Tom Connellan

When companies like Marriott, Dell, and GE want to take performance to another level, they all turn to one man - Tom Connellan. And with good reason - whether it's an hour-long keynote or a day-long interactive session, Tom's unique combination of solid research and street-smart business sense will make his appearance a meeting highlight.

When companies like Marriott, Dell, and GE want to take performance to another level, they all turn to one man - Tom Connellan. And with good reason - whether it's an hour-long keynote or a day-long interactive session, Tom's unique combination of solid research and street-smart business sense will make his appearance a meeting highlight.

A former Program Director and Research Associate at the University of Michigan Business School, Tom brings depth and breadth to your meeting. As a company founder and former CEO, he knows first-hand what it takes to grow a business. Tom started a service company in the health care field and built it into a network of 1200 instructors serving 300 hospitals and most of the Fortune 500 firms. He's worked in manufacturing and sales. Tom knows what it's like to be on the firing line of business and audiences connect with this practical experience.

The author of nine books and numerous articles, Tom has been quoted in leading publications such as U.S. News and World Report and The New York Times.  He's been the Editorial Director of four management and personnel magazines, a first level supervisor, and a company president.  

Tom can show you how to create Sustained Superior Performance, how to handle those difficult conversations that always seem to arise, and how to win the hearts and minds of your customers.  

Everyone leaves Tom's session with practical how-to's they can put to work the next day. His fast-paced, entertaining, and informative presentations captivate participants from start to finish.

• Creating Exceptional Customer Experiences

  This presentation shows you why customers are tougher today and what you need to do about it right away. It's tied in part to Tom's Wall Street Journal Bestseller Inside the Magic Kingdom (which describes how Disney creates exceptional customer experiences and how you can do the same).

  His basic premise about brands and customers is that "a brand does not and cannot exist separately from your customer's experience." As Tom puts it, "your customers' experience is your brand!"

  Participants see how creating an exceptional customer experience builds both a winning brand and a winning bottom line. They learn the five different levels of loyalty and what it takes to move customers from one to the next.

  Tom takes you behind the scenes at companies that create world-class customer experiences. He combines that with the latest research to show you how to capture the hearts and minds of your customers. He and his partners have conducted research covering more than 110,000 customer transactions. This solid background assures that your participants will receive meaningful content they can use right away.

  He describes how a single internal factor directly drives customer loyalty and profitability in such compelling terms that engineering teams, entire IT departments, C level executives, sales teams, manufacturing managers, HR departments, and others regularly participate in this session.

  Key points Tom covers include:

  - Why, in the eyes of your customer, your competition isn't who you might think it is and what to do about that.

  - How to capitalize on the one internal factor that stands out above all others as the largest single predictor of customer loyalty.

  - How to retain at-risk customers.

  - How to find out the real reason a customer stopped buying from you.

  - Why customer satisfaction is a poor predictor of loyalty and what to do about that.

• Turbulent Times Leadership

  Based upon Tom's New York Times Bestseller Bringing Out the Best in Others, this presentation shows your leadership team how to keep everyone fully engaged, highly motivated, and performing well in a challenging environment.

  Because he combines his research into high performance with his experience as an entrepreneur and CEO, he delivers actionable ideas that can be put to use immediately.

  Tom's research on high performance over the last twenty years has covered astronauts, CEO's, Rhodes Scholars, female world leaders, manufacturing operations, top students, top performing sales reps, military achievers, U.S. presidents, and others.

  He found that through thick or thin, leaders of high performing teams consistently treat team members differently in 3 different skill areas, and Tom's three-part message to leaders looking for high performance from their team is to:

  1. Believe in them.

  2. Hold them accountable.

  3. Provide a supportive environment.

  His research into sales managers, for example, showed that the managers of high performing reps score 22% higher in their ability to practice those three skills than do the managers of low performers.

  Most leaders use some degree of all three skills, but even in the best of times very few use all three in a manner that consistently gets the performance levels they want. The most common occurrence in normal times is to overdo accountability and underdo support - although sometimes the reverse is true. In turbulent times, this imbalance gets even more pronounced and performance slips rather than improves.

• Making Exceptional Things Happen in a Changing World

  We live in an increasingly upside-down world. To quote the great sage Yogi Berra, "even the future ain't what it used to be." The scope, complexity, and rate of change is increasing in virtually every organization. Yet, individuals at all levels must keep focused on producing results - even in the face of greater instability.

  This presentation is based upon Tom's next book - The 1% Solution. It incorporates some of his research into Olympic Gold Medal Winners. Tom found that in the men's downhill at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino, for example, the difference between first place and fourth place was 1.08 seconds or .9%. In all Olympic events, the difference between a gold medal and no medal averages about 1%. Between 1st and 10th place, the average is about 2%.

  Whether it's sales reps, manufacturing directors, engineers, entrepreneurs, or others, the key to building sustainable profits in an upside down world lies not in trying to be 100% better than your competition; it lies in simply being 1% better in everything you do.

  Best of all, by researching Olympic athletes, Tom's uncovered a unique way business leaders in a high pressure situation can jump-start performance within 72 hours. Tom coined the term "Behavioral Leverage" to describe this process.

  If you're looking for ways to help your audience keep forward momentum strong in turbulent times, let go of the old and embrace the new, this presentation is a good choice for you.

