Topics — Leadership Keynote Speaker
Top Rated Keynote Speaker, Consultant and Author
Denise’s Most Popular Topics:
Denise is available to speak in-person or virtually on these topics, or she will work with you to develop a custom program.
Lead To Greatness
Choose from one of three Denise’s new keynotes:
- READY & RESILIENT: Leadership For Now & Next — how to navigate the way work and business has changed and lead your organization to greatness
- EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE DISRUPTED: The New Rules for Workforce Engagement — how to ensure your workforce is engaged and productive today and ready for tomorrow
- BRAND LEADERSHIP: How to Break Through, Blaze New Trails, and Build a Great Brand — how to achieve brand leadership in today’s competitive markets
THE FUSION FORMULA: Brand + Culture = Results
Forget everything you think you know about workplace culture! You don’t need perks and parties. You need engaged employees who produce the right results and help you build a great brand. Denise shows you how to infuse your culture with your core brand values and align your people with your unique brand identity, so you produce a healthy organization and a valuable brand. Based on her new book, FUSION, Denise shares the secrets behind the world’s greatest organizations and lays out the leadership playbook for achieving the brand-culture fusion you need to power your performance and future-proof your business.
Brand Leadership: How to Build a Rock Star Brand
You know how great brands dominate their fields. You experience it every time you pay a premium for a certain type of jeans, or see a line of people camping out to catch the newest smart phone release. Denise shows you how to achieve rock star brand status. Drawing from case studies, analyses, and interviews with brand leaders from the world’s leading brands, she shows you what great brands do and how to achieve the kind of brand leadership that everyone — from customers to employees to investors — wants a piece of.
IGNITE EXPERIENCE: Fuse Customer Experience and Employee Experience to Drive Your Growth
Customer experience is the new competitive battlefield where customer loyalty is won or lost. And among employees, the war for talent is intensifying. How do you win on both fronts? Denise shows you how to align and integrate your employee and customer experiences—and unleash their combined power to fuel your growth. Learn how to design and deliver employee experiences that fully engage your people and translate into customer experience excellence. Denise lays out the complete game plan you need to win the hearts and minds of customers and employees.
Extraordinary Experiences: How to Win Customers' Hearts and Dollars
How do some companies break through the clutter; compete with bigger, better-resourced competitors; and manage to grow and thrive when so many others fail? They earn customer love and loyalty through extraordinary experiences. Denise gives you the complete blueprint for creatively designing and consistently delivering customer experiences that win over customers for life. Learn how to get the edge that everyone else wants and excel at customer experience.
Workshop: Operationalize Your Values
Take your core values from words on a page to the driving force of your organization with an outcomes-oriented working session led by Denise. Participants engage in powerful exercises and facilitated discussions that enable them to identify the attitudes and actions they need to adopt to live out your core values on a daily basis. They develop a shared understanding of what the values mean, why they’re important, and how to work together to interpret and deliver on them. Ignite the power of your core values to focus, align, and empower your organization.
What Great Salespeople Do
If you’re worried about how the role of sales and selling is changing, you need to know what the best salespeople do to succeed in this new business environment. Denise shows you that great salespeople do what great brands do. She explains how to innovate — not imitate, how to create extraordinary experiences that embody your brand, and how to cultivate strong, emotional connections with customers. You’ll be inspired to engage with clients in new ways that cut out competitors and create long-term business success. Learn why and how the most effective salespeople operate as brand evangelists — and how you can too to win the new sales game.
Brand-Building Isn't Just for the Big Guys
It’s true! You don’t have to be big to be great. Even if you’re an entrepreneur who’s short on time and money, you can build a brand that stands out and has a big impact. Denise shows you what you need to beat the big guys at their own game. She reveals the Minimum Viable Brand (MVB) framework and how to lay the foundation for getting traction in a crowded, cluttered marketplace. Learn the 6 “What’s” that every start-up and small business must answer — and how the most successful entrepreneurs have built powerful, profitable brands.
