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Team & Spirit

We integrate business development, operational excellence and change management. Our DNA combines practical experience in senior sales functions for leading companies with a proven and highly efficient transformation methodology. 

We produce tangible results by working side-by-side with our clients up to field implementation. Our team shares the same passion for execution, innovative ideas and puts everything on the table to raise the bar. 

Leadership team

Nikolaus Bremerich

Managing Partner DACH & Nordics

Nikolaus grew up in an area of Germany that was severely hit by the "steel crisis" of the 1980s. During this time he witnessed the painful, yet successful, transformation of his family's retail business. This sparked his motivation to help companies to transform and further develop their business.
 

After finishing university Nikolaus joined the consultancy of one of his professors, working for companies like Würth, Metro Group or Talkline in missions covering various European countries and Japan. After three years. Nikolaus joined a mid-sized consulting group.

In the following 14-years, his team worked on almost 100 missions in a wide variety of industries, improving their sales effectiveness and creating new sales channels.

 

Nikolaus has held several international management positions, in which he successfully implemented transformational sales strategies.

In 2010 he decided to build his own business around sales acceleration, later becoming part of POWERING. He’s now part of the POWERING team, fueling the success of companies and helping them to establish cutting edge sales systems.

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Olivier Guiard-Schmid

Managing Partner Frankreich & Benelux

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Oliver comes from a family of entrepreneurs, spanning several generations. From a very early age, he was exposed to the challenging decisions that every company is faced with when having to make structural changes and

implementing new systems.

After completing his studies in France at EM Lyon and Centrale Paris, he joined a new, fast-paced, English software company — growing the business

from scratch in continental Europe.

After 5 years of dazzling development, he took the head of the family sales consulting group and sold it to the Omnicom Group. During twelve remarkable years, Olivier headed international sales consultancy and outsourcing activities, managing more than 80 international business acceleration programmes,

in 15 different business sectors.

In 2013 he decided to create POWERING, a company focused on the acceleration of sales. By combining operational consulting and change management with powerful, digital tools, POWERING puts client teams in the driving seat and transforms the way businesses function. With a strong focus on growing POWERING’s international presence and local capabilities, Oliver is always looking to connect with exceptional sales leaders.

Anne Ferrand

Partner Learning & Team Dynamics

Anne was born in Lebanon and studied first in Lebanon and then in France from 1982 onwards. She holds a Master's degree in management and two post-graduate degrees from Dauphine, notably in Distribution, Logistics, Sales and Negotiation. Anne completed her education with a short programme on Impact Measurement at ESSEC.

 

Anne started her career in mergers & acquisitions, before specialising in the marketing and sales of financial products, and then joined Reed Exhibitions, the world's leading event management company. Anne held sales, marketing and business development management positions for over 12 years. Anne also led numerous sales efficiency and digitalization initiatives, including the implementation of salesforce within the company.

 

Driven by the human side and the taste for transmission, Anne led an MBA for 2 years, which allowed her to develop skills in competency development and learning. Very interested in business transformation, change management within sales teams and the implementation of a truly result and impact oriented approach, Anne joined Powering as Partner Team Dynamic & Performance. Anne works on both the international sales acceleration programmes and the development of Powering Impact Learning in France.

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Gianluigi Olivari

Managing Partner Italien

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Sales have been the ‘fil rouge’ of Gianluigi’s entire working career. He started working as a salesman in the 1980s, prior to evolving to very different roles in sales, marketing and general management in local and multinational companies in Italy and Europe.
 

Passionate about performance enhancement and transformation, he decided in 2002 to setup his own consultancy and training company in Italy, focusing on helping both global and local clients to accelerate their top line growth.

Used to working in international environments, he has specialized in running sales acceleration programs and developing action-oriented learning programs, especially in Sales, Sales management, KAM and Sales Enablement.


He started working with Powering international in 2014, and has managed sales acceleration and training projects for more that 50 clients in a number of different industries (FMCG, Pharmaceuticals, Construction, Automotive, Machinery…). During the last 15 years, Gianluigi also wrote several books on sales performance topics, including a few which became best-sellers in Italy.

Olivier Rivière

Managing Partner KAM & Complex Sales

Trained as an engineer in materials science, Olivier started in applied research in Metallurgy, a domain which requires a solid background in demanding areas of physics, where applicable results can only be obtained with a high level of pragmatism and a very strong sense of the context.
 

The very same factors that excited him in his research, led Olivier to orient his career towards marketing and sales in complex business environments. During 25 years, working for 4 different global technology-driven companies, he acquired a broad and deep experience in marketing, sales, partnerships and alliances, and client management. 
 

When he became a consultant in 2008, Olivier naturally decided to focus on key account management, sales effectiveness and sales enablement. Passionate European, trilingual, he believes in the combination of intellectual rigor and pragmatism, in system thinking and collective intelligence, in the power of a rich experience across sectors, countries and cultures.

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Pascal Hermant

Managing Partner Iberia

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Pascal has done business with more than 40 countries on 4 continents, in a range of local, global and multicultural environments. He speaks 4 languages and has lived in several countries.

