When was the last time you had a speaker that was unique? How about one that has grown up in a family business? How about one that is not spending part of their time on the platform trying to sell books, boot camps, consulting, coaching, and classes on how to do what they do?

Audio/visual needs - We like to think that we are the easiest organization to work with. Our audio and visual needs are few. Here is a link to that very short list.

Biography - Here is a brief description and history of Tom Shay.

Booth appearance - How about a unique idea for helping you obtain sponsorship from a vendor?

Clients - Here are some of the organizations we have worked with.

Introduction - Here is an introduction for Tom Shay presenting to your group.

Photos - You are going to need a photo or two of Tom Shay to include in your promotional material when we work together.

Videos - We have several samples to offer you; 20 minute snippets from five of Tom Shay's most popular presentations.

PDFs of Tom Shay Presentations - We have arranged out presentations into areas of business interest. Each PDF has multiple presentations, yet each presentation is unique. Each presentation is based upon Tom Shay's years of experience of operating and managing his own business.

Business Strategy Presentations

Financial Management Presentations

Main Street District Presentations

Marketing Skills Presentations

Sales Skills Presentations

Staff Education Presentations

Vendor Presentations

Presentation Tracks - All of the presentations are grouped into tracks. These links will take you to individual pages listing each of the presentations within each track. Below the track links are links to pages on each of the presentations.

Business Strategy Track

Financial Management Track

Keynotes

Main Street District Track

Marketing Skills Track

Sales Skills Track

Staff Education Track

Vendor Track

Keynotes:

Characteristics of a Successful Business!
From a suggestion of a person in a Tom Shay presentation, the question was asked, "What do you consider the characteristics of a successful business?" This presentation is available as a keynote by this title, and as a seminar entitled, "What it takes to become a 5 Star Business!"

Connecting the Dots Within the Main Street District Businesses!
Your downtown businesses can be like a series of dots - totally unrelated to each other, perhaps just in a straight line. Or, your "dots" can be linked to each other in a format so that together they create a beautiful picture. If you have business people that are members of the CAVE Society (Citizens Against Virtually Everything), then you can develop what is necessary to revoke their society membership and connect the dots into a work of art. In this keynote, Tom Shay will share with you the technique for getting businesses to actively participate in your district.

Keys to building strong retailers
A Main Street district has two options in having strong retailers. The first is to search and recruit new businesses to join the existing businesses. Another option is to work with the existing businesses and help them improve. It is not that a district should select one over the other; instead, both opportunities should be utilized. This keynote by Tom Shay shows how to do the latter.

R.E.S.P.E.C.T. Business Strategies...'Retha-Style!
When she sang the song "Respect", Aretha Franklin probably knew she had a hit record. Tom Shay says the song provides businesses with ideas to better understand what their customers want. As the lyrics state,'RESPECT. Find out what that means to me".

Small businesses don't die, they just commit suicide!
Reports from the US Census Bureau show as companies have downsized, and individuals decide they want to own their own business, there are more and more new small businesses being started. Yet, some 95% will not be in business to have their 5th anniversary sale, and only half of those will celebrate their 10th anniversary. Businesses with many years of experience are not immune to this problem. See why, Small businesses don't die, they inadvertently commit suicide!

Strategies to win in a challenging economy!
While the media may be telling us of continuing doom and gloom, each business can control its' own destiny. Here is a list of what to do, what not to do, and what to stop doing. This presentation has been requested frequently for a wide variety of audiences

Business Strategy Skills Track:

Abbott and Costello Teach Business Strategy
While you may have thought of the "Who's on First" act by Abbott and Costello as purely entertainment, Tom Shay says the famous duo was actually sharing solid ideas of how to operate a small business. Tom will show how all the positions on the team work together to develop a solid plan for developing the proper strategy for a profitable business.

Alexa is playing fair and she is playing to win - How to beat the Internet
When you sell against the Internet, you think you know their advantages. But do you know their disadvantages? What about the advantages you have over any business selling on the Internet? And, past the "feel good" aspect of shopping locally, what are the real reasons we should be telling our customers they want to do business with someone in their area as compared to buying online?

