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Rick  Barrera

Rick Barrera

Marketing Consultant & Author

Rick Barrera

Marketing Consultant & Author

Biography

Rick Barrera has lived “in the trenches” solving real world business issues for over 25 years as a consultant and business owner. As a speaker, he captivates audiences with real life stories and future focused thinking.

He is the Head of Faculty for The Center for Heart Led Leadership in Denver, Colorado, a frequent host of "Connect and Collaborate Radio" on Denver's MoneyTalk Radio and Co-Host of The Financial Advisor Show Podcast.

He has helped dozens of companies, radically shift their focus, invigorate their cultures, re-design their systems, accelerate revenue growth and serve customers at significantly higher levels. . His fresh thinking approach has influenced Abbott Labs, Ameriprise, Auto Crib, AutoZone, Bayer, Caterpillar, GMAC, IBM, Invisible Fence, Husqvarna, Intel, Merrill Lynch and Verizon - to name a few.

He has authored books on Alignment, Branding, Marketing, Sales and Customer Service including Overpromise and Overdeliver: How to Design and Deliver Extraordinary Customer Experiences which was a Wall Street Journal and Business Week Best Seller. He is currently working on a leadership book entitled We Before Me.

He lives in beautiful San Diego, CA with his two Perfect-Angel-Genius-Children.

Speech Topics

Our Exponential Future

In this fast-paced exciting talk, Rick Barrera will show you how 7 core technologies will dramatically change the business landscape and transform human existence over the next decade. Cheap energy, abundant clean water, low cost food, free computing, nanotechnology, dematerialization, and demonetization will come together to revolutionize how we think, live, feel and work…

Why should you believe in this revolution? Because the world’s best and brightest minds have come together through social entrepreneurship to build it. Dean Kamen, Elon Musk, Craig Ventner, Peter Diamandis, Ray Kurzweil, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Bill Joy, Larry Page, Daniel Kahneman, Jeff Skoll, Stewart Brand, Ratan Tata and many others are working together for the first time to design a brighter future for all of us. Working together, they are creating Our Exponential Future…

If your organization could use some good news and a powerful dose of optimism, this speech is just what the doctor ordered. Your team will leave excited about the future and stimulated to think about the infinite new opportunities that are ready to be harvested by forward thinking organizations who understand the untold cornucopia that is about to be spread before us.

Intentional Sales Leadership

Sales leadership is hard work. It is not for the timid or meek. It requires inspiration, creativity, enthusiasm, exceptional recruiting skills, customer insight, technological competence, planning, strategy, consistent coaching and lots of hard work. It is also one of the most fun, fulfilling and lucrative activities you can pursue…and it is critical to the survival, growth and success of your business.

In this interactive session, Rick Barrera, Author of 3 groundbreaking branding and sales books will share his insights on many of the following topics:

  • The Intentional Sales Leadership Mindset
  • Why your leadership is critical for sales success
  • Understanding that clear marketplace differentiation is YOUR responsibility!
  • Why sales goals should be set on the territory vs. the sales person
  • Why sales goals should be set on the potential of the opportunity vs. previous years
  • Why forecasting is a critical skill and how to hone your forecasting skills
  • Why you must be in a constant recruiting mode
  • How to build a team of “A” players
  • When you should hold people accountable for input (effort) vs. output (revenue)
  • How to determine the “Metrics that Matter” and why fewer simpler metrics are better
  • How to set and keep a Sales Cadence for your team
  • How to lead a successful sales initiative from beginning to end
  • Why developing a Collaborative Selling Culture in critical to your long-term success
  • How to engage your team in proactive CRM usage
  • Being easy to do business with by “Smoothing the On-Ramp”
  • Why it is essential to create Irresistible offers
  • Why Event Marketing is an important part of the marketing mix
  • How to leverage PR and NewsJacking to accelerate your growth
  • Why it is critical to consistently provide your sales team with “Something to Talk About”
  • How to Lip Load your team for success
  • How to build a Questioning culture
  • Why staying close enough to smell your customer’s breath is essential for sales leaders
  • How to use technology to ensure an unlimited number of leads for your team
  • Why you must have a written relationship plan for mentors, friends, customers, target customers, suppliers and your internal team
  • Why you want a Diamond shaped organization rather than a Bowtie
  • Senior leadership’s role in opening doors
  • How to communicate one-to-many as a senior leader
  • Priority management
  • Why working in vertical segments or quadrants is critical
  • How to create Streams of Income vs. driving transactions
  • Why your ultimate goals is Streams of Relationships
  • Leveraging Social Media to “soften the beachhead” for your sales team
  • The role of Associations in your marketing
  • Developing Streams of Information for you and your team
  • Why Account Penetration is your most potent weapon
  • Why a clear Overpromise and alignment of messaging will accelerate your growth
  • How to get out of the proposal business and into the collaboration business
  • The real source of motivation
  • How to develop and maintain momentum and excitement

