Ross Shafer’s Speech Topics:
1) Nobody Moved Your Cheese!
High energy and hilarious keynote - perfect for setting the opening tone or the closing message for your conference. From small town pet shop manager...to Emmy award winning TV host..to renowned business author and speaker, Ross is a fierce proponent of taking personal responsibility (and being accountable) for what happens in your professional and personal life.
The Take-a-Ways
1) How to shed blame toward the economy, management, another business unit, or your competition. Real growth and opportunity only follows when you accept that nobody cares more about your career and success than YOU do. Success will be your own fault.
2) How to avoid time-robbing distractions. Staying focused and “on task” promotes confidence in your coworkers and allows you to become a trusted advisor to your customers/clients/patients. You’ll see how the “world’s best” accomplish this feat.
3) Advertising and marketing aren’t powerful enough to grow your business (or your career). You must work to transform your customers/clients/patients into unpaid spokespeople for YOU and your company. Exponential growth happens when your biggest fans insist their friends do business with you.
4) How to jump start your curiosity engine to create instant (yet highly genuine) rapport with team members and customers. These methods go beyond “transactional acquaintanceship.” Respecting and collaborating with people… “as people” helps reduce costly miscommunications, inspires productivity, resolution, and stimulates fresh ideas team-wide.
5) How to keep your business and personal life in perspective. Understanding the difference between Making a Living and Making a Life is what will keep you curious, hungry, and excited about your profession; as well as your place in the world.
2) Are You Relevant?
In this energizing and enlightening keynote, Ross boldly shares the most innovative practices he has gleaned from dozens of organizations who continue to thrive in any economy. You will be inspired to cross-pollinate the best of these ideas for your organization. You will be more aware of cultural shifts that can endanger your market share - shifts that can revolutionize your industry and catch your competition off guard. After this session you will be convinced that your top priority is to matter to your customers, your clients, and your team members.
The Take-a-Ways
1. Realizing that “Best Practices” are a moving target. You’ll learn what you need do to avoid extinction. We’ve see complacency kill off some of the world’s best known brands. We will discuss why they couldn’t predict their demise...and how YOU can.
2. There is no recession when you innovate. Economic times are always in flux yet some organizations refuse to participate in a downturn - and continue to flourish. You’ll learn how to generate the same kind of small (but powerful) innovations other smart companies have invented to revolutionize their industries from within.
3. Customer Service (as we know it) is obsolete. Today’s world is so complex, customers and clients don’t want ‘service’ anymore. They want Empathy from you. They want you to understand their pain and frustration. And, they want you to be their trusted advisor. The distinction between service and empathy is so profound we created the Customer Empathy Institute to coach this dramatic behavioral change.
4. Why do the same people win all of the awards? There is a reason the best salespeople consistently win the top awards - and make the most money. The best sales people are like talk show hosts. They are trained in the art of curiosity and showing extreme interest in other people. We’ll coach these skills so you can apply them tomorrow.
5. You will be able to alert yourself to culture shifts & emerging trends. Reacting - and wisely adapting - to these shifts can dramatically spike your revenues.
3) The Customer Empathy Solution Part 1
Our clients often add this high energy Keynote as a much longer Break Out. The idea is revolutionary yet highly profitable in execution. “If you want lifetime loyalty, stop training customer ‘service’...and start coaching customer EMPATHY.”
This dramatic attitude shift goes straight to the heart of the customer experience. Ross defines Customer Empathy as, The ability to identify, interpret and appropriately respond to the customer’s emotional state - before, during, and after the transaction.
After 14 years of writing, researching, and producing Human Resource training films, Ross unveils frightening case studies of organizations that ignored the customer because they were blinded by fantasy sales goals, outdated operational procedures, and frozen mission statements. Then, he reveals the smart (yet humble) teams who gobbled up market share by responding to their customers’ evolving emotional state.
The Take-a-Ways
1. Learn why your customers/clients/patients feel so vulnerable, helpless, anxious, and out of control, today. The customer has been through a stock market collapse, home equity meltdown, two Iraq wars, rising fuel prices, and daily news of dire unemployment. You’ll see how these (emotionally draining) cultural events dramatically change their buying habits.
2. Customers want Empathy...NOT service from you. Empathy, as a sales and collaboration skill, means you need to become an expert at reading faces, body language, and voice inflection. You will learn how to listen to learn...not listen to respond.
3. When people love you, they will give you more money. You’ll actually learn what your customers/clients expect from you in order to garner their lifetime loyalty. When your customers feel an emotional connection with you, they will literally stop dating other companies - and start spending more time and money with you.