Characteristics of a Successful Business!
From a suggestion of a person in a Tom Shay presentation, the question was asked, "What do you consider the characteristics of a successful business?" Here are the 10 characteristics of the most successful businesses. Details and explanations of each of the characteristics are included.

Creating a Business Plan
Take an individual who is purchasing or opening a new business and the lender is likely going to require a written business plan. Unfortunately, when the loan is approved, the business plan goes on the shelf and is never looked at again.

Even an existing business is likely to not have a business plan. Without a plan, how will the business find, or know if it is on the path to profitable success? Participants in this session will learn how they can improve their business by creating and utilizing a business plan they have written with a vision for the future.

Disrupting or Prompting; Does this affect how you approach business?
March 2020 turned the business world, and everyone's lives upside down with the Corona pandemic. Today, how many businesses are gone because of that? How many are acting like it is still 2019? And, how many have become adaptive because of the opportunity they saw to become a business that addressed their customer's needs and wants?

Even for those businesses that grew tremendously because of the pandemic; many are simply riding along like a "post turtle" without having done anything to make their business better. This very unique session gives deep insight to the opportunities for change.

Do what they don't; do what they can't!
Many businesses have a habit of looking over their shoulder to see what they consider to be the "giant" of a competitor is doing. This session takes a look at the eight key factors your customer considers as they decide who they will do business with. This examination will provide insight has to what your focus should be. The answers are in these eight factors and the title of this session.

Making the Most of A Tradeshow!
Surely, attending a trade show should be an investment a business makes, expecting to see dividends from their time and money. Yet so many businesses experience a trade show as just an expenditure. Tom Shay, who has participated in trade shows for over 40 years as a vendor and as a buyer, shares with attendees what it takes to make the most of a trade show.

Small Businesses Don't Die, They Just Commit Suicide!
Reports from the US Census Bureau show as companies have downsized, and individuals decide they want to own their own business, there are more and more new small businesses being started. Yet, some 95% will not be in business to have their 5th anniversary sale, and only half of those will celebrate their 10th anniversary. Businesses with many years of experience are not immune to this problem. See why, Small businesses don't die, they just commit suicide!

Strategies to win in a challenging economy
While the media may be telling us of continuing doom and gloom, each business can control its' own destiny. Here is a list of what to do, what not to do, and what to stop doing. Attendees have reported this topic to be enlightening, informational and very inspiring.

What it Takes to be a 5-Star Business!
From the presentation, "Characteristics of a successful business", Tom Shay has created a workshop that that provides an in-depth opportunity for a business to examine, develop strategies, and establish deadlines for taking their business to the next level. This presentation provides details of each characteristic, examples of businesses having achieved each characteristic, suggested reading, and a self-scoring guideline.

Your Customer Doesn't Live Here Anymore!
This seminar presents solid, tried and proven ideas that businesses can examine and utilize as they develop that "always shop here first!" During this seminar, Tom presents ideas for:
* Identifying what type of store you should be
* Recognizing the five types of customers and knowing which type you want
* Developing the customer service techniques that customers crave
* Providing the five qualities every customer wants
* Fulfilling the customer's equation for value

You Can Hire a Manager, But You Can't Hire an Owner
There is a big difference in the responsibilities of someone that is the manager of a business and the individual who is the owner. Unfortunately, there are too many owners that have gotten 'stuck' in the position of being the manager or worse yet, being the best salesperson.

An owner in this position has a business that is suffering from lack of direction and leadership. This session will provide guidance to separating the two and helping the owner to become THE owner.

Financial Management Skills Track:

Basic Financials 101
Too many business managers and owners rely on a bookkeeper or their accountant to track the financial data. If we were to give a quiz to these same people, we would likely find them lacking in basic financial knowledge. In this informative session, participants will obtain a well rounded understanding of how they can use the information to help them in better managing their business.

