Recession or no recession, today’s business world is more challenging than ever. Leaders, managers, and sales professionals alike are looking for an edge to compete and thrive in a crowded marketplace. Popular keynote speaker and best-selling author (Never Eat Alone) Keith Ferrazzi is helping individuals and organizations find that edge by remembering a fundamental truth: “business is human.” In other words, focus on relationships. Doing so, Ferrazzi says, will lead to revenue growth and greater success.

Relationships for Leadership Success

“Relationships for Leadership Success” is about effectively connecting people and successfully building teams. Successful leaders know how to build and manage relationships with employees, clients, and business partners. They work with people, not against them. They understand that in today’s workplace, you can’t achieve success on your own.

With this keynote presentation, participants learn how to engender trust and develop genuine connections with others, how to define their values and leadership principles, how to motivate others to higher levels of performance, and how to lead with passion and purpose. Leaders who can apply Keith’s time-tested lessons will be able to empower others and find joy in their own personal and professional lives.

Relationships for Revenue Growth

Salespeople face the hard reality that more and more of their products and services are faster and faster becoming commodities in today’s competitive marketplace. In this environment, the one lasting strategy for consistently growing revenue is to proactively build genuine, lasting relationships with clients. Building connections and contacts is absolutely vital to creating revenue success and growth.

Keith’s “Relationships for Revenue Growth” keynote helps bridge the gap for salespeople who find it difficult to balance the desirable and necessary challenge of expanding and deepening connections with the time and energy required to do so.

Achieve the Full Potential of Your Network

Keith Ferrazzi will help you and your organization create a process to scale intimacy, focus on building deeper real relationships with key influencers who will help you succeed, and achieve the full potential of your network. Acquire both a philosophy and a best practice used to plan and develop deep personal relationships with your peers, clients, employees, and stakeholders. What are you waiting for?

Posted under Organizational Excellence, Speaker News, Speaker Recommendations

Adapted from the TSG Speakers Bureau Reference Guide on Motivational Speakers:

All the labels can be confusing: motivational speakers, inspirational speakers, keynote speakers, public speakers, etc. Are they all the same? Are they all interchangeable? To a degree, there are great similarities, and yes, they can be interchangeable. There are significant differences, though, and we tried to bring some clarity with the “Motivational Speakers” installment of our reference guide.

What defines someone as a motivational speaker?

According to Wikipedia, a motivational speaker is “a professional speaker, facilitator or trainer who speaks to audiences, usually for a fee.” Motivational speakers are often utilized as keynote speakers to open or close events in dynamic fashion. A typical presentation from a motivational speaker ranges from 45 to 90 minutes, although some are as short as 30 minutes or as long as two hours.

Motivational speakers come from many different backgrounds. While the motivational speaking profession requires no formal training or certification, those who speak professionally and succeed in the profession possess the proven ability to lift up, educate and motivate their audiences. The best speakers can engage the audience and share best practices, experiences and life lessons without boring the audience. They do so through the use of humor, storytelling, originality, and the refrain from canned speeches.

What is the difference between a motivational speaker and an inspirational speaker?

Wikipedia describes a motivational speaker as one who has “the proven ability to lift up, educate and motivate their audiences.” In contrast, Wikipedia defines an inspirational speaker as one who “address[es] audiences with the aim of inspiring the listeners to higher values or engendering understanding about life and themselves.”

There are indeed similarities between motivational speakers and inspirational speakers, and someone could be labeled as both simultaneously. One subtle difference, though, is that inspirational speakers are often known for having a warm, encouraging message, sometimes based on a story of overcoming great obstacles. Motivational speakers, on the other hand, may be more dynamic and energetic, with a presentation geared toward “firing up” an audience.

To inspire, according to the American Heritage Dictionary, is to fill with enlivening or exalting emotion. To motivate is to provide with an incentive; move to action; impel. Note that inspiration connects with emotion; motivation connects with action.

Who are the most popular motivational speakers?

There are a number of outstanding motivational speakers available to enrich a meeting, conference or convention. Some of the most popular, most requested and most heralded are those whose presentations are both dynamic in style and rich in relevant content, such as  Harry Paul, Benjamin Zander, Mark Sanborn, Eileen McDargh, Marcus Buckingham, Jackie Freiberg and Kevin Freiberg. To evaluate more motivational speaker candidates, visit The Speakers Group’s online directory of motivational speakers.

Posted under Motivational Speakers, Planner Tips, Speaker Recommendations

National Nurses Week 2008 has barely come to a close, but it’s not too early to begin planning for next year’s festivities! Nurses Week is a wonderful time set aside to honor nurses for their skill, commitment, and compassion that touches lives every day. Every healthcare organization has a unique way of recognizing nurses, but many of them utilize outside speakers in one way or another.

Given the finite nature of National Nurses Week (celebrated May 6-12 each year) and the limited number of speakers qualified to address this group of caring professionals, it is always wise to secure your speaker as far in advance as possible. This is the one week out of the year that you can be almost certain that every speaker with a connection to nursing will be booked solid. By the time March and April roll around, most speakers will only have a day or two remaining during Nurses Week. Since the dates are set, why not begin your speaker selection process now and have your choice of speakers to create your special event?