Workshop: Build a Breakthrough Brand with a Clear Competitive Positioning
A clear, definitive competitive brand positioning is essential to brand building. It defines who you are selling to, what your business scope is, and what you do to create value for your customers. It provides strategic guidance on product development, pricing, messaging, and more. In this hands-on workshop, Denise shows you how to craft a competitive brand positioning, including:
- the most effective way to identify and define your target segment(s)
- how to determine an appropriate competitive frame of reference
- three strategies to establish meaningful and lasting differentiation
- the sources that achieve brand credibility among today’s savvy customers
Workshop: Scale-Up Your Brand
Are you looking to grow significantly, expand your scope, or hit a new milestone? You need a solid strategic brand platform…and Denise will show you how to develop one. In this one-day, hands-on, fast-paced workshop, you will learn all the tools you need to develop a strong, valuable, sustainable brand strategy that will ignite your growth and help you scale. Set the foundation for your brand to inspire true customer loyalty, improve your profit margin, and increase the longevity of your business.
Clients Rave About Denise Lee Yohn
Denise really took the time to understand our organization and our challenges. Her presentation was insightful and included many actionable tips for our teams.
Eugenio Caballero
CEO, Sigma Alimentos Mexico
Denise delivered an outstanding presentation to the 1000 participants to the STIMA Congress in Brussels. She translated her vision on what great brands do into ready-to-use tools and made her methodology very actionable.
Jean Cornet
Senior Director Deloitte / President, STIMA Congress
One of the best experts in this domain. Her authentic communication style and connection with the audience was immediate and she captivated their attention for the entire duration of her presentation.
Geneviève Fortier
SVP, McKesson Canada
What you said was so practical, so implementable – not blue sky, rather a blue print on what to do.
Mike Todaro
Managing Director, AAPNetwork
“You were our highest rated speaker as people loved the handouts, the stories and the passion with which you spoke.”
Jay Walter
EO, Australia
Our goal for conferences and events is to ‘engage, enlighten and entertain,’ and boy, did Denise deliver on all three!
Chris Rowe
Director of Marketing Services, Strategic Market Alliance
“You really are helping us get to the next level as a corporation and I’m excited for that and deeply appreciative.”
John Cochrane
President and CEO, Human Good
“I appreciate all the work you put into your keynote. It was an amazing fit with our strategy and such a timely message.”
Michelle Suzuki
CMO, RizePoint
“Denise hit the ground running and never let up.”
Mara Ferguson
Keynote Liaison, ZingTrain/Zingerman's
“You were the highlight of the day! All the feedback that I’ve heard can be summed up in one word: PERFECT! Right message, right time and very well delivered.”
Dawn Murray
Director, Export Development Canada
Denise captured the attention of the audience with her empathy, deep knowledge of the subject and intense communication.
Roberto Meir
CEO, Grupo Padrao
Wow – you were amazing!! Such a practical and powerful message and presentation.
Verne Harnish
CEO, Gazelles
You took the time to make connections back to our Coaches day-to-day realities and everyone is still talking about how valuable (and fun!) it was.
Ruth Dinora Cornejo
Customer Experience, Ford Motor Company
World class. Even over Zoom you could see Denise’s expertise and feel her passion for the work of building great brands.
Cammie Dunaway
Chief Marketing Officer, Duolingo
Denise is a natural giver in her talks – she shares rich content generously, with humor and heart.
Denise is awesome on stage – a real dynamic presence.
A perspective we usually don’t hear but desperately need to.
Her authentic communication style and connection with the audience was immediate.
She ranks among the very best speakers I’ve encountered.
The best speaker ever…Thank you for opening our eyes!
Joe Dominiak
Managing Partner & EVP, Skyline Chili
Thank you for a great keynote to close our event – It was a huge hit!
