Biography of Ed Rigsbee

Ed Rigsbee, Certified Speaking Professional, will help your organization to Elevate Your Business Relationships from Ordinary to Extraordinary. He is the President of Rigsbee Research. He is a nationally recognized expert on strategic alliance development and implementation, with a marketing sub-specialty. Resulting from his extensive research in the area of strategic alliances, he created the Total Organizational Partnering System (TOPS) that he reefers to as the Star of Success. He is the author of the following books:

• PartnerShift-How to Profit from the Partnering Trend
• Developing Strategic Alliances
• The Art of Partnering
• Brian Gets To Play
• Customer Service Screw Ups-Learn from the Mistakes of Others (Forthcoming)

With more than 1,500 published articles to his credit, Rigsbee continues to be a regular contributor to business, trade and professional publications throughout North America. He has been an adjunct professor for both the Universities of California at Santa Barbara and California Lutheran University. Further, he has served as a Dun & Bradstreet Foundation trainer delivering full-day; sales, customer service, teambuilding, and management seminars across the USA.

Ed brings extensive sales, marketing and strategic management expertise to the platform along with his current research work. He shares his real-world experiences; from retail and sales management positions, his work in the hospitality industry, his work in distribution and as owner of a manufacturer representative firm. His presentations, based on the idea of a mutually beneficial partnering philosophy have evolved through his years of research and teaching management, marketing, and selling skills.

What has earned Rigsbee favor with corporations and national associations throughout North America is his ability to synthesize industry specific information along with proven success strategies and offer workable organizational and industry-wide solutions.

Ed and his wife Regina have two sons, Ryan and Jonathan. They have been married and resided in Thousand Oaks, CA since 1974. Besides his speaking, writing and consulting activities, he (infrequently) enjoys snow skiing and scuba diving. He is an active United States Soccer Federation licensed referee.

Ed has been an active member of the National Speakers Association since 1988 and holds the Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) designation, one that less than 10% of the International Federation membership holds.

In 1999, he founded an annual fund raising party at the National Speakers Association's annual convention that has, to date, given over $100,000 to the National Speakers Association Foundation's Professional Speakers Benefit Fund and over $80,000 to the Hereditary Disease Foundation's Laura's Hope project. The event has now grown into an IRS recognized 501 (c) (3) public charity, Cigar PEG, Inc., of which Ed is the executive director.

PRESENTATIONS

Accelerated Business Growth Through Strategic Alliances
(Keynote or full-day workshop)

Increase your marketing share instantly!
o Get instant access to the strength, capabilities, and experience of others.
o Plug into an established network of loyal customers ready to buy from you.
o Access the brilliance of combined brand traction. 

Get all this and more through Strategic Alliances.
 
Strategic alliances give you a dramatically faster and more cost effective growth option by leveraging the assets of others.  To get these amazing results, you have to be strategic, flexible, and collaborative – but you have to be careful.  50% of alliances fail – by knowing how to choose the right partners you will eliminate squandered time and resources.
 
In the Accelerated Business Growth through Strategic Alliances program, Ed draws from his books, Developing Strategic Alliances and PartnerShift along with years of helping organizations access their strategic advantage through alliance development. Ed's depth of expertise combined with his inspirational style of speaking will leave your audience with a sense of purpose.  Because Ed believes that business is about results not excuses, he delivers ready-to-use tools that will immediately impact their lives and your organization’s profitability.
 
Ed makes strategic alliance development as easy as ABC…
 
A – assess your own capabilities
B – be sure about your partner
C – conduct a pre-alliance agreement workshop
D – determine alliance structure
E – execute the agreement
F – fuel the implementation
G – great results require measurement and management

Business is About Results, Not Excuses!

Do you need better results? I’ve said it time and again; business is about results, not excuses! I'll bet you’ve heard the following three basic excuses far too many times.

1. I’ll get to it later.
2. I don’t know how to do that.
3. I tried, but it didn’t work.
 
Collaboration in the workplace is a necessity for results. In an effort to help your employees achieve better results, try the following replies the next time you hear one of the above excuses:
 
Reply to excuse #1. Your self-talk either fuels or extinguishes your passion to achieve, so could you talk to yourself about something else?
 
Reply to excuse #2. Who in our organization does know? Try developing a partnering alliance with them.
 
Reply to excuse #3. Perhaps it was your method of implementation? What implementation skill or knowledge are you currently missing?