The man with the silver tongue

Introducing Keith Abraham, an entertaining and innovative speaker inspiring and helping business owners build their organisations. Keith uses his business to encourage people to think differently, using passion as the catalyst to challenge them to be better, do better and achieve better results. In 1994 Keith’s incredible career began with the founding of his company, People Pursuing a Passion. In 1999 the National Speakers Association of Australia awarded Keith the title of Certified Speaking Professional, acknowledging him as one of Australia’s top thirty professional speakers.

Before beginning his business in 1994, Keith worked for Suncorp, training staff in customer service, leadership, team work and goal setting. After he was invited to speak at a sales conference held at Conrad Jupiter’s, Keith recognised his love for speaking and left his position at Suncorp to pursue his passion. Keith currently lives on the Gold Coast with wife of 17 years Kristine, and two children Mazana and Isabella.

Today Keith shares his motivating ideas with 175 clients in three continents, many of them high profile businesses including; Toshiba, Westpac, Toyota, Lexus Australia, and NRMA to name a few. Keith now speaks to around 10,000 people a year. Incorporating multimedia presentation methods with experiential activities as well as accelerated learning and practical skills, Keith successfully engages his audience every time.

By using elements such as touch, sight and sound, Keith involves his audience in the learning process. He says that by involving people in the presentation, they learn the information better and more importantly they act upon it. The different techniques Keith uses to engage his audience range from the images and music used throughout his presentation to the room set up. He also uses activities that the audience participates in with the person next to them, their entire table or the whole room.

“Most people have heard it all before, but it isn’t about hearing, it’s about doing something with the information,” Keith says. “The more you can get people engaged in the learning process the more likely it is that they’re going to go away and take action.”

Building a rapport with people, Keith is able to get his message across effectively, ensuring every audience member takes an important concept home with them from the workshop or conference. Keith says there are four key areas in building rapport: before, during, after and forever after.

Before the presentation Keith builds trust and credibility by ensuring audiences are provided with great customer service during the registration process. He also helps guests by sending out a reminder SMS a day before the presentation and provides quality background information on his website. By doing all of this Keith builds rapport even before audiences show up.

During the presentation Keith provides guests with a quality workbook and learning environment. By presenting material that is thought provoking and challenging, Keith allows audiences to walk away with gutsy information that inspires them to act. After the presentation Keith posts information on his website that is relevant to what has been talked about. Audiences can also watch the video and listen to the audio of the presentation online allowing guests to revisit the key messages and stay motivated. This is what differentiates Keith from other speakers; he ensures the message will carry on with clients forever after the presentation.

Keith’s unique approach enables audiences to awaken their inner spark that drives them to discover, pursue and live their passion. He says passion equals the energy to achieve goals, feel good about yourself and add value to others. This can be applied to the business world as well as life situations. Keith says that too many people suppress and depress their passionate side. By doing things they love, people are more likely to succeed and achieve great things, giving themselves energy and focus along with the right attitude.

“If you’re not doing it with a passion then you’re just going through the motions” Keith explains. “The main thing that dampens peoples sparks is that they don’t feel like they’re on purpose and living the goals they need to live, in my eyes this is a great tragedy.’

In only 8 years Keith has built a business that is regarded in the top 4 per cent for client retention in the world. Keith teaches the importance of client satisfaction. He says providing a world class service and selling an experience, that is built on standards, creates customer loyalty. Keith believes it is what businesses do forever after that makes an impact on their customers.

“Many businesses work on the three ‘F’ principle, find a customer, flog them a product and forget them,” Keith says. “Customers forget what you do if you don’t stay top of mind.”

He explains that this doesn’t mean continuously marketing or trying to sell to them, it simply means being top of mind when the time comes that they need your product or service again. Keith says the only way you can do that is by staying in contact with clients when they’re not doing business with you. These days you can do that at minimal to no cost through the use of electronic newsletters or blogs, even Twitter, printed newsletters and seminars are also effective methods. If you stay top of mind, customers will come straight to you next time around.

Keith applies his own strategies to his personal and business life, making him a practitioner not just a theorist. He is a great believer in being a practitioner and doing things that make a dynamic difference. Keith says the ideas need to be proven and time tested in the market place.  A theory needs to evolve into something people can use to improve what they’re doing and have tangible results. If a theory has not been tested in the environment we live and work in, then it is just a theory.

“Theory doesn’t get it done, at the end of the day it has to be an idea that works in the real world people live in every day,” Keith said. “Too many people have a theory and don’t put it into practice. They say this is law, this is the way, and this is the principle but never put it into action.”  

Keith’s strategies are proven, demonstrated by the exceptional results his clients have achieved. His business growth concept helped one clients turnover grow from $5 million to $9 million in 12 months, then grow to $16 million the next year without employing any additional staff. Keith turned the worse sales area in a retail organisation into the best section achieving their annual budget of $15,000. Keith has also seen results in a client’s financial planning firm despite current market conditions.

“Even in a depressed financial market due to the financial crisis they have been able to grow their business,” Keith said.
By recognising the main wants of business owners Keith has identified roadblocks that stop these wants from coming into fruition. By talking to people about these roadblocks and providing them with tools to overcome them, Keith better enables businesses to achieve their goals.

Keith provides an online program to ensure he keeps in touch with people. Over 4500 people have subscribed to receive his weekly email on topics such as sales to service and goals to business growth. Keith says it is important for people to have a coach or mentor and access to positive, motivating information. He believes people need to be mentally ready before they can change physically.

 “Many people want to achieve a result but haven’t developed themself enough to go there,” Keith explains. “You have to equip yourself for success; you can’t expect success to come to you first.”

The focus of the online program is to help people to live a life bigger than them, outside of them and help them leave a legacy for others. Keith ensures these principles are translated into his own life by donating a percentage of each presentation he gives to B1G1, a global giving non-for-profit organisation.  B1G1 allows supporters to choose which causes their donations are spent on. Keith’s organisation has supported an orangutan sanctuary and meals for school children in Africa to name a few.

Keith is the bestselling author of three books, Living Your Passion, Creating Loyal Profitable Customers and Inspirational Insights. He is also a regular contributor to magazines and industry journals around the country. Free online resources are provided on Keith’s website for business owners to use as material for their newsletters, e-zines or company intranet.  Working with over 200 companies in 20 industries for the past 13 years, Keith has the ability to make a big impact upon businesses.

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