Monthly Forums

Monthly CEO Forums
Explore problems, opportunities and sensitive issues that may be inappropriate or premature to discuss within your own company. You'll receive the perspectives of practicing professionals, and you are not obligated to take their advice... unless you want to!

Forums are small group meetings at member facilities where discussions take place in a more personal, in-depth, atmosphere. Forums typically meet 11 months per year and allow members to experience the inner practices of other organizations through on-site visits. These meetings are where the rubber meets the road and breakthrough conversations provide the perspective and support to make game changing decisions...or just pick up a quick money making tip!

Quarterly Roundtables Introduce new ways of thinking about employee and customer care, strategic planning, and other critical business issues. These sessions are designed to provide a system for benchmarking your company against world-class strategies. Come, bring your business leadership team, and take away practical new ideas for your growing company.

Business Academy Workshops

The Marketing Busting Series -

Market Busting Workshops are designed to teach your leadership team how to create an unbeatable customer experience process while giving you the time to build it.

Market Busting Workshops consist of four half-day sessions and are included in your Executive Group membership.

Together, you and your team will learn the approach used by Proctor and Gamble, General Mills and other Fortune 100 companies to get into the mindset and world of your target customers so you can design a superior solution with superior margins.  The value of this executive development series alone will justify your entire membership!

The Culture Busting Series -

Few entrepreneurs started their companies out of a burning desire to hire and manage employees...We all know that a vibrant and productive culture can be a huge advantage in the marketplace, but it often gets the back burner to more urgent (though less imortant) issues.

To help bridge that gap we've created a three session series that will help you clarify or affirm you company's core values, purpose and vision in a language that attracts and retains A players. We'll also provide you with a culture audit survey and help you interpret the results. From there you'll have the information you need to develop a communication and debriefing plan as well as a framework for prioritizing your top initiatives for improvement.  We'll help you evaluate the leadership and supervisory practices that have the biggest impact on your work environment and we'll leave you with a practical plan for developing your leadership.

None of us went to culture school and yet it is the 24/7 training program that never sleeps. Whether you use these workshops to help you win the Twin Cities Best Places to Work Award or whether you simply use them to ensure you are taking advantage of best practices to create a more happy and productive workplace, we promise you'll get a lot of value out of the experience. (These workshops are all included in your Executive Group membership at no aditional cost!)

The Sales Busting Series -
How would the world be different if you had a customer acquisition process that allowed you to manufacture a customer on demand?  What if you could become indispensable to your customers?

This series (also included in your membership) begins by identifying the few AAA prospects who could change your business and who are pre-disposed to put a higher value on your offering. Then we exchange your positioning statement, your elevator speeches and your glossy collateral for a psychologically provocative value proposition.

We help your team design a visual differentiator, dollarize your benefits and build a campaign to reach the decision-maker who can get your deal done. We even have a segment on proposal writing. All in all, we are very excited about sharing this process with you and believe you will want to go through it again and again as you target key customer segments for each of your offerings.

The Strategy Busting Series - 
Many business owners spend too small a percentage of their time on strategic initiatives to change the game on their competitors or to make themselves indispensable to their customers.  More often than not their approach to strategy is to set incremental goals for increasing sales or reducing costs that don't improve their value in the eyes of their customers.

Strategy Busting gives your leaders a high level view of your industry and the trends that are reshaping your marketplace.  We'll engage your team in exercises to expose the biggest game-changing opportunities and to explore the most pertinent questions that apply to your unique situation.  The goal is to identify where your customers' needs are heading and (if you decide to) plot an intercept course that puts you in the best position to profit from the change. This process leaves you and your team with immediate insights for improving your margins, your sales and recurring revenues.

If you're the kind of leader who believes your company is perfectly designed to give it the results you currently experience, you will love the clarity these workshops provide about how to eliminate your biggest constraints to growth.

Calendar and special events -  2011 Calendar