Deepening Relationships; Education for Customers; Leadership vs. Growth

"…out-learning the competition"

HEADLINES:
 
Build a Deeper Relationship — one of the keys to GE's long term success is an initiative called GE Access where they invite top suppliers and customers to participate in their learning events at Crotonville, GE's executive education center. Not only does this give them specific one-on-one time with their best customers and suppliers away from the office, but the learning helps strengthen these firms, making them better customers and suppliers.

Invite Your Best Customer or Supplier…to join you at our upcoming  Fortune Leadership Summit May 10 – 11, Houston; and our  Fortune Growth Summit October 25 – 26, Phoenix. They'll benefit greatly from the education and you'll be the hero for recommending something so important to their business – while having some quality time away from the office to form deeper bonds.

Why We Replaced the Sales Summit with the Leadership Summit — and what is the difference between the  Fortune Leadership Summit and the Fortune Growth Summit. Several of you have asked these two questions. In response:

1.       We ran out of what I considered high enough quality speakers (with new ideas) to make a viable Sales and Marketing Summit on that topic alone

2.       Instead, we're incorporating the best sales and marketing gurus into the two Summits – spring and fall – and hosting several gurus via our online seminars

3.       In general, the Leadership Summit is about "growing the individual exec"; the Growth Summit is about "growing the company"

4.       Both Summits will have different faculty, so it's still the equivalent of reading a dozen books per year — and we don't repeat faculty, so if you miss the Leadership Summit, you're not going to hear them keynote the Growth Sum

5.       Finally, both Summits appeal to the entire management team – our goal is for the whole team to learn together twice per year, mimicking Bill Gates twice-yearly "think weeks."

Are There Early Bird Special Deals? — No, maybe we're wrong, but we have just one standard "everyday low price" pricing structure. Growth firms want to be guaranteed that no one paid less than them. The reward for registering early is you get the better seats (and it's just a $250 deposit, so you can preserve your cash). We seat in order of registration and size of team. And any team with four or more execs gets their own round table at the Summit.

Faculty for Fortune Leadership Summit:

Marshall Goldsmith — most famous executive coach in the world, he'll discuss 20 bad habits that block executive performance

Greg Brenneman — one of the top turnaround CEOs, he's the past CEO of PwC, Burger King, Quiznos, and the President that turned around Continental Airlines, he'll share his tools for turning around and growing any company

Josh Bernoff — co-author of two recent bestsellers, Groundswell and Empowered, he'll share four steps in this "IDEA" framework: identify mass influencers, deliver groundswell customer service, empower with mobile, and amplify fan activity. He'll show how empowering your staff to use these technologies will transform your business.

Darren Hardy — as Publisher of Success Magazine, Darren has been at the forefront of executive excellence. His book, The Compound Effect, provides the tools for executing the habits Marshall Goldsmith will suggest. That's why we paired them up at this Summit.

Mark Aesch — YPOer, whose book Tom Peters has called "quite possibly the best management book I've ever read", heads up a Mass Transit authority in Rochester, NY where he reversed a massive debt while reducing fares while increasing both citizen and employee satisfaction.

Graham Weston — co-founder of Rackspace, Graham led one of the most successful IPOs this past decade, tripling the stock price post IPO. Known for its "Fanatical Support", Graham will share how he and his team drove the business during one of the toughest decades in recent history.