After having started his career in Belgium in the FMCG industry, already in sales and marketing functions both in food and non-food categories, he moved to several countries like France and Spain for Danone Group in global sales functions, always with the aim of accelerating sales and nurturing talent by developing and deploying sales capabilities.
 

In 2016, Pascal moved to Spain and soon after, decided to launch his own business around sales acceleration, joining POWERING in 2017. His philosophy is simple, aligning strategy and execution delivers a disproportionately positive impact on topline growth, and relies on developing a strong performance culture and foster team commitment and responsibility. Exactly in line with the DNA of all Powering sales acceleration programs.

Paweł Chabros

Managing Partner Zentral & Ost Europa

Paweł was born and raised in Montreal, where he was confronted early on with different cultures and ethnic backgrounds. He graduated from Warsaw School of Economics (SGH) and  started his professional career in marketing departments of multinationals: CPC (Unilever) and Kraft Jacobs Suchard (Mondelez). Participated in building the Hellmann’s and Jacobs brand on the Polish market. Over the next several years he acted as Account Manager and Group Account Director with sales development responsibility at McCann-Erickson.
 

Passionate about trianing and coaching,  he took up in 1998 his first job in the training industry, joining Kalkstein, a human skills development consultancy in Poland. During his 19-year tenure he moved up the ranks from trainer, senior consultant, to partner and board member. From day one he was involved in both local and international L&D assignments.
 

In 2017 he started his own training company Training Excellence that helps customers achieve excellence in business skills to accelerate results and deliver lasting performance improvement. With Powering since 2020.

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Eric Debarnot

Managing Partner Channel Excellence

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Eric’s father was a devoted teacher, who believed in making people’s lives better through education. His passion for discovering and understanding different cultures led to Eric being born in the middle of the Sahara Desert.

This inbuilt passion to experience the world was probably the reason that Eric’s career led him to call seven different countries home. It’s also why he is passionate about capability development, particularly in sales and marketing. With regards to ‘capability,’ Eric likes to focus on competency and skills, as well as

culture, processes and tools.
 

After his studies at Ecole Centrale de Paris, Eric worked as a manager, and then as a leader, in several business functions, like engineering, IT and finance, before finding his way into marketing and sales. He did this in large organizations such as Mars, LVMH or Smithfield, and switched several times between business jobs and consulting, where he found the human and intellectual challenges he was looking for.

Eric has been a consultant for nearly 15 years, joining POWERING in 2015,

where he lives his passion every day.

Paulo Nunes

Managing Partner Brasilien & Latein Amerika

Paulo was born in Sao Paulo, where in the 1980s he experienced the highest period of inflation in the country’s history. From the beginning of his career, he learnt the importance of creativity in business and the flexibility needed to work in unstable economies and professional environments, marked by constant political change.
 

After graduating in Business Administration, he joined the Saint-Gobain group, working in Marketing and Market Development. He then worked for Etex and Assa Abloy groups, where he held various senior management positions, and deepened his expertise in channel development, team building, sales excellence and business unit management.
 

In 2010, he intensified his studies in the area of people development, team training and corporate coaching, through several courses and certifications, and launched his own sales performance consulting business, specializing in sales acceleration and change management. In 2014, he decided to join POWERING and currently leads the Brazilian office.

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Nicolas Vincent

Managing Partner West Afrika

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Nicolas was born in Lyon and studied at the ESIAE Business School, gaining his first experience in sales by working at Danone. He then moved to Africa to work for Descours & Cabaud B2B Distribution Group where he worked for four years as a sales manager. This powerful, one of a kind experience fueled his desire to return to the African continent as soon as possible.

He then worked 10 years in Spain as commercial director and country head of a major B2B, enduring the tough economic crisis of 2008-2009. Back to France, he joined the board of Descours & Cabaud as global key account director for Descours & Cabaud with a fantastic and very challenging mission of boosting the business with the main French multinational companies at international level.
 

With Africa still firmly on his mind and a passion for sales and channel development, he decided in 2018 to return to Africa, basing himself on the Ivory Coast. Here he created his own company which focuses on business development in West and Central African markets. He joined POWERING in 2020, bringing sales acceleration solutions to African companies and sales teams.

Ed Yates

Managing Partner USA & Canada

Ed grew up in Stamford, Connecticut and studied Accounting at the University of Connecticut, earning a CPA and going on to become a manager with Deloitte. After business school at New York University, Ed pursued FMCG brand management at Nabisco and Cadbury Schweppes, eventually running brand and customer marketing for the Castrol North America lubricants business. 

 

At Castrol, Ed developed the first category management approach for the automotive aftermarket industry, sparking an enthusiasm for customer management that has guided his career ever since. Ed was asked to lead Castrol’s global retail development effort, joining the global team in the UK. After returning to the US, Ed moved to consulting and helped establish the Glendinning (now Kantar) US practice.  

 

For the past 20 years Ed has been developing category and customer solutions across industries including consumer products, ecommerce, pharmaceuticals, retail, entertainment, chemicals, packaging, financial services, agriculture, energy and technology. This work has taken Ed to over 40 countries and six continents.  Based in Los Angeles, Ed joined Powering in 2021 and leads the North American business.

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