Sales & Customer Acquisition

Why organisations work with Jake Havron He treats influence as a learnable skill with named components (motivators, decision methods, body language, congruence), not a personality trait, which gives sales and leadership teams something they can actually practise. He has trained inside revenue-heavy environments rather than seminar rooms, including real estate organisations reporting $300M to $1.6B in annual sales and the HVAC contractor audience at ACCA 2024. His material is built for entrepreneurial and mastermind audiences, GoBundance, MentorBox, 180 Elevate, where the bar for application is high and theory does not survive the room. The framework targets the gap between effort and persuasion that most sales managers describe but cannot name: why two reps with identical scripts close at different rates. Biography highlights Founder of Dream Life Mastery Company and co-founder of FORDIFY, a personal branding agency whose clients include Life Time Fitness. Keynote speaker at the ACCA 2024 conference, addressing roughly 1,000 HVAC contractors on leading with influence. Trainer for GoBundance, MentorBox, 787 Coffee Co. and 180 Elevate Nonprofit. Has worked with real estate sales organisations reporting between $300M and $1.6B in annual revenue. Co-leads the ITfactor Mentorship Program with speaker Emily Ford. Background as a registered nurse before moving into business strategy and speaking. Biography Most sales and leadership development still treats influence as a soft skill, something either you have or you do not. Havron’s argument is the opposite. Influence has structure. People shift their decisions for identifiable reasons, and a salesperson or leader who cannot name those reasons is guessing in the room. His “4 Pillars of Influence” framework, motivators, decision methods, body language and congruence, is built around that claim. Each pillar names a variable a practitioner can read in a live conversation and adjust. It is a working model for people whose income depends on whether the person across the table moves. The audiences he trains tend to be commercially exposed: real estate teams in the $300M to $1.6B revenue range, mastermind communities like GoBundance, and trade audiences such as the ACCA 2024 contractor conference. He also co-founded FORDIFY, a personal branding agency that has worked with brands including Life Time Fitness, and runs the ITfactor Mentorship Program with Emily Ford. Havron’s path into the work is unusual. He was a registered nurse before building Dream Life Mastery Company and moving full-time into strategy and keynote work. The clinical background shows up in how he teaches: behaviour first, theory second, and a bias toward what a person can actually do differently on Monday morning. Key speaking topics Influence in sales Influence in leadership Self-leadership and personal effectiveness Sales team performance Communication and persuasion Entrepreneurial leadership Ideal for Sales leaders and high-performing sales teams in revenue-driven sectors Entrepreneur and founder communities, mastermind groups, and scale-up leadership audiences Franchise and channel-partner audiences where influence sits at the centre of the commercial model Front-line managers stepping into senior leadership roles for the first time Audience outcomes A named, four-part vocabulary for influence that teams can apply in live sales and leadership conversations. The ability to read motivators and decision methods in a counterpart, not just deliver a script. A separation between influence and pressure tactics, and a working sense of why the second tends to backfire. Specific adjustments leaders can make in body language and congruence when the room is not moving with them.

Why organisations work with Savvas Trichas A working academic record in the field he speaks on: peer-reviewed publication in The Leadership Quarterly on how facial expression shapes leadership perception, co-authored with Birgit Schyns. Certified coder in the Facial Action Coding System (FACS), one of a small group qualified to read facial muscle activity to research standard, applied to executive communication. Guest lecturer for the FBI National Academy Associates Cyprus chapter on deception detection, giving leaders a credible voice on lie detection that does not rely on stage tricks. A practitioner’s grasp of negotiation drawn from Harvard and MIT-tradition material, paired with a researcher’s discipline on what the body signals during a deal. Material is built for boards and executive teams that already know what to say and want to know why they are not being heard. Biography highlights PhD in Human Resource Management and Marketing. Co-author, “The face of leadership: perceiving leaders from facial expression,” The Leadership Quarterly, 2012. Three-time TEDx speaker (Las Vegas, Lausanne, Athens). Certified coder, Facial Action Coding System (FACS). Manuscript reviewer, The Leadership Quarterly. Guest lecturer, FBI National Academy Associates Cyprus Police, on management, communication, and deception detection. Biography Most leadership training teaches what to say. Trichas works on the harder question of why audiences accept it. His peer-reviewed research with Birgit Schyns in The Leadership Quarterly examined how a leader’s facial expression shapes followers’ trust and judgements of effectiveness, a finding that sits underneath every senior communication moment, from a board update to a negotiation. That research base separates him from most communication speakers. He is a certified coder in the Facial Action Coding System, the anatomical method developed for the precise analysis of facial muscle movement, and he reviews manuscripts for The Leadership Quarterly. The science is not a credential dropped into a keynote; it is the source of the material. The applied work runs across persuasion, storytelling, negotiation, and deception detection. Trichas lectures for the FBI National Academy Associates Cyprus chapter on communication and deception, and has built a parallel track on negotiation drawn from the Harvard and MIT canon. Three TEDx appearances and a bestseller, “The Power of Communication,” sit alongside corporate work for organisations including PwC, Coca-Cola, and MDRT. The argument he offers a board is unfashionable and useful. Strategy and message are necessary but not sufficient. Whether a leader is trusted, whether a negotiation closes, whether a transformation lands, often turns on signals that operate below the words, and those signals are now well enough understood to teach. Key speaking topics Nonverbal communication and leadership perception Negotiation and persuasion Executive presence and credibility Storytelling for senior leaders Deception detection in business contexts Servant leadership and empathy Public speaking for executives Leading transformation through communication Ideal for Boards and executive teams preparing for high-stakes external communication: investor updates, M&A, regulatory testimony. CHROs and leadership development heads designing programmes for newly senior leaders on presence and credibility. CCOs, heads of negotiation, and commercial leaders responsible for high-value deals. Sales leadership conferences where persuasion and trust signals carry commercial outcomes. Audience outcomes A research-grounded view of how leaders are read, not just heard, in board and town hall settings. Specific cues from the Facial Action Coding System tradition that leaders can use to read counterparts in negotiation and meetings. A working framework for credibility that separates persuasion, narrative, and nonverbal channels rather than collapsing them into “communication skills.” A more disciplined view of deception detection, what the evidence supports and what it does not, useful for interviewing, due diligence, and negotiation. Confidence that the speaker’s claims rest on peer-reviewed research and applied work with law enforcement, not stage technique.