Rethinking Customer Service

No matter how big your company, no matter what your business, exceptional customer service can be the difference that delivers a competitive edge. This program will teach your customer service employees how to maximize your revenue by treating your customers like the valuable asset they are.

Too may managers focus on the cost of delivering outstanding customer service rather than looking at the profit it can generate.

Key Concepts

  • For customer service to drive revenue, margin and profit, your company must develop a reputation for delivering outstanding customer service.
  • To develop a reputation for service, it must be consistently delivered at every customer touch point by every employee.
  • Today’s customers focus on the total experience, not just the product or service.
  • Every customer contact creates a “Moment of Mediocrity,” a “Moment of Misery” or a “Moment of Magic.”
  • Profitable service means taking advantage of the sales opportunity in every service situation.
  • Service people must understand that although the customer may not always be right, they are always the customer.
  • A fresh look at Nordstrom, Disney, Google, Amazon, Four Seasons and other, models of exceptional customer service: how they recruit, train, coach and motivate for outstanding, consistent customer service
  • The five key future trends for service.

Overpromise & Overdeliver: The Shortcut to Marketplace Dominance

To stand out in a transparent, hyper-competitive, real-time marketplace your offer must be radically different from your competitors… and you have to instantly prove your value to customers… You must Overpromise and Overdeliver!

Key Concepts

  • Incremental differences go unnoticed in a hyper-competitive marketplace. You must radically differentiate your company, brand, products, services and offers to earn marketplace attention
  • You must be able to succinctly articulate your uniqueness with an Overpromise
  • To win customers, you must be able to instantly prove that you can Overdeliver on your Overpromise by demonstrating your uniqueness at Critical Customer TouchPoints
  • Once customers experience your uniqueness, they can spread word-of-mouth quickly by using your succinctly articulated Overpromise to tell others about your radical difference!
  • The shortest path to market dominance is to Overpromise and Overdeliver

Step 1. Identify your company’s uniqueness and articulate your Overpromise to radically differentiate your company in the marketplace

Step 2. Amplify your uniqueness at 3-5 Critical TouchPoints to ensure that you can consistently Overdeliver for customers which accelerates adoption and maximizes revenue growth

Step 3. Multiply your wins by leveraging your Overpromise in the marketplace

Participants Learn:

  • Why an articulated Overpromise is critical to survival
  • How the Overpromise and Overdeliver methodology accelerates momentum
  • Why momentum is essential to maximizing revenue growth and profitability
  • Why a succinct, articulated Overpromise is essential for driving word-of-mouth
  • How to leverage your Overpromise on social media
  • How a clearly articulated Overpromise drives internal and external alignment that cuts costs and accelerates growth
  • Why defining and amplifying Critical TouchPoint Experiences is essential for brand strength
  • How the Overpromise and Overdeliver methodology delivers consistently Extraordinary Customer Experiences

Designing a Results-Driven Heart-Led Company

Where are you going? Is your team going with you? Do they know why the destination is mission critical? Are they onboard? Are they passionate about getting there quickly? To earn your team’s loyalty and passion, you must have a clearly defined, exciting, heart-pumping, euphoria-producing destination. You must shape The Grand Story for your team and show them where each of them fit in the Grand Story, why their talents and passions are unique, and uniquely needed to make the journey possible. They must be committed individually and collectively to reaching the Daring Destination.

