Jeff Tobe

Certified Speaking Professional, Jeff Tobe’s credentials are impressive. Insider Magazine dubbed him “The Guru of Customer Experience” and readers of Convention & Meetings Magazine chose him as one of their favorite speakers with other celebrities including Bill Clinton, Anderson Cooper, Condoleezza Rice and Daniel Pink. He is a creativity and customer experience expert, professional speaker and bestselling author who works with companies and organizations who want to increase their bottom line by changing their customer experience and retaining great talent.

Tobe founded Coloring Outside the Lines in 1994 and since then has worked with hundreds of clients ranging from ones with less than 20 employees to Fortune 500 companies including Microsoft, PepsiCo, Bank of America, ReMax International and many more!

Jeff Tobe’s most requested programs focus on CREATIVITY/INNOVATION, CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE and EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT. His high-energy, high-fun and high-content programs create the ideal presentation for any kind of corporate or educational forum.

His articles have been read in hundreds of publications and he is the author of the hugely popular book, Coloring Outside The Lines. He is the co-author of three other books and his newest book, ANTICIPATE: Knowing What Customers Need Before They Do is quickly becoming one of the hottest business books on the market. He is also the creator of the Touch Point Focus initiative in which he helps clients re-examine their customer touch points.

Coloring Outside the Lines: Creating a NEW Customer Experience

This high-energy, participatory, humorous session has received outstanding reviews from diverse groups around the world. Certified Speaking Professional, Jeff Tobe, challenges you to step outside your comfort zone in positioning yourself more creatively than ever before. He provides the insight you require to give yourself the ‘competitive edge’ for which we all strive in your industry/profession today!

To be effective in today’s marketplace, you must force yourself to look at your organization’s EXPERIENCE from a different perspective.

Tobe is not just entertaining—he provides real ‘tools’ to creatively ENGAGING your internal and external stakeholder. With the push to competitive advantage in the marketplace, Jeff encourages people to stop competing on customer service!

He believes in the power of creativity to look at business from a new perspective and accept that customer service is no longer the bar that distinguishes us from our competitors. We now have to consider our internal and external customers’ EXPERIENCES from the minute they make contact with us to the minute they are done!

Jeff encourages you to “start considering every one of your TOUCHPOINTS–those opportunities you or your people have to affect the customer/stakeholder/member experience. Allow people to ‘tweak’ their own touch points and, collectively, change the experience.

He addresses the concept of seeing the world through their eyes—from their perspective! Most important, his sessions are upbeat, interactive and FUN!

Let's Get Engaged!

“Only 50% of workers in the U.S. are committed to and engaged in their work”
State of the American Workforce report / Gallup 2014

In this presentation, Certified Speaking Professional, Jeff Tobe DOES NOT ask you to marry him!! What he does is make you aware of how important it is to get people engaged at what they do every day. Business is changing at lightning speed. What if we looked internally to make it easier externally? In other words, what if we considered how to get our selves, our team and our stakeholders more engaged at what they do so that it will ultimately have an impact on the ‘customer’ experience?

In his usual high-energy, high-humor and high-content style, Jeff walks audiences through the “Four Pillars of Engagement”…

Creativity
Curiosity may have killed the cat but it’s the one resource that most successful professionals have discovered that they need to foster in their team. Creativity leads to innovation and, as you may already know, this has been Jeff’s passion and focus for 20+ years! To get people invested in your organization, you have to encourage them to be more curious in looking for alternative solutions, being incredible problem solvers and in asking the right kinds of questions of their internal and external customers.

Commitment
Commitment is at the heart of every successful organization, and commitment is always about relationships. It’s about commitment to the customer EXPERIENCE by examining every “touch point” we have; any opportunity we have to impact that experience! Gain a competitive advantage with trustworthy leaders, loyal team managers and clients who commit to the integrity of your organization and of the project.

Accountability
At every level of the organization, people have to do more than just WANT to be accountable, they have to act “as if…” Engagement without accountability equals chaos. Jeff demonstrates ways in which we can get our people more accountable for their actions and decisions. He believes in the rule that “If you are 100% accountable for the ‘now”, there can be 0 excuses in the future”.

Communication
Engagement starts and ends with open communication. A recent New York times survey found that 78% of workers polled in diverse industries mentioned poor communication at the root of challenges with their managers, colleagues and customers. What an amazing opportunity! Jeff shares techniques to make your people more aware of their communication and to give them the tools to better themselves. Join an elite 22% nationwide who DO get it!

Outside-the-Lines Leadership

The “Creative Leader” is largely distinctive from the “Effective Manager” according to Certified Speaking Professional, Jeff Tobe. Learn how to understand the “styles” of your “stakeholders” and be able to get “buy in” to your ideas.

What does this mean to you? If you can’t appreciate the need for outside-the-lines leaders in your own organization, you can’t possibly survive in any profession. Strong words? Perhaps! But, keep in mind that in this increasingly competitive marketplace, people want to do business with—work with, work for—people who display the qualities of a great leader—not just an efficient manager. Jeff believes that the societal and economic turmoil we now face can be traced to one overarching cause—our failure to be accountable for what we do.

In his program, “Outside-the-Lines Leadership”, Jeff shows attendees that truly communicating with their follower (internal AND external) can take on whole new meaning if they change their mindset and buy into the concept of TOTAL ACCOUNTABILITY in leadership. He believes that we need to understand our follower better and then work with them in a way in which they NEED to be worked with—NOT the way we have worked with them in the past! Most importantly, you’ll learn how to analyze the differences between managing and leading and you will discover why quality leadership spills over into your personal life as well.

No matter which program he is presenting, Jeff Tobe is energetic, humorous and insightful all at the same time. To keep our diverse group of technical services people engaged for 2 hours is a feat unto its own. — VP Training & Development, Veolia Environmental Services

There he was, Jeff Tobe, one of the most dynamic and thought-provoking speakers I’ve ever encountered, was delivering his presentation on “Coloring Outside the Lines: Creating a New HR Experience”. Besides finding myself laughing and occasionally clapping at Jeff’s anecdotes, I learned from him some brilliant, novel perspectives on internal customer experience — Corporate Training Specialist, UC Berkeley

Jeff was a last minute addition to our agenda and we have never used an outside speaker in the past! What a hero I am! He not only brought a completely different perspective to our group, but his energy and his enthusiasm were contagious. We plan on brining Jeff back two more times this year — Senior Partner, Signature Financial