Why organisations work with Kavita Oberoi A first-hand account of selling into the NHS and global pharma as an outsider, including the specific moves that turned a Pfizer pilot into a multi-client healthcare consultancy. An OBE-recognised entrepreneur who is candid about the parts of company building that most founders gloss over: pricing the first big contract, hiring before revenue, and surviving the move from founder-led sales to a delivery team. A public profile shaped by The Secret Millionaire and ongoing BBC, Sky and ITV business commentary, which translates into audience trust before she opens her mouth. Genuine credibility on the diversity-and-resilience angle without the usual abstractions, drawing on a documented path from a 15-year-old taking a Saturday job against family expectation to chairing the Global Girls’ Fund. Biography highlights OBE for services to entrepreneurship and start-up businesses, Queen’s 2014 Birthday Honours. Founder and Managing Director of Oberoi Consulting, healthcare IT and clinical audit firm working with the NHS and pharmaceutical industry since 2001. Founder of Oberoi Business Hub, Derby’s Pride Park, serviced and virtual office facility for start-ups, opened 2012. Named in the 2009 HBOS report on Britain’s 100 Most Entrepreneurial Women. Chair of the Global Girls’ Fund, the international fundraising arm of Girl Guiding and Girl Scouting. Honorary Doctorate, University of Huddersfield, 2013; BSc Applied Chemistry, First Class, University of Huddersfield, 1992. Television: Channel 4’s The Secret Millionaire, BBC’s The Apprentice You’re Fired, ITV News Business Club panellist, BBC Breakfast, Sky News. Biography The clinical audit gap inside UK general practice was the opening Kavita Oberoi spotted in 2001. GP surgeries needed structured data work that pharmaceutical companies and the NHS both wanted, and almost nobody was packaging it as a service. From a standing start she won a contract with Pfizer, and Oberoi Consulting grew from there into a healthcare support business serving GP practices, primary care groups, private healthcare providers and global pharma. The route to that point matters because it shapes what she actually says on stage. A first-class chemistry degree from Huddersfield, then a stint as one of Bayer’s highest-performing medical representatives, gave her the technical credibility to sell into clinical buyers. Leaving a corporate salary at 30 to start a consultancy without a network or a war chest gave her the rest. In 2012 she opened Oberoi Business Hub on Derby’s Pride Park, a serviced and virtual office facility built specifically for start-ups and small companies that need infrastructure they cannot yet afford to own. The wider portfolio now spans healthcare consultancy, shared workspace, commercial property and media work, and earned her an OBE in 2014 for services to entrepreneurship and start-up businesses. She chairs the Global Girls’ Fund, the international fundraising body of Girl Guiding and Girl Scouting, set up the Derby Breakfast Club to feed children before school, and was named in the 2009 HBOS report on Britain’s 100 Most Entrepreneurial Women. Her Channel 4 Secret Millionaire episode put a lot of that work in front of a national audience and continues to drive board, charity and conference invitations across the UK. Key speaking topics Building a services business in a regulated sector Founder-led sales into NHS and pharmaceutical buyers Scaling beyond the first major contract Entrepreneurship and start-up infrastructure Women in business and overcoming cultural barriers Philanthropy and corporate giving Ideal for Founders, owner-managers and aspiring entrepreneurs inside accelerator, incubator or membership programmes Sales and growth leaders selling complex services into healthcare, pharma or public-sector buyers Diversity and women-in-leadership audiences inside FTSE and professional services firms Awards hosting and after-dinner addresses where the brief is credibility plus warmth, not theoretical content Audience outcomes A clear-eyed view of how a single enterprise contract can be turned into a sustainable services company, with the operational moves named. The questions a founder should be answering before they leave a corporate salary, drawn from someone who actually made that jump. A practical sense of what selling into the NHS and global pharma looks like from the supplier side, and where most start-ups misread the buyer. Renewed confidence in personal agency for audiences whose backgrounds are not typically reflected on the founder stage.