Black Ink: Cashflow Management Secrets Your Accountant Never Shared!
Sure, most all businesses get a financial sheet that is updated each month, but is it being utilized to its fullest? Do they create a cash flow chart? And have they established a set of goals, both long and short term? Seminar attendees will discuss examples of these, and create a plan for the future of their business. The EZ CA$HFLOW software program is provided to each participant for these seminars at no additional cost.

Can You Get More From The Investment You Have in Your Business?
Every business owner has made a substantial investment of money in their business. If instead, that money was invested in stocks, bonds, or a money market, the owner would surely want to know what the rate of return would be. The same should be for their business; they should know what the rate of return is for their investment in the business. And more importantly, they need to know how to improve the rate of return. In addition to explaining how to make this calculation in simple terms, Tom Shay shows participants how to utilize a FREE calculator on the Profits Plus website to assist them in this endeavor.

Creating Positive Cashflow with an “Open to Buy”!
You will find that a majority of businesses do not understand or utilize an open to buy. Yet the majority of small retail businesses that fail each year have a financial sheet showing them as profitable on the day they close!

Too often, that needed cash is sitting on the shelf as excessive inventory Or, how many business owners and managers are surprised each month as they examine their financial statements to see there is more inventory than they wanted in their business? This problem can be solved. Understanding and utilizing an “open to buy” will move marginal businesses to profitable businesses. Attendees will be provided with a link to the Profits Plus web site where they can receive a FREE “Open to Buy” calculator.

How Much is That Doggie in the Window? - The Cost of Holding Dead Inventory
What business doesn't have some inventory that has been sitting in the warehouse, stockroom or worse yet, on the sales floor? Perhaps you even have a part of your sales floor that is your 'clearance corner'.

This session, utilizing a free calculator on the Profits Plus website, will show you how to calculate just how much it is costing you to be holding onto that dead inventory. Along with an example business being evaluated, ideas will be shared with regard to how to get rid of this dead inventory.

If you are not making money - You are not doing this! - Let's broaden the horizon of how we determine what we are going to sell and how we are going to price it. Let's consider that much of what the customer spends is discretionary income and that requires looking at who we sell to, what we sell, and how we sell it, in a different light.

Numbers Gibberish and the Profit Secrets They Hide
As the saying goes,"the job is much easier when you have the right tools". So, what are the right tools for the management of a successful business? Tom Shay has created a website that is full of free tools that will show attendees how the numbers on their financial statement contain the most important tools for any small business. Finding and using the right tools means finding more profits.

One attendee of this session reported a savings of $200,000 in loan interest fees after learning how to utilize the free calculators from the Profits Plus website.

So, That's Where the Money Goes
Most business owners look at the bottom line of their monthly profit & loss statement and then at their checking account business to see two radically different numbers. The traditional question is, "If I made all that money, why isn't it sitting in my checking account?"

This session assists participants in understanding this age old question about their business as well as help them to make sure there is enough cash in the checking account at the right time.

What Your Accountant Is not Telling You
You may get all the proper forms and taxes completed on time. You probably have never had your business audited with regard to any of the forms or tax returns you have submitted. Yet, there are many things that you should know about the accounting aspect of your business. Your accountant may know most of them, but to make sure, both of you have to be "on the same page". This session will share 14 key aspects of financial management that you should be aware of.

Your Assets - Are They Working for You or Just Sitting There?
As a business owner examines their balance sheet they see that the top half details all of the assets controlled by their business. What we know is that businesses that do a better job of utilizing their assets are much more profitable than those that do not. This session helps attendees to evaluate their assets and how to increase the rate of return they provide. Attendees are show how to utilize a FREE analysis calculator from the Profits Plus website.

Main Street Districts Track:

Connecting the Dots Within the Main Street District Businesses!
Your downtown businesses can be like a series of dots - totally unrelated to each other, perhaps just in a straight line. Or, your "dots" can be linked to each other in a format so that together they create a beautiful picture. If you have business people that are members of the CAVE Society (Citizens Against Virtually Everything), then you can develop what is necessary to revoke their society membership and connect the dots into a work of art.

