Desi Williamson

Desi Williamson beat the odds! Despite growing up in a world surrounded by poverty, drugs, and violence, he overcame a myriad of obstacles to realize his dreams of becoming a successful businessman, professional speaker, and author.

The former scholar-athlete at the University of Minnesota transforms 25 years of sales, sales/management and marketing experience into high content programs that deliver results.

He doesn’t give book reports! He’s been on the front line, building multi-million dollar businesses, managing multi-million dollar budgets, and developing the potential in people for powerhouse companies such as Johnson & Johnson, Rain Bird Sprinkler Mfgr., PepsiCo, and Cadbury-Schweppes. He also owns a successful real estate investment company.

Desi began his career with Johnson & Johnson where he was second in the country in total sales production, he then dedicated 7 years to wholesale distribution with Rain Bird where he built a business from $800,000 in sales to more than $10 million during his tenure.

He continued his business building success with Pepsi-Cola Company where he managed a franchise-bottling network generating more than $85 million dollars in sales. He was, subsequently, promoted to a general sales manager capacity where he lead an organization of 250 employees consisting of both union and exempt employees generating $75 million dollars in business.

Before starting full-time in his speaking career, Desi spent his final 2.5 years as an executive with Cadbury Schweppes where he was responsible for generating more than $1,000,000 in new business, and directing a $35 million dollar business.

Although Desi had achieved success in the business arena, there was something more compelling that he wanted to do with his life. With a burning desire to help others, he founded Impact!! Seminars Unlimited, Inc., a company dedicated to helping organizations increase sales, increase customer service, and increase their bottom-line through empowered people.

His broad range of experience as a corporate executive and entrepreneur allows him to present on these various issues with equal efficiency and effectiveness. He spent 4 years as a professional sales trainer for Tom Hopkins International.

Desi delivers with high impact! His, dynamic, magnetic, delivery style serves to empower you so that you take what you learn and apply it directly to your personal and professional life. Customizing his presentation to each specific audience, he discusses your business and “real world” solutions to the challenges you face. His clients all rave about his unique ability to weave their mission and strategic initiatives into the core of his presentation.

He is the author of a popular video training series now used by more than 150 correctional facilities across the country, four audio cassette programs and a new book titled, “GET OFF YOUR ASSETS!...How to Unleash the Power in You.

His list of clients include Fortune 500 corporations, civic organizations, and trade associations.

Whether a keynote presentation, a half day workshop, or full scale training session, his in depth, content driven programs empower you to, continuously, reach for higher levels of performance and make the changes necessary to get results. That’s why he’s known throughout the country as Mr. Impact!!

MOST REQUESTED TOPICS:
Motivation
How to Program Yourself for Success
So often in life, we become victims of negative programming through various outside influence. We are all born to win, but programmed to fail. In this module, Desi teaches participants how to control their own mental programs by understanding why we do what we do, and how to change our own programming to achieve the results we desire through personal accountability and responsibility.

The Power of Personal Identity and Purpose
It has been proven throughout history that people can do the most remarkable things if they have the right motivation. The first key to success is understanding ourselves and what makes us function. Secondly, we each must specifically define our mission in life, both personally and professionally. This module empowers you with the tools to identify your mission and how to accomplish it.

Personal Development
Personal Development is the foundational key for making our lives work for the better. One of the major keys Desi teaches is "Quantum Learning." By mastering this process, you develop the skills to take you from who you are now. . .to who you want to become.

Modeling Excellence
One of the most powerful ways to be successful in life is to model other people or organizations who have achieved success. In this session, Desi introduces the characteristics of peak performers, and teaches how to create niches that can infuse your business with new opportunities and yield outstanding results.

The Value Goal Connection
Until we value ourselves, we won't value our time. . . until we value our time, we won't do anything with it. Learn how to discover your core values and implement them into goals that have the power and impact that cause you to take action toward building your better future.

The Power of Rapport
One of the most powerful ways to immediately increase the quality of our lives is to increase our skill in influencing other people in a positive manner. The art of personal rapport allows us to get things done by teaming with and leveraging the strengths of others: OPT (other people's time), OPI (other people's ideas), and OPE (other people's energy). In this module, Desi teaches how to master this most important 21st Century skill!