Why organisations work with Colleen Francis She reframes where growth actually comes from. Her Right on the Money thesis argues that the installed base, not the prospecting funnel, is the primary engine of bold growth, and gives revenue leaders a playbook for acting on it. She closes the gap between sales strategy and sales behaviour. Her work with Chevron, Merck, Royal Bank, John Deere and Dow is focused on what frontline sellers and managers actually do differently on Monday morning. She brings a full-cycle pipeline discipline rather than a single tactic. Nonstop Sales Boom is built around ending the boom-and-bust cycle through continuous engagement, qualification shared with the buyer, and disciplined prioritisation. She carries the credentials that senior audiences expect without leaning on them. Induction into the Professional Speakers Hall of Fame and the Canadian Speaking Hall of Fame is the signal; the room is there for the argument. Biography highlights Founder and President, Engage Selling Solutions. Author of Right on the Money: New Principles for Bold Growth (Morgan James, 2022), Nonstop Sales Boom, and Honesty Sells. Inductee, Professional Speakers Hall of Fame. Inductee, Canadian Speaking Hall of Fame, and past President of the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers. Named a LinkedIn Top Voice for Sales. Keynote speaker at Dreamforce and MDRT Experience, with client work across Chevron, John Deere, Merck, Abbott, Experian, Royal Bank, Dow, Adobe and Salesforce. Biography Most B2B organisations still build their growth model around new-logo acquisition. The numbers tell a different story. The accounts already inside the house are usually under-penetrated, under-priced, and handed off to service teams the moment the contract signs. Colleen Francis has spent more than twenty years arguing that this is where bold growth is actually hiding, and building the systems that let revenue leaders reach it. That argument is the spine of Right on the Money, published by Morgan James in 2022, and the thread that runs through Engage Selling Solutions, the firm she founded and leads. Her earlier book, Nonstop Sales Boom, sets out the other half of the discipline: ending the boom-and-bust quarter by treating pipeline generation, deal progression, customer retention and account expansion as one connected system, not four competing ones. The work is built on client evidence, not theory. Engage Selling has run programmes with Chevron, John Deere, Merck, Abbott, Experian, Royal Bank, Dow, Adobe and Salesforce, among others. Francis speaks on the main stages these clients attend, including Dreamforce and MDRT Experience, and has been named a LinkedIn Top Voice for Sales. The credentials are there – induction into the Professional Speakers Hall of Fame and the Canadian Speaking Hall of Fame, past President of the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers – but the reason senior revenue leaders book her is simpler. She tells a sales organisation what to stop doing, with specifics, and then what to do instead. Key speaking topics Sales strategy and commercial growth Account expansion and customer retention Pipeline discipline and revenue predictability Sales leadership and frontline management Buyer behaviour and modern B2B selling Sales transformation in mature businesses Ideal for Chief Revenue Officers, Chief Sales Officers and VPs of Sales running large distributed sales organisations. Senior sales leadership audiences inside B2B businesses where retention and expansion matter more than new-logo volume. Partner, channel and enterprise account leaders responsible for growing inside existing customers. Sales kickoffs and annual conferences looking for a commercial keynote with a practical, named methodology. Audience outcomes A clear commercial case for treating the installed customer base as the primary growth engine, with the metrics to defend it. Named behaviours that separate consistent sales teams from boom-and-bust ones, at both rep and manager level. A sharper view of where pipeline is leaking – qualification, handoff, account planning – and which of those to fix first. Language senior sales leaders can take straight into their next QBR on retention, expansion and forecast discipline.

Why organisations work with Vinh Giang His communication framework is rooted in the psychology of illusion; specifically, how professional magicians manage audience perception, belief, and attention. This gives organisations access to a model of influence that is empirically grounded in audience psychology, not generic presentation technique. His signature concept: that every professional has a habitual voice, not a natural one, and that this voice can be deliberately rebuilt, gives individuals a concrete, actionable framework rather than general advice about confidence or impact. He built 52Kards, an online magic education platform that reached 800,000 students globally, demonstrating that he has applied the same principles of skill transfer and engagement he teaches to others at commercial scale. The STAGE Academy programme translates his performance methodology into structured organisational training, giving companies a repeatable development pathway, not a one-off motivational event. He was named South Australia’s Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2013 and has delivered over 80 live events internationally, including a TEDx appearance at Macquarie University: his credibility is practitioner-built, not academic. Biography highlights Co-founder of 52Kards (formerly Encyclopedia of Magic), an online education platform with over 800,000 enrolled students worldwide CEO of Luminary Productions, a training, development, and video production company Creator of the STAGE Academy, a structured public speaking and communication programme for professionals South Australia Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award (2013) Multiple award-winning performer at the Adelaide Fringe Festival: Top Voted Show and Top Reviewed Show, three consecutive years (2012-2014) TEDx speaker, Macquarie University, on communication and professional performance Biography Vinh Giang’s central argument is that most professionals communicate well below the standard their thinking deserves, and that the gap between expertise and expression is a learned problem with a learnable fix. His methodology doesn’t come from corporate training or academic research. It comes from 15 years of studying what professional magicians do: how they control attention, manage belief, and shape the experience of an audience in