A Word about Customization: What’s my Secret Sauce?

So … in an exploratory conference call with a client today, who is looking at me to keynote an upcoming professional services conference, the question was stated:

“We’ve spoken to quite a few futurists and speakers, and all of them say they customize. And you said that too. So how do we know you’re the right guy?”

I love this type of question, because it gives me a real opportunity to speak to the passion that I bring to my work.

And that is, when you bring me in for a keynote, leadership or customer event, you are getting real insight based on 25 years as a trend observer. As well, if you look at my client list, you’ll understand that I get to talk with a lot of CEO’s, senior executives, associations leaders and thought leaders. I’ve had the opportunity to study up close what real organizations are doing to deal with real challenges. That type of unique insight comes into the room….

But wait, there’s more! Let’s not to forget my secret sauce: detailed, specific, real, specific, concrete research, based on real information. That sort of matters!

Wait, you say, doesn’t every speaker or topic expert do that? No comment….

What’s the source of much of my material? It’s this : I use a pretty intensive information research service that allows me to hit the right articles, industry reports, scientific publications, research journals and other information sources that help me zoom in on important trends, issues, statistics and observations. With that, I’m bring =ing information  into the room. It’s a well-honed skill – I’ve been doing this for a long time — 30 years, in fact. (Indeed, for a time in the early 1990’s, before the Internet came along, I was already doing what was known as “competitive intelligence research” utilizing similar online research databases. I go back with that industry to about 1986…..)

When you engage me on a very customized topic area, I take delight in taking on the challenge of finding out what’s going on with the issues, trends and topic areas that you worry about.

Here are some examples: take some time to read through what I read. They are all in PDF format. A few hundred articles… which I carefully read, analyzed, and extracted the relevant bits, and boiled down into concise keynotes and trend reports for my keynotes. (Not all of the articles are represented in the subset below) Then tead the blog post which resulted after my keynote, some of which was covered in my talk.

• 2016smartclothing research material and subsequent blog post
• 2015firefighters research material and subsequent blog post
• 2015physicianrecruitment research material and blog post

Some speakers will give you a really cool future-oriented talk based on really cool future trends, but not much more.

And not to be rude, but they will probably deliver the same talk for your group that they did for an entirely different industry and audience the week before. Which, at the end of the day, leaves you with a really fun and exciting keynote. But no real depth of insight.

Interested in real insight? Give me a call. I pick up the phone!