Clients and testimonials

Thank you so much for your latest series of sessions with my team. I have had superb feedback. Comments such as "This was what had been missing from my career all this time". Colleagues have bounced into my office telling me how confident they feel now. I reckon that I can attribute about £150,000 of uplift in fees & cross selling for every session we do with you, a pretty amazing return on investment. Thank you for helping me to transform the way we think, the way we do business & the profitability of the work we do.

Chief Executive

...our team now constructively push back on deadlines effectively without any negative response from clients. They ask more questions resulting in better briefs and longer timelines. We have cut down the amount of time spent on unnecessary work, but the biggest and by far the best result has been to recover more fee for work already completed ... that in the past we would not have asked clients to pay.

We are delighted to have made the progress we have and your part in the project has been pivotal to our success...

...let me say how impressed we have been as a team with the part you have played and you have our appreciation.

We greatly enjoyed our training. We are already putting in place our actions, but more importantly there has been an immediate mindset change in terms of qualifying our prospects. Thank you on behalf of the Babel team.

COO & Founder

Thank you for the contribution you have made to the future development and growth of our company...the negotiation skills is already starting to deliver a return on investment...fee levels are rising…deadlines more realistic...

Thanks Chris, it’s been another big year, and another one ahead all being well. FYI we did a quick calculation with the account management team a couple of months back, based on how much additional revenue we’d created further to your training, using your techniques. Within the first 5 months we could attribute £86k. Safe to say we managed to cover your costs for the training! Managing Director

We just won Muller... another name ticked off the "Dream Dozen" list you inspired us to create...we have now won three from the list...Thanks for all your help with our new business development, our time with you continues to pay dividends...a new chapter in our company's development…we look like a very good advert for your new business training...

The day our team spent with Chris was truly invaluable. I have no doubt it will impact very positively and very quickly on our business. Chris's background in our sector means that he knows exactly the challenges we face and therefore the session wasn't overloaded with unnecessary theory but filled it with really practical, thought-provoking advice. It's helped put the spotlight even more on commercial best-practice and has served to increase the confidence of the team even further when it comes to negotiation. I can't recommended Chris highly enough (although, not to our competitors!!!)

Negotiation. We all claim to be masters, but are we? After the Merrington Magic you will be. The sessions are as scary as they are useful... crammed full with practical ways to manage negotiations for the better.

...feedback from the teams has been extremely positive. I am certain the course will help us to make a real change to the business and deliver tangible results to the bottom line - we recovered the cost of the course within 24 hours.

The work Chris Merrington did with Emap's recruitment sales teams before he undertook a six session training programme was as important as the training itself; he investigated our markets, spoke to the sales teams, listened to sales calls and really worked hard to understand the motivation behind our investment in both paper and online sales training.

The result was a series of popular, inventive and interactive but, most importantly, practical sessions which resulted in an almost 100% success rate in up selling online packages...

...your experience of agency life was a real benefit and hit the spot with our senior team....people could immediately put what they had learnt into practice. I have witnessed a lot more confidence from people when they handle a tricky client negotiation and now don't spend weeks avoiding the issue! I particularly appreciated the fact you took time to understand the company, our culture and approach...to make sure the content reflected our needs.

...thank you for the excellent ‘masterclass’... for our annual Sales Conference…had an instant impact on our sales team – it couldn’t have been more relevant and the team were engaged throughout. The skills, ideas and examples were put into practice…the sales team are negotiating more effectively with our common objection...price.

...every person who attended the course has a story to tell about how they immediately put into practice the skills you have taught and used the negotiation tools you've given them. I can confidently say that the course has paid for itself several times over in the first few weeks.

...the time I spent with Chris has been invaluable. It is critical that one gives themselves thinking space in order to make the correct decisions. It's allowed me to approach and solve difficult problems quickly, which have resulted in improving my teams business output and has given me time back.

It has been a pleasure working with you on the Barcelona Sales Conference...I definitely feel your contribution...has been part of hitting our Q1 business plan. The team also requested a follow up later this year. Definitely a workshop to recommend to all sales teams.

Thank you very much for your excellent keynote at our annual conference...

...your presentation was very well received. I was pleased that you took the first slot, as you set the tone for the entire day. Your talk was energising, humorous and very informative. I was initially concerned that this topic might be perceived as teaching antiques dealers to 'suck eggs' but there were no such accusations and I think the dealers found your pointers genuinely useful.

The tangible value that MC&C have realised as a result of your advice is an incremental £110,000 net revenue in 2 months (ie: straight to the bottom line). That's one of the better short term ROI's that I have seen in thirty years of providing marketing services. Beyond this a change in team culture, engaged the entire management team in the task of creating sustainable profitable growth for MC&C as well as for our clients. The team has more confidence in their right to transact with clients as equals, better briefs, better delivery deadlines, better work & better outcomes. Chris engaging with you has been a win for our clients and a win for us...thank you for the value you have created for us.