real time. The insight he took from performance is precise. Robert-Houdin’s principle: that a magician is an actor playing the part of a magician, reframes communication as a discipline of craft, not personality. Applied to business, this means that a leader’s authority in a room is not fixed. It is a set of habits, many of them inherited from childhood, that can be replaced with deliberate ones. That argument is the foundation of the STAGE Academy, his structured communication programme for professionals. Giang is not a theorist. He dropped out of a commerce and law degree at the University of Adelaide to build 52Kards, an online magic education platform that eventually reached over 800,000 students worldwide. That business – built before the term “creator economy” existed – earned him the South Australia Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2013. His performance work at the Adelaide Fringe Festival, where his shows won Top Voted and Top Reviewed for three consecutive years, gave him a practical laboratory for the same principles he now teaches to senior professionals. His clients have included Microsoft, Facebook, and LinkedIn. The organisations that engage him are not looking for motivational uplift; they are investing in a measurable upgrade in how their people present, persuade, and lead under pressure. Key speaking topics Performance-based communication for leaders The psychology of influence and audience perception Vocal presence and professional authority Storytelling and high-stakes persuasion Confidence and mindset in professional communication Communication as a teachable skill set Entrepreneurship and the business of building trust Ideal for Senior leadership teams and C-suite executives seeking to sharpen influence and executive presence Sales and commercial leaders whose teams communicate and persuade in high-stakes environments CHROs and L&D leads commissioning communication capability programmes Conference audiences drawn from professional services, financial services, or technology – where credibility depends on the ability to make complex ideas land clearly Audience outcomes A concrete model for understanding why their current communication habits underperform, and what specifically to change Practical tools for rebuilding vocal presence and delivery authority, drawn from professional performance training A framework for structuring high-stakes communication; presentations, negotiations, and leadership conversations, that moves audiences to action Greater awareness of the gap between how they intend to come across and how they are actually received A shift from treating communication as a soft skill to treating it as a professional discipline with measurable standards

Why organisations work with Tim Sanders He sits inside G2’s data on how millions of business buyers actually evaluate and adopt software, which gives his AI commentary an evidence base most keynote voices do not have. His Harvard Business School Digital Data Design Institute fellowship pairs that operator view with formal research on AI and digital innovation, so the argument lands with both the CIO and the CFO. He has run the playbook before: as Yahoo!’s Chief Solutions Officer through the original platform shift, and at Upwork on digital transformation and talent strategy, he has lived the gap between platform promise and operating reality. Five books, including the New York Times bestsellers “Love Is the Killer App” and “The Likeability Factor,” give him a thirty-year track record of translating shifts in how technology changes commercial behaviour into language operators can use. “Dealstorming” gives sales and revenue audiences a structured method for unsticking high-value deals, named in case studies at Yahoo!, CareerBuilder, Regus, and Conde Nast. Biography highlights Chief Innovation Officer at G2, the world’s largest software marketplace Executive Fellow, Digital Data Design Institute at Harvard Business School Former Chief Solutions Officer at Yahoo! and head of Yahoo’s in-house think tank Former Vice President of Client Strategy at Upwork Author of five business books, including New York Times bestsellers “Love Is the Killer App” and “The Likeability Factor” Author of “Dealstorming,” with referenced sales work at Yahoo!, CareerBuilder, Regus, and Conde Nast Biography The hard problem inside most AI programmes is no longer the model. It is the operating decision: which workflows to rebuild, which software to back, which vendors are quietly underdelivering. Tim Sanders works on exactly that question, with two unusual vantage points behind him. The first is G2, where he is Chief Innovation Officer. G2 holds the largest first-party dataset on how business buyers evaluate software, which gives him a live read on what is actually being bought, abandoned, and renewed across the SaaS and AI stack. The second is Harvard Business School’s Digital Data Design Institute, where he is an Executive Fellow translating research on AI and digital innovation into material business leaders can act on. Earlier in his career, he was Chief Solutions Officer at Yahoo! during the original web platform shift and led its internal think tank. He went on to serve as Vice President of Client Strategy at Upwork, working with enterprises on digital transformation and the talent side of technology change. That sequence of operator roles is what gives his keynote work its bite: he has been the executive on the receiving end of the slide that says “AI will change everything.” He has also written through every one of these shifts. “Love Is the Killer App” and “The Likeability Factor” became New York Times bestsellers and remain mainstays of corporate reading lists. “Dealstorming” is used by sales organisations as a structured method for breaking through high-value deal blockers, with named work at companies including CareerBuilder, Regus, and Conde Nast. Key speaking topics AI adoption and return on AI for the enterprise Software buying behaviour and the SaaS market Sales strategy and revenue collaboration Customer experience and modern buyer behaviour Digital transformation and the future of work Leadership in technology-driven organisations Ideal for CEOs, CIOs, CDOs, and Chief AI Officers running enterprise AI programmes CROs, CCOs, and sales leadership teams under pressure on revenue productivity Boards and ExCo sessions weighing AI capital allocation and software portfolio decisions SaaS, technology, and professional services organisations rethinking go-to-market in an AI buyer environment Audience outcomes A clear read on where enterprise AI adoption actually is, based on first-party SaaS buyer data rather than vendor narrative A sharper view of which AI use cases are creating measurable operating advantage and which are stuck in pilot Practical moves for sales and revenue teams to work with, not against, an AI-augmented buyer A repeatable method for breaking through stalled high-value deals through cross-functional collaboration Renewed confidence at the leadership level that AI strategy is a decision domain, not a technology domain