• ...Deceptively powerful delivery style that captured the hearts and minds of our top 300 people and took their already intense customer focus to a new level... brought breadth, depth, and new meaning to the issue of customer loyalty.
  Dell Computer Corporation
• Your on-target content delivered with humorous, succinct and potent points captivated everyone from start to finish. I could almost see the wheels turning in everyone's head! You have a wonderful knack, Tom, of simplifying what many feel is complex and presenting in a way most people can identify with and readily apply. Thank you for a very productive and enjoyable session.
  Crescent Resources, LLC
• We really enjoyed having you at both conferences. I appreciated you taking the time to learn our business and lingo. Because your message resonated with our group and perfectly fit our corporate strategy, I am getting great feedback. I will definitely keep you in mind for the future, and have highly recommended you to my counterparts at TD.
  TD Canada Trust
• You really got through to our dealers! The integration of our themes with your solid content and passionate delivery captured and held their attention – no small feat with a bilingual audience with very high standards. The bottom line is 'right on the money.'
  Acura Canada
• You were a huge hit! People are still referring to snippets of your talk. It was very effective and directly on point for where we are as an organization. Thanks for taking the time to integrate our language and issues into your powerfully unique content. With everything we do, I always ask our folks "What's the ROI on this?" and in your case it was superb.
  Availity, LLC
• I don't know how many home runs it's been, but the streak started when I was at Fidelity and has continued with every presentation here. Your unique combination of motivational style and how-to content hits the nail on the head every time. We continue to outperform on every metric and your sessions have been a huge factor in those performance levels.
  ADP Brokerage Services

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  August 2010

  Turbulent Times Leadership for Sales Managers

   

  Research-based and tested in the crucible of the marketplace Turbulent Times Leadership for Sales Managers shows the reader how to boost sales in any economic condition. Connellan's research uncovered skill sets in which leaders of high performing sales reps are 22% more effective than leaders of low performing reps. This book lays out in a step-by-step fashion how to put those three skill sets to work.

  
  
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  January 2009

  The 1% Solution

  If you’re like most of us, you’ve probably noticed that the difference between top athletes seems to be very small - but you’ve perhaps not observed exactly how small those differences are. Curious about this, Tom Connellan did some research and found exactly how small the differences are. In looking at the Men’s Downhill in the 2006 Winter Olympics, for example, he found that the difference between a Gold Medal and no medal was 1.08 seconds or .9%. And no matter where he looked, he found pretty much the same thing. The difference between Gold and no medal averaged about 1%. The difference between Gold and 10th place? About 2%. Since chances are you’re not going to compete in the Olympics, the real question is what can you learn that you can use in whatever you do. And that’s where Tom comes in. He found three things at the core of that 1% difference - three things you can use to create a comparable level of performance.

  
  
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  June 1980

  How to Grow People into Self Starters

  For the past 16 years, Dr. Connellan has been studying high performance environments, and has uncovered three factors common to all high performers. This book shows you step-by-step how to create and maintain the three environmental factors of a high performance environment.

  
  
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  November -0001

  Sustaining Knock Your Socks off Service

  This title looks at how to maintain the first-class service which most customers crave, and shows how to sustain this service through training, coaching, empowering, supporting, inspiring, and rewarding great service providers.

  
  
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  November -0001

  E-Service: 24 Ways to Keep Your Customers When the Competition If Just a Click Away

  Online businesses that stand out from their competitors are not just those with a great product and a savvy marketing pitch; they also know how to translate the old-fashioned notion of superior customer service to the Web, argue customer-service consultants. In fact, first-rate customer service is even more important for online businesses than for their offline competitors. For those e-businesses that are losing out on sales or failing to capture repeat business because customers have difficulty navigating their Web site, Zemke and Connellan offer sound advice in the form of "seven winning principles" of e-customer service, based on their analysis of Web sites, focus groups and consumer complaints.

  
  
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  November -0001

  Bringing Out The Best in Others

  Everyone knows someone who's underperforming. Now they can have the power to change that. Tom Connellan's research uncovered three keys that are common to 21 of the first 23 astronauts, 45 percent of the female world leaders between 1960 and 1999, 55 percent of Supreme Court justices, 2/3 of the people listed in Who's Who, and over half of the U.S. presidents. These three keys unlock peak performance in the people you live and work with. They enable business leaders, music teachers, coaches, educators, parents, and others to consistently get that extra 10 to 20 percent needed to make a significant difference in profitability, performance, teamwork, and grades. They have been proven to work, time after time.

  
  
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  November -0001

  Inside the Magic Kingdom

  Based on hours of interviews and discussions with present and former Disney employees, Inside the Magic Kingdom discloses the secrets behind Disney’s success . . . and explains why, of its millions of guests each year, over two-thirds are repeat customers. This upbeat, easy-to-read book illustrates clear, solid principles with examples that are well-known to Disney insiders but virtually unknown to outsiders – until now. The principles that drive the magic of the Magic Kingdom are disclosed in this fun, easy-to-read book. It reveals seven key lessons that can be applied in any company and provides powerful examples that will help employees at any level become more customer focused.

  
  

Speakers 2.0

1. Making Exceptional Things Happen in a Changing World