Recognized for well over a decade as one of the leading authorities on customer-focused relationship management strategies, Don Peppers is an acclaimed author and a founding partner of Peppers & Rogers Group, the world's premier customer-centered consultancy.

Don's vision, perspective and thoughtful analysis of global business practices has earned him some significant citations by internationally recognized entities. Business 2.0 Magazine named him one of the 19 "foremost business gurus of our times," and Accenture's Institute for Strategic Change listed him as one of the 50 "most important living business thinkers" in the world. The Times of London has listed him among its "Top 50 Business Brains," and the U.K.'s Chartered Institute for Marketing included him in its inaugural listing of the 50 "most influential thinkers in marketing and business today."

Don has a popular voice in the worldwide media, with recent contributions to both the Harvard Business Review (May 2009) and the McKinsey Quarterly (June 2009). In addition to frequent posts on Strategy Speaks, the Peppers & Rogers Group blog, Don produces a video diary of his global business observations, entitled "Peppers Unplugged," and is an active Twitter user, as well (@DonPeppers).

His thought leadership and presentations routinely focus on the business issues that today?s global enterprises are grappling with, while trying to maintain a competitive edge in their marketplace. These include:

• Balancing long- and short-term goals by managing customer value
• Building stronger customer relationships and customer experiences
• The role that employee engagement, customer trust, and innovation play in the viability of every business
• Why and how to overhaul your business model before your competition (or channel partner) does it for you

His compelling, clear and concise way of articulating his insights places Don in high demand as both a speaker and a management advisor. In 2009 alone he had dozens of speaking engagements on six continents, and his counsel is regularly sought by Fortune 500 executives and entrepreneurs.

With co-author Martha Rogers, Ph.D., Don has produced a legacy of international best-sellers that have collectively sold more than a million copies in 18 languages. Their latest thinking is embodied in their newest book, Rules to Break & Laws to Follow-published in 2008, and named as the inaugural title to Microsoft's "Executive Leadership Series." The book addresses the challenges of success in a world where networked customers and engaged employees hold tremendous power, and further exposes the crisis of short-termism that is rampant in business today, while documenting the strategies required to grow out of this rut.

In 2005, with Return On Customer, Peppers and Rogers advanced a concept of business valuation based on the customer base as a revenue-producing asset. This book introduced and trade-marked a unique new financial metric (Return on Customersm, or ROCsm), which is now being licensed to companies around the world as a valuation and analytics tool. Fast Company named Return on Customer one of the 15 "most important reads" of 2005, and cited the book again in 2007 on their list of the 25 "Best Books" in business.

These successes follow in the footsteps of their other books, The One to One Future (1993), which BusinessWeek called "one of the bibles of new marketing"; Enterprise One to One (1997), which received a five-star rating from The Wall Street Journal; as well as The One to One Fieldbook (1999), The One to One Manager (1999); and One to One B2B, which made The New York Times business best-seller list within a month of publication in 2001. The authors have also published the first-ever CRM textbook for university use in graduate-level courses, Managing Customer Relationships (April 2004).

Previously, Don was a new business rainmaker for world-class advertising agencies, including Chiat/Day and Lintas:USA. He capped his advertising career as the CEO of Perkins/Butler Direct Marketing. Prior to Madison Avenue, he worked as an economist in the oil business, and as the director of accounting for a regional airline.

Don holds a Bachelor's Degree in astronautical engineering from the U.S. Air Force Academy, and a Master's Degree in public affairs from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. He currently serves on the Board of Directors for Cicero, Inc. (CICN), and for privately held Jetera Precision Media. Don is on the Board of Advisors for Gridley & Co., the investment bank, and for blyk, the ad-supported mobile phone network in Europe.

Each of these topics can be tailored to vertical-specific factors and can be customized with relevant case studies.

You Can't Un-Google Yourself

Higher expectations and networked consumers make delivering ideal customer experiences more important than ever. Customers have more power to disseminate word-of-mouth recommendations than ever before. From posted reviews to online user groups to social networks, customers themselves now often set the tone for how a brand is perceived in the marketplace, how prices are compared, and how trust is evaluated. This session offers new proprietary research from Peppers & Rogers Group and best practice recommendations as to how your brand can deliver superior customer experiences and build trusted relationships in a world where Google results are often a brand's first impression.

Short-term Results and Long-term Success

A raging crisis of short-termism threatens companies that try to operate by today's "accepted wisdoms" in business. Most businesses rely on three rules to create shareholder value with their sales, marketing, and customer service efforts: 1) the best measure of success for your business is current sales and profit; 2) with the right sales and marketing, you can always get more customers; and 3) company value is created by differentiated products and services. However, when businesses blindly follow these rules in their effort to create shareholder value, they soon find themselves locked into the Crisis of Short-Termism. In this provocative session, Peppers and Rogers demonstrate how long-term value is just as important as current sales and profit.

Culture of the Customer

• The 3 C's of a Sustainable Business - Colleague, Channel, and Customer
• If You're Seeking Customers for Your Products, You Need a New Navigation System
• Global Efficiency, Local Autonomy and Competitive Advantage

Customer Experience

• Bad Service Bulletin: You Can't Un-Google Yourself
• Please Press " * " for Superlative: The Value of Your Front Line Contact Centers
• Dancing Shoes for Honeybees: Word of Mouth, Buzz, and Social Networks
• The Strontium-90 Effect: A Customer Experience Lasts Longer than You Think

Leadership in the New Economic World Order

• Competing for Trust: Post Crisis Strategies for a Twitter Economy
• Leadership in Times of Challenge and Opportunity
• You Can't Outrun a Bear Market, But You Can be Ready for the Recovery
• Radical Times Require Radical Action: Leaders Needed, Inquire Within

Enterprise Engagement-Enabling Your Brand Ambassadors

• The Compelling Economics of Enterprise Engagement
• You Can Lead a Force to Water, But You Can't Make them Think
• Is Your Corporate Culture an Advantage or an Albatross?
• The Company You Keep: Employee Culture for Competitive Survival

Ethics and Trust as KPI's for Success

• Violate Your Customers' Trust, and Kiss Your Asset Good-Bye
• Have I Ever Lied to You? Ethics as the Basis for Business Strategy
• Cultivating Trust isn't Expensive - It's Essential!
• Integrity Isn't Elastic: Ethics and Trust Can Never be Part-Time Values

Innovation

• Bits, Bytes and Bucks: Monetizing New Technology and Relationships
• She Blinded Me with Science: Tomorrow Comes Faster Than It Used To
• Excellence or Innovation? Pick One
• Innovation & Advantage: Driving Creativity for Competitive Stance
• The Wisdom of Dissent: Innovative Decisions Require Diverse Points of View

Looking Forward

• Social Networks and How to Leverage Them
• Tweet, Google, Bing, POP - Ride the Bubble, Avoid the Drop
• Merging with Our Machines: PMT, WOM and Society
• The 1to1 Future: Are We There Yet?

Metrics for the Long-term

• Long-Term Leadership in a Short-Term World
• Return on Customer: Breaking the Rules to Maximize Enterprise Value
• Have You Looked at Your Data Lately? You Can Get More for Less
• Customers Are Like Little Financial Assets, with Collective Memory

Relationship Strength and Loyalty

• The Three Rs of Loyalty: Relationship, Reward, Recognition
• At What Price Loyalty? ~ The Six Myths of Customer Loyalty
• Loyalty IS the New Black: Best Practices and the Value of Relationship Strength