Donald Cooper

Speaking topics

Presentations listed below include in-person and virtual keynotes, as well as workshops, fireside chats, and other presentation formats.

• Accelerate Your Business: How to Sell More, Manage Smarter, Grow Your Bottom Line …and Have a Life!

  Managing any business today is tough… and getting tougher.  We’re all faced with more demanding customers, more and stronger competition, increased complexity and shrinking margins. Mediocrity is no longer an option. On top of that, great staff are hard to find and keep — and that problem won’t go away any time soon.

  Through keynotes, workshops, management boot camps, and one-on-one coaching, Donald Cooper has helped thousands of businesses to create compelling customer value, clarity of purpose, and long-term profitability.

  Simply put, Cooper works with business owners and managers who want to create extraordinary outcomes in these five key areas:

  • Create compelling customer value and experiences that will “grab” their target customers, clearly differentiate them from their competitors, make them ‘”famous”, and grow their bottom line.
  • Market and promote their business more effectively in a crowded and cynical market place. There’s no point in being the best if you’re also the best kept secret.
  • Attract, lead, and retain a dedicated, top-performing team.  We must become “talent magnets”.
  • Manage more effectively to improve profitability now and for the long term.
  • Create a clear vision for the future of their business, a specific action plan to get them there and a culture of accountability to make sure they do.

• Vision Critical: How to Define Our Future, Grow Our Business and Improve Our Bottom Line!

  There’s huge confusion in business today about what a “Vision” is, what it isn’t…and whether it even makes sense to have one.  Businesses spend months and thousands of dollars on consultants or “Management Retreats” to come up with a vague, ‘feel good’ Vision that says little, and achieves nothing.

  Every industry is changing and new business models are taking over.  It’s tough to get where we’re going if we don’t know where we’re going.  Simply put, our Vision should be a clear, specific and measurable statement of what we commit to become to be a more profitable market leader in 3 to 5 years.  It will consist of 6 points, on one piece of paper and will be easily updated every year to keep us in the lead.

  Its purpose is to inform, focus, challenge and inspire us as leaders, and everyone on our team, by creating clarity about these 5 things:

  1. The compelling customer value and experience that we commit to deliver,
  2. What we commit to become,
  3. Specifically how we’ll get there,
  4. The extraordinary bottom line that we commit to generate…and,
  5. How we commit to behave along the way.

  That level of clarity simply doesn’t exist in most businesses today…and it’s killing them.  Our Vision will also be our most effective recruitment tool, when hiring and developing key team members.

  Donald’s breakthrough work on business Vision has helped 1000s of companies throughout the world improve clarity, commitment and profitability.

• Owning Customers for Life: 4 Powerful Steps to Increase Loyalty, Sales & Profitability!

  Whether you sell to consumers or to other businesses, customers are more demanding, less forgiving, more confused, more time-compressed and more cynical than ever before.  They want your best service and your best price…and they want it now.  On top of that, you have way too many competitors, you all look pretty much alike…and some of you aren’t going to make it!

  So, to succeed we must stand out.  We must create compelling value and experiences that make powerful connections with our target customers.  Simply put, we must be extraordinary.  Mediocrity is no longer an option.

  Then, we must communicate our value in a way that ‘grabs’ our target customers, clearly differentiates us from our competitors and makes us ‘famous’.  There’s no point in being the best if we’re also the best kept secret.  And we have to do all of that on a tight budget, so that we grow our bottom line.

  Creating loyal and profitable customers for life is not that complicated.  In fact, you’ll be amazed at how simple and do-able it actually is.  In this bottom-line marketing session Donald delivers his clear and compelling insights into why people buy, why they don’t buy…and what they really want when they do buy.

  He debunks tired myths about loyalty, price, advertising and value and then replaces them with powerful insights and management tools that will help you create a compelling competitive advantage, more effective marketing and a better bottom line.

  Donald’s profound understanding of human behavior, delivered with humor and a strong dose of reality, will inform, challenge and energize you.

• Winning the Talent Wars: 8 Essential Steps to Attracting, Leading and Keeping a Top-Performing Team!

  Whether your business is large or small, not having the right people in every position carries a huge bottom-line cost in lost business, inefficiency, missed opportunity and frustration!

