Special Download: The
Management 500 -- Chapter 1: Prepare with Precision
Special Download: The
Management 500 -- Chapter 6: Use Pit Stops Wisely
As a keynote speaker from Maui to Barbados and everywhere in between, Dan Coughlin is one of America’s most practical business teachers.
He combines real-life stories from his management consulting work with in-depth research of the audience. He then delivers penetrating and practical insights that attendees can use immediately to achieve sustainable improvement in their business performance and results.
In his keynote topics, Dan Coughlin maintains a laser focus on leadership, sales, innovation, and branding because they share one simple performance concept: think and influence how other people think.
Attendees consistently say they appreciate the usefulness of Dan’s ideas, the way he customizes his remarks for their group, and the simple, down-to-earth, and humorous way in which he delivers them.
Since 1998 he has invested over 3,000 hours on-site as a management consultant observing and advising executives and managers in a wide variety of business functions and in more than fifty industries. As an Executive Coach, he has provided more than 1,500 coaching sessions for presidents, vice-presidents, and senior directors in Fortune 500 companies and major privately-owned firms.
He and his clients constantly work to hone simple processes that will improve performance throughout their organizations.
His clients include McDonald’s, Toyota, Abbott, Marriott, Coca-Cola, St. Louis Cardinals, Boeing, Prudential, National Association of Home Builders, National Automobile Dealers Association, Restoration Industry Association, Young Presidents Organization, BMC Software, American Bar Association, American Management Association, USDA, AT&T, Jiffy Lube Association of Franchisees, and more than 150 other organizations.
As a business thought leader, Dan Coughlin has written four books on leadership, sales, innovation, and branding, which include:
Find a Way to Win: Management Insights from Terry Michler, America’s All-Time Winningest Soccer Coach (2010, foreword by Marshall Goldsmith)
The Management 500: A High-Octane Formula for Business Success (2009, foreword by Jason Jennings)
Accelerate: 20 Practical Lessons to Boost Business Momentum (2007), which made it to #4 on Barnes & Noble’s Business Bestseller List.
Corporate Catalysts: How to Make Your Company More Successful, Whatever Your Title, Income, or Authority (2005), which was translated for both China and India.
Quoted in USA Today, the New York Times, Investor's Business Daily, The Journal of the American Management Association, and dozens of other publications, Dan Coughlin has written articles that have been published in more than 100 trade association publications, including his monthly article in The Ladders.
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Dan's experience as a keynote speaker includes:
- Toyota Financial Services National Sales Conference
- Abbott Laboratories Global Regulatory Conference
- National Automobile Dealers Association
- McDonald's USA National Leadership Council
- National Association of Home Builders
- BMC Software International Sales Managers Conference
- Denny’s Association of Franchisees International Conference
- Prudential Capital Group National Team Leader Conference
- Marriott International Sales & Marketing Western Region Conference
- Jiffy Lube Association of Franchisees National Conference
- Society of Actuaries
- SkillSoft International Sales Conference
- SolidWorks International Sales Conference
- Boeing St. Louis Leadership Association
- Restoration Industry Association National Convention
- Many, many more
Speech Topics
Title: Accelerate Your Impact as a Leader
Take out your business card, and cross out your title. It has nothing to do with your ability to lead. In this high-energy, high-impact session, Dan Coughlin gives the CRITICAL LEADERSHIP ACTIONS necessary to influence key decision-makers at all levels. Based on his 3,000 hours of on-site executive coaching in over 30 industries, he debunks the traditional myths of leadership and shows how any employee can impact the way other people think and drive better sustainable business results.
Customers don't care which department was most successful. They only care about the value the departments deliver collectively to them. Leaders create more value for customers by effectively influencing divergent individuals to support a common cause. Dan explains how every leadership style can be effective, except for the dreaded chameleon and the polite dictator. He shows how preserving your integrity supports long-term business success.
Learning Objectives:
- Learn the 4 Critical Leadership Questions and how your answers can sustain high performance throughout your organization.
- Learn how to effectively give candid feedback to fellow employees about poor performances and still maintain a strong working relationship.