At The Speakers Group, we’ve set up a special page with recommendations of speakers qualified to help you recognize and honor your nurses during Nurses Week. Among the speakers who are most requested for Nurses Week events:

• Diane Sieg - A former Emergency Room Nurse and author of STOP Living Life Like An Emergency, Diane is a great speaker to provide relief from the hectic, hurried life of your nurses. In her “Reclaiming the Spirit of Nursing” presentation, Diane challenges and inspires nurses to reclaim their passion and pride for nursing so they can continue to make a REAL difference in their work and in their lives.
  
  
• Kathleen Bartholomew - Kathleen Bartholomew, RN, MN, has been called the most important new voice in American Nursing. With a wide array of available programs for nurses, Kathleen can help you address the issues that are relevant in your workplace. Whether that be “Ending Nurse to Nurse Hostility,” “Improving MD/RN Relationships,” or simply re-igniting “A Passion for the Art of Nursing,” Kathleen is changing nursing by compassionately holding a mirror to the profession and exposing a century of hidden truths.
  
  
• Kathy Dempsey - Another former ER nurse, Kathy received national attention as a result of a life-altering hospital-based event that ‘made her a poster child for the Center for Disease Control (CDC).’ Her presentations reach far beyond the experience, to build a touchstone with each member of the audience. Kathy’s ’signature story’ is her transformation as an ER nurse who became the first health care worker in America to be diagnosed positive for AIDS as a result of workplace exposure.
  
  
• Judy Carter - Judy is not a nurse, but nurses love her! A humorist, author and motivational speaker, Judy delivers a highly customized “Laughing out of Stress” message which generates plenty of laughs but also teaches real lessons on how nurses can laugh their way out of stress and even use humor to connect with their patients.
  
  
• Karyn Buxman - A former nurse, Karyn connects with her fellow healthcare workers and shows that while the state of health care today is no joke, it just may be a laughing matter - if we understand that humor is frequently generated by painful circumstances. In her hysterically entertaining keynote titled “This Won’t Hurt a Bit - And Other Fractured Truths in Healthcare,” Karyn shows nurses how humor can help them get through the toughest of days and still remain smiling.
  

Of course there are many more candidates to choose from, and regardless of your budget or unique program objectives, the right speaker is out there. Let us know if we can help. Happy Nurses Week 2009!

Posted under Healthcare, Planner Tips, Speaker Recommendations

The first line of a post titled “Mastering the Art of Motivation” on BNet.com grabbed my attention: “According to the Harvard Business School, 85 percent of companies report that employee motivation drops after the first six months on the job.” Wow!

I suppose that shouldn’t come as a great surprise. We can all remember back to when we started our job for the first time… It was new! Exciting! Challenging! Invigorating! By the time you’re six months in, it’s familiar. Routine. Mindless. Exhausting. That’s just one side of the story, though. Look at what else happens to new hires within the first six months on the job:

1. They become more familiar with their boss and co-workers… and they realize they are all helplessly flawed!
2. While they love the core responsibilities of their position, they realize there are some necessary activities (TPS reports?) that just aren’t as much fun… and they seem to take more time than the work they love.
3. In the midst of the “routine,” they lose sight of the purpose of the organization and even their position which initially connected with their passion.

The list goes on, but these are all very real issues. As the BNet post indicates, it is largely the responsibility of managers to watch over their employees and make sure their motivation does not reach dangerously low levels - and there are plenty of preventatives and remedies at the managers’ disposal. One “tool in the toolbox” should be a connection to personal and professional development authorities who can help business leaders create and maintain a workplace that fosters motivation for all employees. For each of the toxic issues noted above, there are speakers standing by with the exact antidote. For example:

Rick Brinkman, co-author of Dealing With People You Can’t Stand and a very funny, yet relevant, keynote speaker on “Conscious Communication,” is a great help in addressing situation #1 above. It is inevitable that we will cross paths with people we “can’t stand” in the workplace, but Rick’s message hits home with situations that people find themselves in every day and empowers them with practical solutions.

Marcus Buckingham, author of the bestseller, Go Put Your Strengths to Work, and co-author of bestsellers such as Now, Discover Your Strengths, is in high demand by companies seeking to bring the strengths movement into their organizations. Those employees who find themselves bogged down with activities which are not their strengths within six months will only experience further deterioration of their motivation level as time goes on. Within a few years, they’ll only be a shell of the person they were when hired. Marcus can help leaders and managers create a business that plays to the strengths of its greatest assets - its people. The measurable benefits of creating a “strong company” are amazing.

What about employees who lose sight of their - and their company’s - purpose? It is a sense of purpose that drives each of us. Take it away and we are lost. Kevin Freiberg and Jackie Freiberg, co-authors of books such as Boom! 7 Choices for Blowing the Doors Off Business-As-Usual, can be great resources to leaders, managers AND their employees. Reminding their audience members that they are “designed to choose,” they help individuals reclaim their sense of purpose and as a result, boost performance to levels higher than ever before.

And for a universal solution to keep everyone running at optimum levels, consider Harry Paul, co-author of the book, REVVED! An Incredible Way to Rev Up Your Workplace and Achieve Amazing Results (and also co-author of the popular FISH! book series about the Pike Place Fish Market).

These are just a few examples of speakers who can partner with business leaders to prevent the motivation drop-off of new/recent hires, and maintain peak levels of motivation for everyone in the organization. The investment in a speaker can range from a few thousand dollars to tens of thousands of dollars, but what might the benefit be from having a motivated workforce showing up every day? Or, alternately, what might it cost to have an unmotivated workforce showing up every day?

Posted under Organizational Excellence, Planner Tips, Speaker Recommendations