Why organisations work with Samuel J Scott He argues the brand-versus-performance trade-off in CFO language, which is the conversation that actually decides marketing budgets in a downturn. He is a current Head of Marketing at a connected TV advertising platform, so the case studies are operating reality, not retrospective consulting. His Promotion Fix column in The Drum has run since 2017, giving senior marketers a reference point on advertising effectiveness most peers in the room already read. He holds a WARC Master of Advertising Effectiveness and Marketing Week Mini-MBAs, which is unusually formal training for a working marketer presenting to boards. He takes a public contrarian line on adtech and AI marketing hype, useful for leadership teams tired of vendor pitches dressed as keynotes. Biography highlights Head of Marketing, Adte, a connected TV advertising platform. Columnist of The Promotion Fix in The Drum since 2017; previously a contributing columnist for TechCrunch and Moz. Master of Advertising Effectiveness, WARC, UK. Mini-MBAs in Marketing and Brand Management, Marketing Week, London. 2019 juror, UK Advertising Association Young Lions, the UK Cannes Lions qualifier. Former Director of Marketing at Logz.io and Head of Marketing at Faddom in the Israeli B2B tech sector. Biography In a downturn, the marketing line is the easiest to cut and the most commonly mis-cut. Performance budgets get protected because they are measurable. Brand budgets get reduced because they are not. Within two years, the performance machine stops compounding because the brand has stopped feeding it. That is the argument Samuel J Scott has been making in The Drum’s Promotion Fix column since 2017, and in keynotes for marketing leadership teams across more than two dozen countries. He is one of the few speakers on this subject who is also a working operator, currently Head of Marketing at the connected TV advertising platform Adte, and previously a marketing director in the Israeli B2B technology sector at companies including Logz.io and Faddom. His credentials sit on the technical side of the discipline. A Master of Advertising Effectiveness from WARC, two Mini-MBAs in marketing and brand management from Marketing Week in London, and CIM certifications across marcom planning, copywriting and AI marketing tools. He served as a jury member for the UK Advertising Association’s 2019 Young Lions, the UK qualifier for Cannes. The editorial register is contrarian. Scott has built a reputation for arguing against marketing fashion, whether that is uncritical AI adoption, attribution theatre, or brand purpose campaigns that cannot survive a CFO’s scrutiny. Audiences leave with a sharper view of how to spend a marketing budget when growth gets harder, not a slide deck of trends. Key speaking topics Brand and performance advertising Marketing effectiveness and measurement Defending marketing budgets in downturns B2B marketing and brand-led growth AI in marketing communications Adtech and connected TV Marketing communications strategy Ideal for CMOs and marketing directors under pressure to justify brand spend to a CFO. B2B technology marketing leaders rebuilding a brand layer above lead-gen. Boards and executive teams reviewing marketing as a commercial function, not a cost line. Marketing communications and agency teams negotiating AI-era budget assumptions. Audience outcomes A working language for arguing brand investment in financial terms. A clearer split between what performance media can do and what only brand work delivers. A sceptic’s filter on AI marketing claims from agencies and adtech vendors. A defensible structure for marketing budgets through a downturn. Specific reference points from current B2B technology marketing practice.

Why organisations work with Robert Herjavec Two major business exits anchor the credibility. BRAK Systems sold to AT&T Canada for $30.2 million in 2000, and Herjavec Group’s majority stake sold to Apax Partners in 2021. Senior teams hear from an operator who has built and exited at scale. Seventeen years as an original Shark on ABC’s Shark Tank, evaluating thousands of founder pitches in real time. Audiences get a working investor’s read on what closes a deal and what kills one. A sales-first view of business growth. You Don’t Have to Be a Shark, his Wall Street Journal bestseller, frames sales as the universal skill of business and gives non-sales people a usable discipline. Operator-level cybersecurity context from founding and running Herjavec Group, once one of Canada’s largest information security firms, before its 2022 merger into Cyderes. Useful when boards want the threat landscape explained without a vendor agenda. An immigrant-founder narrative with verifiable outcomes. Arrived in Halifax at age eight from communist Yugoslavia, then built and exited multiple technology businesses while helping launch one of the most successful business reality formats on network television. Biography highlights Founder of Herjavec Group (2003); served as CEO until stepping down in September 2024 following the company’s 2022 merger with Fishtech Group and rebrand to Cyderes Sold BRAK Systems to AT&T Canada for $30.2 million in 2000 Original cast member on ABC’s Shark Tank since the show’s 2009 debut; also a panelist on Canada’s Dragons’ Den and Shark Tank Australia Author of three business books: Driven (2010), The Will to Win (2013), and You Don’t Have to Be a Shark (St. Martin’s Press, 2016), a Wall Street Journal bestseller Recipient of the 2012 Ernst & Young Ontario Entrepreneur of the Year Award for Technology and the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal BA in English literature and political science, University of Toronto Biography Most leaders manage businesses someone else built. Robert Herjavec has founded and exited three. BRAK Systems, the cybersecurity firm he started in his basement, was sold to AT&T Canada for $30.2 million in 2000. Ramp Network, which he ran as VP of Sales, was acquired by Nokia for $225 million. In 2003 he founded Herjavec Group, which grew into one of