In this keynote, Rick Barrera will show you why defining the right destination is 90% of the battle. Then he’ll show you how to accomplish the other 110% of your mission. Yes, 200%! Since when is perfection good enough? Why merely accomplish your goals when you can blow the doors off! High Performance Teams are never happy unless they are exceeding their goals. Isn’t life more fun when you are winning?

Leaders will learn:

  • How to choose a Daring Destination
  • How to define the right results that will delight customers and excite team members
  • How to use meaningful missions and milestones to turbo-charge results
  • Why leaders must know what is in their team’s hearts and heads and how to inspire both
  • How to drive passion and metrics at the same time
  • Why team values and behaviors are essential to success
  • How to get discretionary effort from every team member
  • How to wield the two-sided sword of selfishness

Rick Barrera believes that results and love are two sides of the same coin. If you love your company, team, job, project and customers, how could you deliver anything less than your best? Heart Led Leadership is not soft, in fact, it couldn’t be more hard-nosed. It is about total commitment, excellence, passion, teamwork and most importantly, results! But how you get those results is always through people…

Collaborative Selling

In this interactive session, Rick Barrera will show you how to make sure that all of these things are happening using his unique Collaborative Selling Methodology.

You Will Learn:

  • How to create a territory plan that guarantees an income boost every year including how to identify the “Metrics that Matter.”
  • Why it is critical that you have written relationship plan customers, prospects and mentors
  • How to create streams of relationships to broaden your base
  • How to use technology and social media to generate unlimited high quality leads
  • How to penetrate the right associations to build your pipeline and reputation
  • How to leverage your CRM to make your life easier and generate more revenue
  • How to position yourself, your company and your offer to be in a “Category of One”
  • How to get out of the transaction business and into the profitable relationship business
  • How to create streams of information that keep you on the cutting edge of your industry and market trends
  • How to properly research your prospect before your meeting to ensure that you are relevant and focused on their most pressing needs
  • How to use Social Media to “soften the beachhead”
  • How to get on your customer’s mental map and stay there, shortening your sales cycle so you can put cash in the bank faster
  • How to ask the right questions in the right order, to get to the heart of the matter faster by getting your prospect to do the heavy lifting
  • Deep listening, and HOW to listen on 15 levels at once to ensure total alignment
  • How to get your prospect TO ASK FOR HELP
  • How to get your prospect to sit “side-by-side” and collaborate with you to create the perfect solution using your products and services
  • How to ensure that your solutions are always on target, and within budget, ensuring rapid approval
  • How to get your new customer so committed to proper implementation that your project cannot fail
  • How to get out of the proposal business and into the collaboration business
  • The easiest way you’ve ever seen to actually confirm the sale. It is so simple you won’t believe it. Yet when you try it, you’ll be blown away by how well it works and how absolutely simple and easy it is.
  • How to handle the implementation and follow-up to ensure that you set the table for an endless stream of referrals from each new customer
  • How to take control of your business and your sales process to actually generate sales on demand
  • How to penetrate each account to generate maximum revenue for you while maximizing value for your customer

A quarterly Intentional Sales Leadership Day for sales and marketing leaders of attendee companies. In this fast-paced, hands-on, drill-down workshop, leaders will take time out to sharpen the ax and create their quarterly plan for their sales team. We’ll get creative, help each other to think outside our industry and company to invent an exciting sales future for each company.

Activities will focus on:

  • Setting the Sales Cadence
  • Giving them something to talk about
  • Lip Loading your team
  • Forecasting
  • Identifying and tracking the “Metrics that matter”
  • Creating irresistible offers
  • Creating detailed quarterly plans and strategies for execution
  • Building a strong sales culture
  • Sales coaching skills

Testimonials