Keys to Building Strong Retailers
A Main Street district has two options in having strong retailers; they can search and recruit new businesses to join the existing businesses. Another option is to work with the existing businesses and help them to become better businesses. It is not that a district should select one over the other; instead, both should be utilized. This keynote by Tom Shay shows how to do the latter.

Marketing Skills Track:

AMP Up! Creating Your Advertising, Marketing, and Promoting Plans
Too many small business are not 'buying' their advertising. Instead they are 'sold' by a representative of some form of media or advertising company. This session will utilize a free calculator from the Profits Plus website and walk participants through the necessary steps of having a plan that is proactive instead of reactive.

Changes; You are selling the wrong stuff
Selling "item and price"; a sure recipe for disaster for any small business regardless of whether you sell products, services, or both. It is a game you cannot win. Most everything you sell or provide falls into the category of "discretionary spending". This means the customer is spending money they do not have to spend.

Therefore, this spending is for enjoyment of the product, the service and/or the experience of spending the money. Selling begins with your deciding you are going to enjoy the process so that your employees and your customers can also do so.

CVS Marketing - Cause, Viral, Social
Traditional forms of advertising - television, radio and newspaper are not only expensive and often ineffective, but the audience they reach is diminishing. Cause, viral and social marketing can do a better job of getting the message to customers. This session will illustrate how to plan and budget for each component of the message that a business wants to have their existing and potential customers receive. Learn from Tom Shay how to reach today's customers - effectively and inexpensively.

How to put SIZZLE on Your Sales Floor!
Businesses that have high average sales tickets and high sales per square foot do not do so by accident. During this presentation, techniques for improving both will be shown. And these ideas do not require a large budget! There are over 25 aspects to causing a customer to notice a business and then notice the products and services offered once they have entered the business.

If Patton Ran Your Business: How to Win the Battle With Your Competition!
There is a war going on out there to get your customer's business; you and all your competition. Successful businesses know how to target a specific segment of their marketplace; as compared to trying to be "everything to everybody".

History shows there are four potential strategies for a business; you have to know which is the right one for your business. For many businesses, the choice is made for you by market conditions and your competition. Should a business defend their market position, become an attacker, a flanker or a guerrilla warrior?

Once the right strategy is determined, you have to decide what tactics you will utilize to implement your strategy. This interactive workshop helps a business owner to determine the proper strategy and then decide the tactics they will implement. Using stories and experiences of General George S. Patton and utilizing examples of products we purchase everyday, Tom Shay leads participants in this most useful exercise.

Power Promoting Ideas 1
Many retail businesses know how to advertise, but few know how to promote. See the special tweaks that will deliver the advertising message and bring the customer back. These retail management seminars are presented in such a unique and interactive manner that your attendees will be talking about the fun they had and the ideas they received long after the conclusion of your event.

Power Promoting Ideas 2
Power Promoting Ideas is a retail seminar that puts people and ideas together. After having created a winner such as this, how do you follow up? With another edition of Power Promoting! With input by participants who have attended the first edition of the seminar, we have now produced another retail book and another round of profit generating ideas.

If your organization has utilized Tom Shay’s Power Promoting retail seminars and your attendees are asking, “What’s next?”, then the only answer is Power Promoting Ideas 2.

Pricing Strategies for Profits Plus!
There is variable pricing, everyday sale pricing, blind price items, and sensitive price items. How do your businesses create the combination that benefits their bottom line the most, and keeps the customer coming back? Your attendees are sure to see their gross margin increase after participating in this seminar! One participant reported an increase of $79,000 in profits from this seminar!

Stop giving away your profit!
While so many businesses, both product and service oriented, focus on an "item and price" or "discounted service" model for attracting new customers as well as inviting existing customers to return, we offer a unique concept that has been tested and proven to protect margins, increase average ticket, and improve the bottom line. Attendees can return to their business and utilize the free online calculator to determine how to implement this within their business. One business had 82% of their customers returning because of their initial transaction.

The Science and The Art of Buying
As a buyer of merchandise for your business, have you asked yourself if buying is an art form or a science to be calculated. This session will explain the eight key components that require attention so that merchandise does a better job of maintaining the initial margin, inventory produces a higher turn rate, and closeouts are reduced. Buying is no longer just item, quantity and multiplying the cost by some factor.