- Learn how to leverage your strengths and passions to effectively create greater value for your organization and your customers.
- Learn how to maintain the genuine, daily, and purpose-driven enthusiasm necessary to guide a lasting impact in your organization.
- Learn how effective collaboration can become the highest form of business acceleration.
Title: Accelerate Business Innovation
Business innovation is about finding better ways to boost productivity, performance, and profitability. A business innovation is the creation of additional value for customers that they will pay for at a profitable margin to your organization. It has to be both: new value that the customer does not already have and a profit-generator for the business. One without the other is insufficient.
Dan Coughlin demystifies the process of innovation, and makes it simple, clear, and practical. He shows how every employee can generate breakthrough ideas to increase efficiency, improve execution, and boost the bottom-line. From scheduling thinking time to using the observation tower to using OPS (Other People's Successes), audience members will walk away with ideas they can use immediately to begin to generate powerful innovations.
Dan explains how successful business innovators boldly walk away from a lot of good ideas so they can focus on a few great ideas. He explains the four phases of innovation and the importance of prototyping to save time and money. If you want your organization to propel itself beyond today’s performance level, this is a must-attend session.
Learning Objectives:
- Learn the process of innovation and how the creation of value is based on careful observation of your desired customers.
- Learn how to master the cycle of innovation that produces a steady flow of profit-generating ideas for sustained excellence.
- Learn to schedule thinking and non-thinking time and how they drive innovations month after month.
- Learn how sacrifice accelerates innovation and why “N” and “O” are the most important letters in “innovation”.
- Learn how to find organizations that have matching definitions with yours and how they provide a steady stream of ideas for improving your performance.
Title: Accelerate Your Brand
Your brand is your reputation in the marketplace. Your brand is the perception of value that customers think they receive when they buy from your organization. It's not what you want to be; it's what customers and potential customers believe you are right now.
Dan Coughlin, who has worked with such world-class brands as Toyota, McDonald's, Marriott, Prudential, SUBWAY, Coca-Cola, and the St. Louis Cardinals, provides penetrating insights into the dos and don'ts of building the brand you want. He explains the importance of defining and owning a performance category that matters deeply to customers and will generate the financial outcomes your organization desires. He shows the critical and integrated relationship between purpose, business research, strategy, planning, execution, and marketing that ultimately determines the brand you have. He walks the audience through the importance of a brand audit and the steps necessary to complete it successfully. He demonstrates how an obsession with undisciplined experimentation can ruin a brand and destroy the sustainable, profitable growth of an organization.
Learning Objectives:
- Learn what your brand is, where it exists, and how you can strengthen it.
- Learn how long it takes to build a brand and why a sustained, consistent effort is critical to success.
- Learn to leverage a brand audit to strengthen decision-making throughout your organization.
- Learn the importance of being able to walk away from your brand in order to grow your business.
Title: Accelerate Sales
Sales are the cash flow engine in every organization. Every sale, whether it’s an impulse buy or one that occurs over a long sales cycle, is a value- and values-based sale. Every customer asks two questions: what will I get for my investment (value), and how will I be treated before, during, and after the sale (values)?
Selling is the process of convincing another person that your value is worth theirs. Does the prospective customer understand the full value of what he or she can receive from your product or service? Does this value connect in a meaningful way to his or her desired outcomes? Is the value received worth enough to him or her to pay you what you are asking for? Sales people impact not only short-term cash flow, but also long-term customer relationships and the equity in the business.
In this presentation, Dan Coughlin guides sales people to leverage their strengths and passions, deliver dramatically differentiated value to their customers and prospects, and generate the sales they need to make this quarter a success. And he goes deeper into showing how great relationships create a steady flow of sustainable, profitable sales. This is not a rah-rah sales rally, but rather an intensely practical session for sales managers and sales people in all industries.
Learning Objectives:
- Learn how to find the profit-generating gap between a customer’s expectations and desires.
- Learn how to understand the long-term equity in sustainable, value-added relationships.
- Learn why there is no such thing as a transaction and how every sale is a value- and values-based experience.
- Learn the difference between product sales, service sales, and solution sales, and why the latter is the driver of sustainable, profitable growth.
