[Découvrez les conférences offertes en français.]
It is no longer sufficient to tell people what they should do as employees, even as managers. Nowadays, people expect to be explained why they should adopt various practices, say things a certain way, do stuff another way. Any speaker can deliver the what. Some can deliver the how, the actionable stuff. But most can't deliver the why. My unique position as business school professor, former entrepreneur, and television show host means I can deliver a strong why, a clear how, and make every what accessible and easy to understand for any audience.
Contact me to find out how I can adapt contents to your needs, and to find out about applicable rates.
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* Who Killed Wow!?
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For years, businesspeople and employees have been repeatedly told that merely satisfying customers was no longer enough. That they had to delight them. Wow them into becoming loyal customers for years to come. In fact, yes, truly satisfying customers, especially in highly competitive industries, is crucial. And delighting them by going the extra mile is certainly worth it for any business.
However, this conference explains that customer loyalty is in fact based on two different types of factors: Basic ones, and Wow ones. The problem is that as businesses and employees focus more and more on wowing customers, they forget that they still have to perform their most basic job in a perfect way in the first place. You may have bells and you may have whistles, if your core promise as a brand, as a company, as an employee is not delivered, no customer and no partner will ever be truly satisfied... let alone delighted. Then it's truly the end of Wow.
This conference explains what people -- may they be customer service or sales representatives, managers, even board members -- can and must do to prevent Wow! from slowly vanishing from their businesses. With customer service agents and sales representatives, I insist on team work and develop their concern for the very basic details of their core work. I discuss what to do with dissatisfied customers and explain how a genuinely positive attitude is the biggest contributor to Wow! once the basic job has been performed in a satisfactory fashion. With managers, I also discuss how inspiring employees and keeping them happy and engaged (through various simple techniques and strategies) is the best path to ressuscitating Wow!...
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* Innovation is Everyone's Business.
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The Red Queen's race is an incident that appears in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass and involves the Red Queen, a representation of a Queen in chess, and Alice constantly running but remaining in the same spot. "Well, in our country," said Alice, still panting a little, "you'd generally get to somewhere else — if you run very fast for a long time, as we've been doing." "A slow sort of country!" said the Queen. "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"
Businesses these days are typically in this same situation: They must innovate, evolve, invent, adopt best practices at least as fast as their competitors just to stay in the same place. To gain market share or create additional value — that is, to get somewhere — they have to do all that even faster. Worse, should they be too slow, they start losing ground. And may even disappear. (Remember Kodak, anyone?)
In this conference, I explain why it is so important for employees and managers in any business to look for opportunities, ideas, paths that can lead to innovation. Because most ideas usually come from the outside of any company, all employees, no matter what their position, can and should play a role in monitoring what customers ask for, what competitors are doing, whatever cues partners and suppliers may provide. With managers, I also discuss strategies and incentives to give teams in order to foster innovation and boost the flow of productive ideas.
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* Happypreneurship
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Entrepreneurs do not launch businesses to get rich. They do it to find happiness, no less. While some may figure the money they'll ultimately make with their ventures will make them happy, most rather see their new businesses as a path to self-actualization, some kind of freedom, perhaps more time with their family.
In my research and experience, I have however found out that a third type of entrepreneurs, the ones who launch their businesses in the hope of changing the world for the better, or creating a brighter future for people, is the happiest of all. And that their specific type of happiness generates results. Big results.
In this conference (derived from my upcoming book), I explain the kind of competitive advantages happy entrepreneurs, or happypreneurs benefit from and enjoy. How happypreneurship typically wins over pure profit-focused, and even egocentric entrepreneurship — that is, going into business for the greater good is more lucrative in the end than all other motivations that may drag people into entrepreneurship.
I finally address what entrepreneurs, both those who are in business and those who would like to be, can do to make sure they get on the best possible track. Making the world a better place in the meantime.
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