Turning a Sales Flyer into a Sales Happening!
While direct mail may be a very effective way of getting the advertising message before customers, Tom Shay provides a list of tweaks and improvements that a business can make so that the results of the direct mail piece will great improvement. Not only will sales items be sold, but non-sale items and additional items will cause the sales increase.


Staff Education Track:

Getting Extraordinary Results from Ordinary People!
You visit another business to find that their manager has a staff which is full of exceptional people. That manager was not "lucky". Instead, the manager was able to lead each of the staff to excel. How did they do it? Seminar attendees will hear the secret of getting extraordinary results from ordinary people!

Masters of Legendary Service!
Everyone has had the experience at least once; a manufacturers' or wholesalers' representative, or a salesperson in an independent or chain store, demonstrates a sincere and deep interest in the wants and needs of the customer. Can you learn the motivation this person has? And, can you teach the hidden secret the salesperson utilizes to give the customer the pleasant experience? You, personally, and the business you work in, or own, will reap the rewards as you learn to teach the secrets of the Masters of Legendary Service!

Team Up for Success!
Here are the secrets to solving the need of, and problems of employees. The audience will learn how to build a team that involves the veteran employees and develops the techniques that focuses their staff on profits. This session provides a very detailed step by step process for creating a very valuable staff, retain employees, and garner additional buy-in to management. Attendees will learn how to develop a program where the employees are educated instead of training.

When Your Management Style Isn't Working and Your Employees Aren't Either; it's time for a change!
It is a frequently heard comment; "My employees aren't doing what I need them to do. I just don't have good employees." Unfortunately, what all these employees share in common is a manager or owner whose management style isn't working either. This interactive session helps attendees to identify how they will react and manage in situations within their business. Then they are shown a different style of management for that situation and invited to compare the two to see which way is more likely to help with their management decisions.

Sales Skill Track:

Advanced Professional Selling Skills!
This session is for those who want to have a staff with the sales skills that are second to none. Explaining the nuances of the true professional with emphasis of the fine points such as word selection, questions to ask, how to ask questions, and even the stance a person takes that can cause substantial sales increases.

Games People Play - Selling skills become fun!
Show people how to sell using interactive games. This session is all audience participation as we "play" several games which teach add on selling, selling benefits instead of features, and how to engage the customer with open-ended questions.

Relationship Selling Skills are a Big Deal!
How about a new twist to sharing sales skills? This presentation involves a unique deck of playing cards and participants in small groups. This sets the stage for question asking, and idea sharing to assist participants in improving their sales skills.

So, You Want to Be a Master Salesperson!
The ideal presentation for salespeople, demonstrating ways to resolve customer complaints, "tag-team" sales techniques, the five questions a master salesperson uses, the three things a master salesperson sells, the five traits of a valuable team member and the importance of calculating the lifetime value of a customer.

The Magic 8's of Selling!
New employees, whether they do or do not have previous sales experience, don't walk onto the first day at work knowing how to identify the types of selling scenarios they are exposed to every day. They also miss many of the opportunities to close a sale. The Magic 8's of Selling outline how to identify 8 selling scenarios and 8 ways to close a sale. The magic will appear as sales in your business increase.

Vendors Track:

Cultivating Accounts that Must Have... You!
A presentation designed for the sales staff of manufacturers and wholesalers to show how you can develop a loyal account by knowing where a dealer needs assistance.

Lessons from a Postman - How to deliver as a vendor
When accounts are asking, "What is your price?", they are demonstrating they find no additional value in your salesperson or your company. More than just adding value to the relationship, we need to provide the very essence of what your accounts need to grow their business and grow their profitability.

Why Fly Paper Works! Attracting Buyers to Your Tradeshow Exhibit!
A unique presentation designed for a trade show where the sponsor wants to have a special event for the exhibitors. This presentation shows to exhibitors what it takes to get merchants to stop at your exhibit and what you can do to endear the buyers to you and your company.