An Attitude Adjustment
Our attitude determines our direction in life. There are forces in life - both good and bad - that determine how we feel and react toward others. This module addresses how to balance the two so that your emotional state is congruent with power, control, and achievement.

Change
The Burning Platform
A "burning platform" develops when an organization faces a major decision in which the cost of remaining status quo can be detrimental to the very core of the business. At this point, creating change is critical to survival. In this module, participants learn how to identify these situations and use change as a competitive advantage.

Transformational Thinking
The process of change is accelerating exponentially, presenting ever more difficult challenges. Participants in this module learn how to develop new paradigms of thinking to handle the volume, speed, and complexity of change in today's fast-paced world. Most importantly, they will learn how to recognize and exploit the tremendous opportunities of change.

Breaking the Cycle
Visionary organizations possess certain characteristics that enable them to remain on the cutting edge of change and become benchmarks in the industries they represent. In this module, Desi illustrates how to use these characteristics as a template to break old business practices that are no loner effective, and develop new, innovative approaches.

Becoming a Change Agent
In today's business climate, you need a new style of flexible and committed leadership to help others create change. This module discusses the various stages of change and how to empower people to move from compliance to commitment during the change process - so that quantum leaps in performance can be realized.

Developing Future Vision
The best way to forecast the future is to create it! This requires moving from the existing state of being to a new, more desirable state of being. Quite often the emotional state of a person plays a critical role during the implementation process involving change. In this module, participants learn how to properly direct their energies for powerful results through a process called "future pacing."

New Beginnings
Successfully implementing change in any organization requires wholesale changes in old behavior patterns and development of new operating methods. Effectively measuring desired behavior requires that certain standards are in place and adhered to. In this module, Desi teaches the process of continual rededication to change by understanding how to measure and promote positive behavior.

Leadership
Becoming a Customer-Focused Company
The growth and development of many organizations in recent years has caused them to become too internally focused - by managing from the top down in the organization and losing sight of the needs of its employees and customers. Desi shares the principles that help you put the focus where it belongs: on the people that make it all happen!

The Empowered Organization
The process of empowerment involves creating a business climate that supports openness and personal initiative. In this session, you learn how to become a sponsor by involving and supporting your team to exercise freedom to act within its area of competence.

The Power of Diversity: Building Awareness
Communicating the importance of diversity is a vital aspect of creating a diverse work environment, and requires great patience and skill. The module teaches the key components of diversity, why it is important, and how to effectively cascade awareness throughout the organization for powerful results.

Workforce 2000
Diversity in the workplace is creating unprecedented challenges for all organizations. Along with ethnic and gender differences, employees have vastly different cultural and educational backgrounds, skills, ages, lifestyles, values, and needs. Desi explores the changing trends that create challenges and opportunities in the workplace - and how diversity can actually be used as a launching pad to outstanding achievement.

The Power to Manage Change
The composite changes in the workplace present unique challenges to the people of an organization as well as to their job functions. This session provides participants with the skills necessary to effectively manage conflicts by developing new behaviors and initiatives that remove barriers and allow the organization to prosper during periods of change.

Leading vs. Managing
Which is more important? Are they mutually exclusive or can they be performed simultaneously? The various demands your organization encounters in operating a business often make it difficult to remain focused on the proper priorities in providing resources for employees and serving customers. Desi teaches how to develop reliable and sustainable processes that show when to properly lead and manage so that you add value to the customer - and even exceed their expectations!

LifeTime Management
Personal Identity and Purpose
The source of all human activity comes from our own beliefs about ourselves, our perceptions of the world, and our own ability to have an impact. Most people find themselves overwhelmed and in a constant state of reaction because they never took the time to ask Who am I? Where am I going? Why? Desi teaches how to define personal identity and combine it with a purpose that will help you achieve outstanding results, both personally and professionally.

Assessing Our Behavioral Patterns
The process of understanding why we do what we do is vital to bringing ourselves into alignment with behavior that will support us in maximizing our time. In this module, participants learn key human needs factors that govern our belief systems, and how our own personal belief system manifests itself into behavior that determines our direction
in life.

The Values Balance Wheel
The process of life involves the management of many values, such as family, spiritual, financial and health. Demands on our time forces us to make tough decisions about what to do and when. This module identifies the 12 major life values that are common to all people, the roles they play in determining how we spend our time, and the results we ultimately get.