Canada’s largest information security businesses. Apax Partners bought a majority stake in 2021. After a 2022 merger with Fishtech Group it became Cyderes, where Herjavec served as CEO until September 2024 and remains an investor and board member. He has been an original Shark on ABC’s Shark Tank since the show’s 2009 debut. Across seventeen seasons he has heard thousands of founder pitches and decided in real time which to back and which to walk away from. The result is an unusual stockpile of pattern recognition on what closes a deal and what kills one from the investor’s side of the table. His three books work the same vein. Driven (2010) and The Will to Win (2013) were simultaneous Globe and Mail bestsellers about how persistence and self-discipline build careers. You Don’t Have to Be a Shark (St. Martin’s Press, 2016) reached the Wall Street Journal bestseller list, arguing that sales is a teachable craft any senior leader can use. He won the 2012 Ernst & Young Ontario Entrepreneur of the Year Award for Technology and was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal by the Governor-General of Canada for outstanding service. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and the founder mindset Sales as a business discipline Building and scaling technology companies Resilience and persistence in business The cybersecurity threat landscape for enterprise leaders Growth strategy and going from zero to scale Pitch evaluation and the investor’s perspective Ideal for Sales kickoffs and revenue leadership offsites where credibility on selling as a teachable discipline is the priority Annual conferences and flagship events where a marquee, household-name keynote needs to anchor the agenda on entrepreneurship and growth Founder-led businesses and high-growth firms whose audiences want an operator with multiple verified exits behind him Cybersecurity, fintech, and enterprise technology audiences, where his industry pedigree adds weight to the broader entrepreneurship and growth conversation Audience outcomes A sharper read on what actually closes a sales conversation and what kills one before it starts The discipline of starting from zero, told by someone who arrived in Halifax with one suitcase and built three businesses worth nine-figure exits An investor’s lens on how to evaluate ideas and the founders behind them, built from seventeen years inside the Shark Tank panel A working argument that persistence and discipline outperform inherited advantage, with a verifiable career arc behind it: BRAK to AT&T, Ramp to Nokia, Herjavec Group to Apax A board-level perspective on cybersecurity risk informed by two decades inside one of Canada’s largest enterprise security operators

Why organisations work with Philip Hesketh A behavioural framework, the Seven Drivers of Motivation, published by Wiley and built specifically for sales, pricing, and client conversations, not generic influence theory. Direct operator credibility: he ran a 150-person advertising agency with clients including the BBC, Nestle, Disney, and HSBC, so the case studies come from his own P&L. A specific, repeatable answer to the pricing question. His “How to hold high prices and fees” session is built around what makes buyers concede on value rather than discount. Two Amazon number-one books on persuasion, giving the speaker a public reference point the audience can revisit, share with their teams, and use as a working text. Biography highlights Founder and managing partner of Advertising Principles, Leeds, grown over 17 years to £48m in billings with 150 staff and clients including the BBC, Nestle, Disney, and HSBC. Author of two Amazon UK number-one bestsellers on persuasion, “How to Persuade and Influence People” and “Persuade”, both published by Capstone/Wiley, and a third book, “The Golden Rules for a Happy Life”. Psychology graduate of Newcastle University and former Procter & Gamble salesperson, named P&G Salesman of the Year. Vistage UK “Outstanding Performer” and “Most Requested Speaker”; TEC Australia “Overseas Speaker of the Year” 2009. Visiting Fellow of Newcastle University. Has delivered keynote and training programmes for sales, professional services, and leadership audiences across more than 20 countries. Biography Most pricing pressure does not come from competitors. It comes from how sales and account teams handle the conversation when a client pushes back. The behavioural science of why people say yes, why they concede on value, and why they stay loyal sits at the heart of that conversation, and it is the territory Philip Hesketh has worked in for two decades. Hesketh is a Newcastle University psychology graduate who started in sales at Procter & Gamble, where he was named Salesman of the Year. In 1986 he founded Advertising Principles in Leeds and built it over 17 years into a £48m agency with 150 staff and clients such as the BBC, Nestle, Disney, and HSBC. The frameworks he now teaches were developed inside that business, not bolted on afterwards. His two Wiley books, “How to Persuade and Influence People” and “Persuade”, set out the Seven Drivers of Motivation: a working model of what moves buyers, decision-makers, and colleagues to act. Both reached number one on Amazon UK in their categories. The model is built for commercial use, with direct application to pricing, negotiation, and client relationship work. Vistage UK named him “Outstanding Performer” and “Most Requested Speaker”; TEC Australia named him “Overseas Speaker of the Year”. Beyond the awards, the practical proof is repetition: chief executive groups book him back, which only happens when the content moves the conversations leaders are actually having about value, fees, and customers. Key speaking topics Psychology of persuasion and influence Pricing and value negotiation Client acquisition and retention Sales performance and conversion Behavioural drivers of buyer decisions Customer experience and loyalty Ideal for CCOs, sales directors, and revenue leaders facing margin compression Professional services partners and client-facing leaders in agencies, law, accountancy, and consulting Account management and key client teams in B2B environments Leadership audiences at Vistage, YPO, EO, and similar peer-group settings Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for the seven psychological drivers behind buyer decisions Specific techniques for holding price and defending fees in negotiation A sharper read on why clients defect, and what conversations keep them Practical questions and conversational moves teams can put to work the next day A clearer separation between price objections that are real and price objections that are tested