Stephanie Glassford, CMP
Event Manager, RE/MAX INTEGRA OA
Denise’s presentation was thought-provoking, powerful, and challenged our sales team to think and understand the secrets behind great brands.
Bernadette Van Osdal
SVP, Triad Retail Media and eBay Advertising
Thought provoking and focused. I highly recommend Denise to anyone who wants to better understand the value of great brands and how they can be cultivated in any organizational setting.
Curt Swindoll
EVP Strategy, Pursuant
Denise’s incredible pre-work, on behalf of her audience, enabled her to hook the attendees from the start of the session and keep us focused with rapt attention throughout.
Jeff Lindeman
Senior Director, Talent & Engagement, San Diego International Airport
Your talk provided us with a framework as to how to operationalize our brand to achieve our Billion Dollar vision!
Stephanie Gallo
E&J Gallo Winery
Nothing short of amazing in front of a very passionate and outspoken audience. She was fabulous!
Emily McNulty
Owner, Moxi Events
Best speaker of the day… a fresh perspective.
Mike Fox
Director, Global Vertical Marketing, Facebook
You were truly a hit with our clients from top travel companies…and our offices and staff really took it to heart and truly enjoyed your presentations and workshops.
Jenny Adams
CEO, Discover the World
Your presentation was engaging, insightful and added great value to our event.
Edmond Walters
Founder and CEO, eMoney Advisor
Your presentation was superb and provided a great depth of valuable insights. Your charismatic and knowledgeable way of providing information made the session that much more enjoyable.
Christina de Vaca
Director, Master of Science in Executive Leadership, University of San Diego
Denise’s keynote took our customer summit to new heights. She did her research, hit all of the points we’d discussed, and used provocative insights and examples. Her talk was inspiring and informative – worth every penny!
Ken Romley
President and CEO, Zift Solutions
Our attendees, who are owners of fast casual restaurants, learned a lot about social marketing from Denise. She’s a dynamic and engaging speaker and really tailored her presentations to our audience. Attendees left fired up!
Cherryh Butler
Conference Producer, Fast Casual Executive Summit
We were privileged to have Denise serve as a panel member for our Brand Strategy breakouts. Her experience and insights were amazing and helped to make the conference a huge success. She is brilliant and entertaining – able to point out a unique twist or opportunity on what might otherwise be a very clinical case analysis.
Mark G. Anderson
Conference Producer, Business Growth Conference, coordinated jointly by the Harvard Business School Alumni Association and Marshall School of Business Alumni Association
Many thanks to you for your contribution to Dine America, I thought your talk was informative, interesting, and entertaining. I received a lot of compliments, and hope you did too!
Sam Oches
Editor, QSR Magazine
Denise Yohn gave a stimulating talk to my Brand Management class at UCSD’s Rady School of Management. Students had great feedback about her practical techniques for clarifying brand essence and enjoyed learning that successful brands usually operate in transcendent emotional space. We hope to welcome her back again soon!
Tina Klein
Rady School of Management, University of California, San Diego
Denise outlined a detailed roadmap for retailers for building their brands. In today’s intensively competitive retailing environment, the various concepts such as the brand platform and tools such as the brand touchpoint wheel that Denise covered in her presentation represent timely and important to retailers, big and small.
Rajan Varadarajan
Distinguished Professor of Marketing and Ford Chair in Marketing & E-Commerce, Mays Business School at Texas A&M University, The Retailing Summit
Denise is awesome onstage – a real dynamic presence. She brought insightful comments and a lot of energy to the session.
Anam Alpenia
Conference Producer, Red Herring North America
We wanted someone who could stretch our thinking. The attendees were blown away by her presentation. We were very pleased with the depth of her experience and her ability to easily communicate that to a broad audience base.
Sabrina Brown
Conference Producer, Canadian Tourism Commission Board of Advisors Annual Retreat
Contact Denise to learn how she will customize her topics to your organization's needs.