4. Why the iPod, Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace have made it vitally important to create a “personal brand” with your customers. Because personal identities and social networking have become such an enormous part of our culture, the best brand differentiators today revolve around the personal brands you create for your customers and clients.
5. Learn why ‘Customer Evaluations’ can do more harm than good. We look to “customer evaluations to help us gather valuable feedback and input. But customers see these as a nuisance..an irritant that can severely degrade their experience. You’ll learn which types of evaluations enhance the customer experience - and which types of evaluations destroy the customer relationship.
4) The Customer Empathy Solution Part 2
This is a great follow up to Part I - Same point of view but with - Tons of New Stories - Interesting New Case Studies - More Inside Customer Psychology. Funny and Plenty of Audience Interaction.
This is the deep dive material we use in our full day seminars and workshops.
THE ULTIMATE EMCEE: Ross hosts a select number of multi-day events for his high-end clients each year.
THE ULTIMATE EMCEE: Because Ross is a trained talk and game show host (who has hosted over 1,000 network broadcasts) he is the perfect choice for moderating your executive panel discussions and complicated award banquets. Ross will keep the programs lively and on task; drawing on his vast experience and lightening quick wit to navigate even the most unpredictable situations.
TALK SHOWS: Ross is adept at handling back-to-back breakout sessions that may feature a myriad of presenters. He has hosted such luminaries as Jack Welch, Colin Powell, Bob Dole, James Carville, Larry Bossidy, Tom Peters, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, to name a few. Since many high profile presenters are more comfortable being interviewed by a “pro,” Ross is able to show the utmost respect via the introduction and the Q & A - yet he doesn’t shy away from the probing questions your people want answered (but may be too intimidated to ask).
GAME SHOWS: Finally, Ross is a popular favorite for hosting custom game shows. Not only do these formats lend themselves to imparting important training information about your company (in a fun way) but they also encourage participation of the entire audience. Ask us how he and his team (Game Show America) can create a custom “TV” show for you.
About Ross Shafer:
 Ross Shafer grew up in the Pacific Northwest and graduated from the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington where he studied business management and played varsity football (linebacker). After college, he took a job as a training manager for a department store (Yard Birds) and was able to save $10,000. He took that money and launched his life as an entrepreneur. His first venture was as the owner/manager of America’s only Stereo and Pet Shop in the small town of Puyallup, Washington (population 5,000 at the time).
Cleaning pet cages wasn’t as appealing as it sounded to Ross, so after 3 years he closed the store and took a job as an advertising manager for the 28 store Squire Shops retail clothing chain in Seattle, Washington. Writing ad copy and concocting campaigns paid the bills, but at night Ross haunted local comedy clubs in search of a career in joke telling. After years of slogging around the comedy circuit, he won the Seattle International Comedy Competition and immediately became an opening act for performers like Crystal Gayle, Eddie Rabbitt, Nel Carter, Neil Sedaka, and Dionne Warwick.
In l985, Ross pitched a TV show idea to the NBC affiliate in Seattle (KING). It was a risky idea to emulate a local Letterman-like comedy talk show. Regardless, ALMOST LIVE was born and for the next 5 seasons Ross hosted the show while he and his team collected 36 Emmys. They won the Esquire Magazine dubious Achievement Award one year for attempting to change the Washington State song to Louie, Louie.
After further TV experience, Ross was headlining all of the leading night clubs and casinos. He produced a highly acclaimed comedy album about the Clinton administration titled Inside The First Family. He also wrote a comedy cookbook that became a best seller; Cook Like A Stud - 38 recipes men can prepare in the garage with their own tools.
By 1994, Ross heard Bill Gates give a speech where he said, Someday you will all be watching television on your telephones. Ross took that message to heart and he made the decision to leave TV and get back to his corporate training roots. Human nature and the human condition were always fascinating to him because that’s what comedians do. They study the laughter and tears business. To date Ross has produced (14) Human Resource training films on Customer Service, Motivation, Leadership, and Peer Pressure. He has authored the business books, Nobody Moved Your Cheese, Customer Empathy, The Customer Shouts Back, and his newly released Are You Relevant? 12 Reasons Smart Organizations Thrive in Any Economy.
Today, Ross is one of the most sought after Keynote speakers and seminar leaders on the subjects of Customer Empathy, Personal Motivation, and Business Relevance.
Emcees and Corporate Entertainment
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