Why organisations work with Nirmalya Kumar He has run group strategy inside one of the world’s largest conglomerates. As a member of the Tata Sons Group Executive Council from 2013 to 2016, he was responsible for group-level strategy and customer centricity across Tata’s operating companies. His Marketing as Strategy thesis, published by Harvard Business Press, is the reference text for CEOs and CMOs trying to elevate marketing from a campaign function to a profit-and-loss instrument. Brand Breakout, co-authored with Jan-Benedict Steenkamp, codifies eight specific routes by which emerging-market brands take share from Western incumbents, including the Asian tortoise route and B2B-to-B2C migration. It is one of the few books on the subject grounded in named cases rather than generic globalisation theory. Private Label Strategy gives executive teams a worked playbook for competing with retailer brands, an issue that returns to the boardroom every time a downturn compresses margins in consumer goods. Thinkers50 Hall of Fame induction in 2017, the AMA Mahajan Award in 2021, and roughly twenty thousand Google Scholar citations place his work in the upper tier of academic marketing thinkers actively booked by industry. Biography highlights Lee Kong Chian Professor of Marketing, Singapore Management University; Distinguished Fellow, INSEAD Emerging Markets Institute. Member, Group Executive Council of Tata Sons (2013 to 2016), reporting to Chairman Cyrus Mistry, with responsibility for group strategy. Former Professor of Marketing and Co-Director of the Aditya Birla India Centre at London Business School (2003 to 2013). Author of eight books, including Marketing as Strategy and Private Label Strategy, both Harvard Business Press; and Brand Breakout (Palgrave Macmillan). Inducted into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame (2017); awarded the Thinkers50 Global Village Award (2011); awarded the AMA Mahajan Award for Lifetime Contributions to Marketing Strategy (2021). Board service across ACC, Bata India, Tata Chemicals, UltraTech Cement, and Zensar. Biography Marketing inside large organisations has been losing strategic ground for two decades, and the cost is now visible at the top line. CEOs see commoditisation, retailer power, and emerging-market competitors moving faster than their own brand portfolios. Kumar’s central argument, set out in Marketing as Strategy (Harvard Business Press, 2004), is that the answer is not better campaigns but a redefined role for marketing as the architect of customer-driven growth across the organisation. His subsequent work develops that argument against specific commercial pressures. Private Label Strategy, co-authored with Jan-Benedict Steenkamp at Harvard Business Press, addressed the structural rise of retailer brands. Brand Breakout, published as Western incumbents woke up to Tata, Lenovo, Haier, and Mahindra, mapped eight named routes by which emerging-market brands cross into global markets. Clash, on Amazon versus Walmart, examined the platform-versus-retail confrontation now defining consumer business. The work is reinforced by an operating record. From 2013 to 2016 Kumar sat on the Tata Sons Group Executive Council under Cyrus Mistry, leading group strategy across one of the most diversified industrial portfolios in the world. He has held faculty positions at London Business School, IMD, and Kellogg, and currently holds the Lee Kong Chian Chair at Singapore Management University. The recognition follows from the substance: Thinkers50 Hall of Fame in 2017, the Global Village Award in 2011, the AMA Mahajan Award for Lifetime Contributions to Marketing Strategy in 2021, and a citation record above twenty thousand on Google Scholar. For boards weighing how to make marketing pay back its budget, his work is the operating manual. Key speaking topics Marketing as strategy Private label and retailer power Brand-building from emerging markets Competing with low-cost rivals Customer centricity in conglomerates Strategy and innovation in India Platform versus retail competition Ideal for CMOs and brand leaders seeking to position marketing as a P&L discipline CEOs and boards of consumer goods, retail, and industrial groups facing margin compression from private label or emerging-market entrants Executive teams in Indian and Asian conglomerates planning international brand strategy Strategy and corporate development leaders working on portfolio decisions and customer-centric reorganisation Audience outcomes A working definition of what marketing must control inside the organisation to drive profitable growth, beyond the campaign function A framework of named routes by which emerging-market brands take share from incumbents, with worked cases A practical view of when to fight, partner with, or build a private label, drawn from the Harvard Business Press study A Tata-scale account of how group strategy and customer focus get implemented across diversified portfolios A sharper read on the Amazon-versus-Walmart structural shift and what it means for consumer companies

Why organisations work with Les Hewitt A coaching method that has been deployed inside more than 300 companies, including Wells Fargo, RBC, FedEx, RE/MAX and the Million Dollar Round Table, with a focus on sales-led and franchise organisations rather than abstract leadership theory. Co-authorship of The Power of Focus with Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, a book that has sold more than 825,000 copies in North America and given Hewitt a recognisable thesis his audiences have often already encountered. Three decades of building and running The Power of Focus coaching program, including more than 900 delivered workshops, so the content is operating practice and not a recycled keynote. A clear diagnostic for why senior teams underperform: unclear future targets, leaders not protecting their top objectives, weak internal communication, and habits that quietly cost productivity. Built specifically for sales leaders, owner-operators and franchise networks, audiences that are usually underserved by leadership-development speakers pitched at corporate HQ. Biography highlights Co-author with Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen of The Power of Focus, an international bestseller translated into more than 20 languages. Founder of The Power of Focus Coaching Program, used by more than 300 companies across North America, the UK, Ireland, Australia, the Gulf, Singapore and Russia. Named clients