  The talent crunch is real, and will last for decades.  In less than 10 years time, we’ll see many businesses fail because they’re unable to find the talent they need.

  Sadly, many business owners and managers have convinced themselves that, “You just can’t get good people anymore!”  They’re in denial and they’ve given up!  The truth is that the best people have to work for somebody…it’s just that we have to deserve them.

  We become what we hire…so we need to attract and hire extraordinary talent, not just ‘bodies’.  Then, we must train, inspire and empower them to WOW our customers, achieve world-class operating efficiency and grow our bottom line.

  Everyone on our team must be clear about our customer promise, our direction and our values.  They must be committed to specific outcomes, be held accountable for their performance and rewarded for their success.  Then, non-performance must be dealt    with promptly and firmly.  Lack of accountability and failure to deal with non-performance are two of the biggest problems in many businesses today.  So, we must all manage smarter.

  Donald’s 8 steps to attracting, leading and keeping a top-performing team deliver a clear, specific and effective process that will help make you a world-class recruiter, a world-class boss…and a world-class business.

• Succession and Exit Planning: Effectively Planning and Executing the Most Significant Financial Event in Your Entire Life!

  This program, specifically for business owners, delivers dozens of bottom-line insights about the real world of succession and exit.

  Succession planning isn’t just about the owner ‘getting out’ at the end. It’s also the ongoing process of developing and preparing capable people throughout the business, including at the top, for new responsibilities as the business grows. To use a sports analogy, it’s about building talent and creating ‘bench strength’ as part of building a profitable, sustainable and saleable business.

  Exit Planning is determining the timing and the strategy for the business owner to make a graceful and profitable exit from the business…and to adjust to the life changes that come with that.

  When you have clients for whom this is important subject will be helpful, we’ll be delighted to chat about ‘possibilities’.

• The 90 Minute MBA: 10 Things You Absolutely Need to Know to 'Own' Your Customers, Manage Your Business and Grow Your Bottom Line!

  Managing any business today is tough…and getting tougher.  We’re all faced with moredemanding customers, more and stronger competition, increased complexity and shrinking margins.  On top of that, great staff are hard to find and keep…and that problem won’t go away any time soon.

  To thrive in good times or bad, first we must create extraordinary customer value and experiences that will ‘grab’ our target customers, clearly differentiate us from our competitors, make us ‘famous’ and grow our bottom line. Then, we must market, sell and promote like never before in this crowded, confused and cynical marketplace.

  Next, we must create a clear Vision for the future of our business and a business model that will get us there. Then, we must develop a top-performing team and world-class operating efficiency.  Without these four things, we cannot grow our business.

  Finally, we must understand the math of profitability and control expenses carefully.

  Performance must be measured, acknowledged and rewarded…and non-performance must be dealt with promptly.  Lack of clarity and failure to deal with non-performance are two of the biggest challenges facing many businesses today.  So, we must all manage smarter.

  Most business owners and managers spend 90% of their time working “in” their business and not enough time working “on” it.  Donald delivers the ‘straight goods’ on how to proactively and effectively manage your marketing, your team, your future and your bottom line…and he makes it fun!

• From 'Great to Gone': Important Lessons from Cooper Canada and Other Business Adventures!

  From humble beginnings in 1905 as a tiny leather goods company, Cooper Canada grew and evolved to become a world-leading maker of sports equipment and a Canadian Brand icon, employing over 2800 people.

  As the company reinvented itself, partners were bought out, the company went public, then went global and was unionized.  It built a dedicated, world-class team, opened an offshore factory, bought competitors, imported and exported and dominated its markets.  Add to all of that the unique challenges of running a family business, and life gets interesting.

  Finally, as both the market and the industry underwent fundamental changes and realignment, Cooper Canada was sold.  Today, the company no longer exists…leaving important business lessons behind.

  Now, with 20 years of experience as an international business speaker and coach, Donald shares those lessons with brilliant clarity, wisdom and humor as he helps business owners and managers throughout the world create compelling customer value, clarity of purpose and long-term profitability.  He has worked with 100s of family businesses and entrepreneurs to deal with business, personal and family challenges.