CEO

Chris and his courses are exceptional. They are a 'must have' if you're an agency leader trying to take your senior team on the same journey. Whether you've had similar training before or not, you will 100% learn something new or remember something of old. In the six months since we had our training, we saw a significant improvement in our agency's growth and profitability. Managing Director

Chris's training style is inclusive, informative and challenging... It made our teams sit up and take notice... It allowed people to feel confident in their own abilities... using Chris's practical tools and advice... challenging clients, working towards great briefs, significantly improving client relationships and improving our business.

In the last two years our new business GP has risen over 300% and profitability almost doubled... we now know where to focus and how to work smarter!

Chris is the perfect 'latent potential unlocker'. He's perfected the art of teaching all levels to understand, have confidence in and use, fast working, value driving commercial strategies... my team have increased in confidence, are having ballsy conversations with marketing clients and procurement alike...mutual trust grows...

Each course we run with Chris pays back within a month. The payback tends to be a mixture of better briefing from clients to get better results, reduced over-servicing and/or doors opening to other parts of the client's business as they value the impact and confidence we build in them.

I couldn't recommend Chris highly enough.

Chris ran a Negotiation skills session for the Board and we all agreed it was probably the most valuable session of recent times at Red..... his sessions are the first we have seen that explain the approaches clients take to undermine agency charging models. Chris has left us with an array of techniques to combat the worst excesses and strategies to actually build revenue... meet with Chris...

Thank you for all your wonderful help this year. You have made a huge impact on our business. Have a wonderful break.

Thank you so much for your conference session with the senior leadership team, we received so much positive feedback. Everyone really enjoyed themselves and said that it gave them time to reflect on the work they do on a daily basis… We couldn't have asked for more.

Dear Chris, I wanted to drop you a line to say thank you very much for the training session you gave one of our teams in London. The impact it’s had on the business and the individuals has been enormously positive. Jenny is working hard to align all the ducks for more training sessions and we’ll hopefully be in touch soon for some more courses. Many thanks once again, great job Chris!

CEO

Chris has a great way of training people - not only do they listen but they actively adopt the tools he gives them...I cannot recommend him highly enough to other agencies.

Your delivery of the Consultative Selling, Negotiation and Presentation Skills modules has been a real success. Every piece of feedback, without exception, has been positive. This is both in terms of the course content and your engaging style. In the first week after training we calculated a real increase in sales of over £40,000. Our Human Resources Director, is delighted with the results, we very much hope that you will continue to be a business partner with us.

Thank you for your energy and enthusiasm for the subject matter and for sharing your level of knowledge with the teams in a fun and focused way.

I have worked with Chris on more than a dozen speaker events and training workshops over the last 18 months and cannot speak highly enough about the content he delivers, the manner in which he delivers his content and his overall professionalism. Our audiences tend to be the owners and directors of SME businesses who operate at a high level and the feedback I have received from them after they have attended one of Chris's sessions is always excellent. Words such as stimulating, valuable, participative and time well spent are often used to describe their day. One session that Chris presented which particularly sticks out in my mind was a 60-minute session that he delivered at one of our conferences to an audience of around 200 people last year. The presentation was highly informative and helpful and Chris delivered it with genuine energy and dynamism, which, in turn, really engaged the audience and generated plenty of discussion and debate afterwards. In my dealings with Chris I have always found him highly professional, organised, flexible and I get the sense that he genuinely cares that the people who spend a day with him at one of his workshops leave with some new ways to approach what they do and that they feel empowered to try new things in their job. Chris is always a pleasure to spend time with and has a razor sharp intellect, which again make his presentations enjoyable and ensures that he is always able to interact with delegates at an appropriate level and respond to their questions from a position of genuine experience. I look forward to working with Chris for many years to come.

Managing Director & Associate Editor

Chris’ delivery of the Consultative selling and negotiation skills course was outstanding. The feedback from every single course attendee has been exceptionally positive and after just four weeks we are already seeing increasing confidence in many of our client interactions leading to more positive business outcomes. We are looking forward to continuing work with Chris to spread his gospel.

Director of Commercial Impact and Marketing

Thanks for everything you've done for us over the years - you've been amazing.

Managing Director

Thank you for an excellent workshop. The team are still buzzing and are clearly feeling more confident about budget conversations. Some are actively more bullish and are already genuinely surprised and delighted that their 'higher than usual' estimates are getting signed off without clients batting an eyelid. More profit AND team confidence.

Managing Director

Checking in with Chris during lockdown was both helpful and inspiring. A shift in thinking is always needed during times of change, and the online bite-size session helped us to both challenge our own thinking and forge creative new ways to take action. Chris’s approach completely works in the ‘new normal’ of digital connection, and the content still packed a punch via Zoom as much as it would have done face-to-face. This was a great use of the management team’s time.

Managing Director