Lee Warren
Most senior teams can describe their strategy clearly in a room of two. Put them in front of a client, a board, or a conference floor and the message thins out. The gap between what a business knows and what it can convincingly say to the people who buy from it is where revenue is quietly lost.
Lee Warren is a business speaker, sales mentor, and Magic Circle member who teaches leaders and commercial teams how to persuade, pitch, and present with measurable effect.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Lee Warren
- A six-step persuasion system built from twenty years of stage performance and a Head-of-Sales career, not from a communications textbook.
- The only Professional Speaking Association Award of Excellence holder (2022) on most shortlists, the UK industry’s highest peer-awarded recognition.
- Author of a Business Book Awards finalist on presenting, which gives commercial buyers a published methodology to point sales teams toward after the keynote.
- A track record of named commercial outcomes from clients, including a reported 350 percent sales lift at New Scientist following his work.
- Booked repeatedly by Deloitte, HSBC, IBM, Pfizer, GE Capital, and Bank of America Merrill Lynch, audiences that do not retain entertainers and do retain people who shift commercial behaviour.
Biography highlights
- Bestselling author, The Busy Person’s Guide to Great Presenting; highly commended finalist, 2019 Business Book Awards.
- PSA Award of Excellence, 2022, the UK Professional Speaking Association’s top honour.
- Member of The Magic Circle for twenty years.
- Former Head of Sales at News International; earlier sales leadership at Eurotunnel and Hertz, including a database-led sales programme.
- Has delivered keynotes in more than twenty countries for Deloitte, HSBC, IBM, Pfizer, GE Capital, and Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
- Theatre work commissioned at The Almeida Theatre and the Royal Opera House (per speaker’s own biographical material).
Biography
Persuasion is the bottleneck most sales operations refuse to name. Pipeline tools improve, decks get tidier, training budgets rise, and conversion rates barely move. The reason is rarely the product. It is that the people in the room cannot yet make another person feel the case being made.
Lee Warren built a career inside that gap. After commercial roles at Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eurotunnel, and Hertz, where he co-created the company’s first database-led sales programme, he became Head of Sales at News International. In parallel, he spent two decades performing as a member of The Magic Circle and creating work for The Almeida Theatre and the Royal Opera House. The combination is unusual: a quota-carrying sales leader who can hold a thousand-seat room.
His book, The Busy Person’s Guide to Great Presenting, was a finalist at the 2019 Business Book Awards and codifies the structure he teaches to commercial teams: build the talk around the audience, not the slides. In 2022 the Professional Speaking Association named him an Award of Excellence holder, the UK’s highest peer-awarded honour for professional speakers.
Clients book him for hard commercial outcomes, not for entertainment. Deloitte, HSBC, IBM, Pfizer, GE Capital, and Bank of America Merrill Lynch have repeat-booked him for sales conferences, partner meetings, and leadership offsites. New Scientist publicly reported a 350 percent sales increase after engaging him. Few presentation specialists have a number like that attached to their name.
Key speaking topics
- Persuasion and influence in commercial settings
- Sales communication and pitching
- Presenting and executive communication
- Business networking
- Storytelling for B2B audiences
- Communication under pressure
Ideal for
- Sales kick-offs and commercial leadership offsites
- Partner and client conferences where the audience is buying decisions, not information
- Business development teams, key account directors, and CROs preparing for high-stakes pitches
- Leadership populations needing sharper executive communication ahead of board, investor, or town hall moments
Audience outcomes
- A repeatable six-step structure for persuading a specific audience, applied the next working day
- A method for opening, structuring, and closing a pitch that does not depend on slide ware
- A working technique for networking rooms and conversations without scripts
- Renewed confidence in front of senior internal and external audiences, grounded in stagecraft, not affirmation
- A shared vocabulary across a commercial team for what good persuasion looks like
Talks
A six-step system for engaging audiences emotionally and rationally, drawn from psychology, sales, and stage performance.
Key takeaways:
- A six-step persuasion structure for client conversations, internal pitches, and senior stakeholder buy-in
- Practical techniques for connecting with audiences who start the meeting sceptical
- A working model for moving people from interest to commitment
A practical session on building and working a professional network, useful for business development and partner-facing teams.
Key takeaways:
- How to open conversations with strangers without forced scripts
- A method for remembering names and managing room dynamics
- A structure for building a network that compounds, online and in person
A keynote on replacing slide-dependence with audience-led presentations.
Key takeaways:
- How to structure a presentation around the audience rather than the deck
- Techniques for handling presentation nerves under high-stakes conditions
- A clearer separation between presenting to inform and presenting to persuade