authorities, outside events management, contract caterers and Business to Business including telecoms. He has worked for famous brands as Kellogg's, Coca-Cola, IDV and Anheuser Busch.

Mark has been working for Blueprint in various sectors, from beverages to food and from fmcg to financial services. His strength lies in inspiring and motivating individuals and teams by developing their attitude, skills and knowledge through training, coaching and mentoring.

Since 1998, Alastair has worked as a senior Consultant across a myriad of sectors, cultures, and countries, serving a blue-chip client base. He developed his vast retail expertise in a variety of roles in companies such as Somerfield, Abdul Latif Jameel, and Perihelion Convenience Stores, both on the retail floor as well as in senior executive positions at head office level. Alastair brings that unique insight in retail customers in Europe, the Middle East, Far East, North America and Australia.

Since the early years of Blueprint, Alastair has been an associate to our business and has developed a long track record in working with a variety of Blueprint programmes in a wide number of businesses and countries. And with his experience and insights gained from having worked in various roles on the retail customer side, Alastair is ideally placed to challenge and improve commercial excellence of selling organisations.

Similarly to Founder & President Erik, James started his commercial career as a sales promoter, but it was with Budweiser and in the alcoholic drinks industry where his journey began - moving up the commercial ladder with Anheuser Busch for 9 years, on to Territory Sales, Business Development, Regional Sales Management and finally National Accounts, predominantly in the On-Trade.

He then moved on to an extremely successful 16-year term with Barcelona-brewer Damm as UK Country Manager, where he oversaw the launch and growth of the Estrella beer brand from its creation, as employee No.1 of Damm UK. 

For a large part of his 25-year career to date James has been an advocate of the ‘Blueprint-way’, be it from learning and applying the principles as an account manager and team leader at A-B, or when enlisting Erik’s services as he created, built and developed his own commercial business structure at Damm UK, on to now - as we are pleased he joins us as an Associate Consultant for the Blueprint business itself.

An economics graduate,  Cezary started his professional life in Henkel Ecolab Company as Sales Division Manager in Poland and Baltic countries, where he worked with great success during six years . There he gained
lot of experiences in managing and motivating people. Then he joined Techmex
Company where he was a Managing Director of Training and Certification Division
responsible for Information Technology Projects IBM, Microsoft, Citrix, Cisco. From
1999 he became a trainer and consultant who supports large companies with his
knowledge and experience, helping to solve difficult situation, motivating individuals
and teams by developing their attitude and skills.

Experience:  Since 2005, Cezary has been an associate consultant to Blueprint and has worked with several customers on business and commercial strategy in Poland.

His professional experience with strategy development and Leadership at Reckitt
Benckiser provide our customers with the latest learnings and applications in the
wider business development.

An economics graduate, Ronnie started his commercial life in retail with the 1,200 store group Fine Fare. During this time he had roles in managing stores, field operations and buying. He joined Mars Confectionery as an Account Manager in the travel sector, prior to joining Coca-Cola & Schweppes Beverages Ltd as an Account Manager in Food Service. He was then promoted to National Account Controller responsible for the Tesco account. He then joined Danone as General Sales Manager of the Biscuit division ‘Jacob’s Bakery’ prior to joining Scottish & Newcastle as Sales Director, latterly becoming Managing Director of the off-license division. He then ran a Management Buy-In of a Frozen Food business supported by 3i Venture Capital group and the Bank of Scotland. An acquisition followed and the Esk Group was formed that Ronnie ran as Chief Executive. In 1998 Ronnie sold his equity in the company and founded Blueprint Management Consultants. Ronnie is listed in the prestigious publication “The International Who’s Who of Business Professionals”.

Ronnie has been heavily involved with the full suite of Blueprint activities across most of our extensive client portfolio. His experience has had him operating across 50 countries and 6 continents in a multi-sector environment. Today Ronnie has the title Chairman and although retired from operational involvement, he continues to be the Jedi Master of the Blueprint businesses.