include Wells Fargo, Royal Bank of Canada, FedEx, Cameron Inc., Nexen Energy, RE/MAX, Royal LePage, Investors Group and the Million Dollar Round Table. Author of further titles in the series, including The Power of Focus for Women, The Power of Faithful Focus and The Power of Focus for College Students. Built and ran Achievers Canada, the seminar business that delivered more than 450 leadership and sales programs before evolving into the current coaching practice. Originally from Belfast; rose to top salesperson in an international network marketing company before moving into coaching and authorship. Biography Most senior teams are not failing on strategy. They are failing on follow-through. Targets get diluted by competing demands, the highest-value work slips down the calendar, and the habits that quietly govern productivity go unexamined. Hewitt has spent more than thirty years building a coaching practice around that gap. The Power of Focus, the book he co-authored with Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, was the first articulation of his method outside the workshop room. It became a long-running international bestseller, has been translated into more than twenty languages, and seeded the coaching program that now carries the same name. The book gave him a public thesis. The coaching business gave him the operating evidence behind it. That coaching business has been deployed inside more than 300 organisations, including Wells Fargo, Royal Bank of Canada, FedEx, RE/MAX, Royal LePage, Cameron Inc. and the Million Dollar Round Table. The work concentrates on a specific cohort: sales-led and franchise organisations where individual leader habits and team focus translate directly into commercial results. More than 900 workshops have been delivered, so the material is tested under load. Hewitt’s distinctive value is the combination of a recognisable book and a long working catalogue of what actually changes inside companies when leaders narrow their targets and protect their top priorities. Audiences leave with concrete habits and language to install on Monday, not a framework to file away. Key speaking topics Focus and follow-through for senior leaders Goal clarity and execution discipline Productivity habits in sales-led organisations Leadership effectiveness and self-management High-performance team behaviour Ideal for CEOs and owner-operators of mid-market and growth-stage businesses Sales leaders, franchise principals and broker networks Senior leadership teams running annual planning and offsite resets Member organisations such as MDRT, RE/MAX, Royal LePage and similar producer networks Audience outcomes A clearer set of personal and team targets, written down and prioritised before they leave the room. Specific habits to protect the highest-value hours of the working week. A common language for accountability that the team can keep using after the event. Practical tactics drawn from sales and entrepreneurial environments rather than abstract leadership theory.

Why organisations work with Konstantinos Karypidis He holds a room the way a stage performer does, then converts that attention into mindset work, drawing on years performing in theatres and on national television before moving into corporate training. His method is built on clinical ground, not platform clichés: as a licensed psychotherapist he targets the beliefs that keep behaviour stuck, which is where most change initiatives quietly fail. Every workshop is built from scratch against the client’s specific problem rather than delivered from a fixed deck, so the content matches the actual tension in the organisation. He has run sessions for the people-facing functions of demanding multinationals, including Sanofi, Roche, KPMG, L’Oréal and AstraZeneca, across sales, HR and customer-service briefs. Biography highlights Licensed psychotherapist, business consultant and executive coach to senior leaders internationally. Began his career as a performance artist, writing and directing his own shows for theatres and national television. Has delivered keynotes and bespoke workshops for Sanofi, Roche, Johnson & Johnson, KPMG, Philips, AstraZeneca, L’Oréal, DHL, AXA and JTI. TEDx speaker. Listed in the Thinkers360 Top 50 Global Thinkers & Influencers in Change Management, 2022. Hosts a podcast and a YouTube channel devoted to books worth reading. Biography Most behaviour-change efforts inside organisations stall in the same place. The strategy is sound and the training is delivered, but the people expected to change carry the same assumptions out of the room that they brought into it. Konstantinos Karypidis works on that gap. He came to corporate work by an unusual route. Before the boardroom he was a performer, writing and directing his own shows for theatres and national television. That background gives him a working performer’s command of attention, which he treats as the precondition for any real change rather than the point of it. The substance underneath the stagecraft is clinical. As a licensed psychotherapist, he focuses on the beliefs and mental patterns that govern how people act, the layer most training programmes skip. His sessions are built individually for each client, shaped around the specific friction a team is facing in sales, HR or customer service. That approach has been tested across demanding environments, from Sanofi and Roche to KPMG, L’Oréal and AstraZeneca. He was listed among the Thinkers360 Top 50 Global Thinkers and Influencers in Change Management in 2022, and speaks regularly on the same TEDx and conference platforms where he first built his reputation for getting an audience to question how they think. Key speaking topics Mindset change and behavioural adoption Peak performance and productivity Employee motivation and engagement Non-verbal communication and influence Sales and customer service Embracing organisational change Ideal for Heads of HR and L&D commissioning a keynote that needs to land emotionally and stick afterwards Sales and customer-service leaders running kick-offs or summits where energy and engagement matter Conference organisers who need an opening or closing speaker who can hold a large room After-dinner audiences at corporate events Audience outcomes A clearer view of the mental patterns that hold back individual performance, and practical techniques to interrupt them Specific tools for reading and using non-verbal communication Renewed motivation tied to concrete take-away methods rather than a temporary lift A shared, energised reference point that teams can carry back into day-to-day work