Direct links to the highlights

We designed this fast-paced interactive presentation as a practical, action-oriented conference keynote. It is equally appropriate for people who have been in business a number of years as it is for people who are just starting out.

Looks at five areas that are common to every consumer-facing business including attractions, entertainment, hospitality, restaurants, retail, tourism, travel – and even government:

•  Strategy and Numbers

•  The Physical Space

•  Selling and Service

•  Team Productivity

•  A Position of Leadership

Helps participants understand the incredibly high level that a consumer-facing business must attain if the business is to succeed.

Especially since the economic meltdown of 2008, people are not behaving like they were even ten years ago. This is because the world has changed and people have as well – especially their shopping habits and needs, and the way that they assess stores and prices.

This session focuses on the underlying psychological changes that are making customers behave in new, unpredictable ways. Suitable as a conference keynote for a variety of audiences, it includes the reasons why people buy, the differences between men and women as customers and the influence of groups.

Also includes a fun, challenging “Psych 101 Test.”

Learn to fish in a different labor pool. Fundamental workforce changes have left many businesses in a constant struggle to find and keep skilled staff. And with endless turnover, they start to suffer and lose customers. It’s likely that these businesses still think of “entry level” employees as young people just entering the labor force. And find that recruiting these people is tougher today as a growing number of employers compete for a decreasing number of candidates – an imbalance that will last for years.

This keynote offers an innovative staffing solution that is being embraced by some of the world’s best companies.

It challenges businesses to change the way they define entry level and shows them how to harness the huge number of experienced and capable people in their 40s and 50s that are now available to employers. Laid off and downsized in mid-career, these people are anything but senior citizens. Includes the changes that most companies must make to attract and keep these reliable, productive employees.

Things we can learn from the entertainment industry. Retail strongly parallels entertainment because both are built on performance and communication with the public. When the doors open, the “actors” are on stage in a performance that will last all day.

This presentation looks at the crucial art behind the science of retail. Drawing on creative examples from several of today’s top entertainment companies, it illustrates how retailers can offer a show that is consistently superior – no matter when the customer arrives.

An entertaining and motivating conference keynote that includes great multimedia examples, this topic can also be an interactive workshop.

For a customer, a brand is not a logo, a name or a product – it is a feeling, a reputation and a consistently delivered promise. And for a customer, service is always personal.

This keynote shows how and why on-brand service – not breaking your brand promise on the most personal level – is now more crucial than ever. Session includes ways to improve the total customer experience and deliver it consistently.

Only one business in a given market can have the greatest assortment or the lowest price, and everyone else must compete by offering reasonable levels of those plus superior service. This session explains how a business can harness the spirit of service – one of the most fragile and perishable of all corporate assets. Covers the basic truths about service and value, service and branding, and the issues of price and loyalty. Demonstrates that a business can soar on the trend to “EST retailing.”

This keynote is designed for companies in any industry that are struggling to understand – and succeed in – today’s complex consumer marketplace.

Every company that serves customers is dealing with issues such as polarization. This is forcing companies out of the middle so that being “everything for everybody” is no longer an option. Even more important is the issue of value, because if you don’t add value, customers will judge you on price – and any possibility of loyalty will vanish. But what exactly what is “value” to the customers of today?

This eye-opening session gives answers from the “front lines” of the marketplace: retail companies that face these challenges head-on every day. It includes both the factual and the emotional drivers of today’s demanding consumers and, most valuable of all, shows what every business can learn from successes and failures that retailers have had.

New for 2012: Building Engagement Through Customer Experience, a fast-paced interactive presentation by Ted Topping. Both informative and entertaining, this topic works well for conferences, conventions, trade shows and larger corporate events.

As the economic clouds clear, it is time to charge up your team and prepare your business for the ramp-up for increased sales. Now is the time to build a solid infrastructure of good habits – to learn to execute the details that will always make the difference.

Focusing on the basics today will improve morale, staff performance and customer service, and strengthen your business now in preparation for stronger but more demanding times ahead.

With the battle-weary customers, every single customer interaction is crucial to your business. No slack and no second chances. Also, with customers making fewer purchases, they demand more from fewer encounters.

Today’s consumers are more impatient and knowledgeable than ever before, and they have now learned to watch their dollars better than ever. They reward consistency and dependability. They will not buy sizzle if the steak is below their expectations. To deliver, you need to ensure daily execution of the details that have created and sustained great companies – regardless of the economic climate.

This session delivers an actionable and effective 30-item checklist to boost your business by Sweating the Small Stuff. This action plan will be useable to your business not just today, but for years to come.

In the weaker economy, customer-facing businesses have had access to more employee candidates, but that has not solved the much bigger problems of a manager: how to find the right candidates, and how to keep them. As the economy clears, finding and keeping them will become even more of an issue.

Regardless of the economic situation, huge changes are taking place in the workforce and customer-facing businesses continue to struggle to find and keep skilled staff. This problem is partly due to demographics – there really IS a shortage of qualified staff today. An even bigger problem is that many businesses have only a vague picture of what kinds of employees they really need.

Embracing innovative staffing ideas is the solution. Working with a trade sector association, Ted Topping spent several months researching and writing a current “best practices” manual for finding and keeping employees. This session will explain what it takes to thrive today, and will help the participants:

• Build your team around productive, stable employees who offer education and experience

• Focus on the 20 percent of workplace activities that produce 80 percent of your bottom-line.

• Understand how front-end and back-end are different businesses with different staffing needs

• Introduce simple “systems” that can be explained to and quickly followed by new employees

Leading a team whose members do not share your – or each others’ – work ethic, values or experience, is an extremely challenging task. Solving the dilemma starts with admitting that the situation will not correct itself. The younger generation will not one day “grow up” and adopt the older generation’s values. The employable-age younger generation is already grown-up and their values ARE different. This situation is even worse if your team members’ values and life experience clash with those of your customers. This session will show how to manage and achieve results in this environment that is not going to change.

Rooted in basic demographics and in a weak economy, the task of finding and especially keeping and managing the staff you really need is more daunting today than ever before.

This session explains WHY we are in this situation and, most important, provides practical, actionable instruction on how to:

• Create a work culture that focuses more on what needs to get done and less on how.

• Accommodate the ways in which people from various age groups approach work.

• Avoid the ineffective carrot-and-stick style of motivation and provide more effective incentives.

• Make production and customer-facing work fun and interesting to the employees.

Many managers say that they cannot find people to whom they can delegate – and that they therefore are “tied” to the business. This workshop shows how managers can use coaching and situational leadership to develop their staff based on the needs of individual employees. Since building the people side of a service business needs to start at the top, this session includes fun, challenging exercises for managers – and offers huge rewards for those who want to gain some freedom.

Our detailed coaching workshop is designed for managers and supervisors. It recognizes that training must provide more than information, it must also provide skills that will let people use that information in practice. Even if people can be persuaded in a workshop setting that there is a better way, old habits can erode that belief as soon as they return to work. Effective coaching will help the new skills stick, resulting in measurable increases in sales, profit and customer satisfaction.

Based on the book Retail Selling Ain’t Brain Surgery, It’s Twice As Hard by Jim Dion, this workshop on retail selling skills is the perfect primer and a great refresher for anyone working in sales.

It expands on concepts that have been available for many years, but does so with a fresh approach and convincing arguments – while presenting a practical guide for applying them.

The session includes proven skills that let retail employees sell effectively and give customers what they want. Selling staff will learn the steps of the sale that make “closing” a natural outcome of serving customers. Managers will learn the selling skills that they need to teach to current and future employees.