Developing a Core Value System
When Desi poses the question: What is most important to you in life? each person in the audience reflects on his/her own existence. He illustrates that until we value ourselves and the things most important to us, we will not value our time . . . and unless we value our time, we won't do anything with it. Participants learn how to identify their own core values and define a hierarchy that will create more peace of mind and life balance as they strive to reach higher standards and achieve outstanding results.

Goal Power
It's easy to allow our lives to deteriorate into a struggle for survival rather than a quest for success . . . to settle for existence rather than substance. Goals are the foundational keys to success. Desi teaches how to set goals, prioritize them, and set up a system to make them happen. This is the pathway that changes lives - forever.

The Future Is NOW!
Procrastination is better called mental paralysis! For far too many people, procrastination has become an insidious habit that ruins once promising lives. Success comes from doing the tasks most critical to obtaining results. In this final module, participants master the skills to conquer procrastination once and for all . . . and free themselves to take MASSIVE ACTION on a consistent basis; to live the life they desire and deserve.

Marketing
The 14 Laws of Successful Marketing
Many organizations waste their money on marketing activities without first understanding the mindset and technical skills needed to create and execute a successful campaign. In this module, you will learn the principles of successful marketing, how to avoid costly mistakes and achieve maximum results.

How to Determine Your USP and MD
Why do some businesses struggle for survival while others define the very industries in which they compete? In this session, you will learn how to determine your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) and transform it into market distinctions (MD) that allow you to become recognized as the benchmark company in your field, generating higher profits for your business, while serving your target market.

The Feature vs. Benefit Model
The results that you get from your marketing and sales efforts will be in direct proportion to the depth of your understanding regarding the difference between features vs. benefits, and selling vs. solving. This knowledge is critical to your success! This module will teach you the real difference between these four attributes, how to present the basic benefits of your product or services, solve problems for your customers, and induce them to take immediate action.

How to Research Your Target Market
Building a successful business involves understanding the vital steps that must occur between first defining, then actually connecting with potential customers. This session will teach you powerful strategies for developing a sure-fire marketing plan that will allow you to properly assess your business, your market, and your competitors - and then get customers to buy from you instead of them.

How to Develop Marketing Communications
Fact: The majority of marketing communications in circulation throughout the world ends up in the trash! Why? It's because they don't address the needs of the prospect necessary to get them to take action on what's written. In this session, you will learn how to write powerful, client-centered copy, and produce marketing materials that maximize your marketing budget and substantially increase your return.

Establishing a Network of Referrals
Many businesses find themselves in a mad scramble to constantly attract new customers without optimizing the full value of their current customer base or sphere of influence. In this final session, you will learn the 3 laws for expanding your current business, how to get referrals, develop strategic alliances, and capitalize on the lifetime value of a customer to ensure the long-term success of your business.

Sales
Mastery of Emotions
The decision-making process is greatly affected by fear and negative emotions. Learn how to overcome fear and create an atmosphere where positive emotions build long-term customer relationships.

Power of Rapport
Impressions are formed the instant people make contact. In this session, participants learn proven ways to develop immediate rapport that enables them to recognize the values and meet the needs of the customer.

Impact!! Questions
Those who ask the most questions control the conversation. Desi teaches the "power" questions to ask that empower prospects and lead them to final decisions. This is the real secret to higher sales.

Handling Objections
Objections are key signals that indicate a customer's desire for more information. Learn how to lead prospects to overcome their own objections by changing their perspective to a frame of reference that aligns your product with their own values and needs.

Impact!! Presentations
Matching products and services to the values and needs of customers is the desired result of a powerful presentation. Desi shares persuasive presentation skills that keep customers physically and emotionally involved in the presentation process. This allows the all-important matching process to take place, so more sales get made.

Impact!! Closes
The process of closing is giving the customer what he or she wants. Participants in this session learn how peak performers continually close throughout the sales process by recognizing buying signals and integrating the values of the transaction necessary to persuade the customer to take action.

Impact!! Follow-up and Service
Follow-up and service with your customer begin the relationship that ensures your future success. Session participates learn the importance of exceeding customer expectations through proven strategies that keep customers involved, satisfied and loyal.