Biography of George Lucas

George Lucas has been active in business education, executive development, and organizational consulting since the early eighties. An MBA and Ph.D. graduate of Columbia, he accepted a faculty position with Texas A&M University, where he served as one of the founding members of the internationally recognized, Center For Retailing Studies. In 1995 and 1996 he was honored as one of U of M's outstanding educators. George is the author of several leading books, including Marketing Strategy Text , Marketing Strategy and Plans , A Lens For Life , and Symbiotic Selling. George's presentations energize people with the skills necessary to succeed in today's challenging marketplace. He is highly regarded as a speaker, and is an expert in marketing strategy.

Most Requested Topics:

Strategic Alliances: "Building Productive Trade Alliances in a Turbulent Business World." This program investigates the reasons organizations are rushing to form more alliances and what must be done to make these alliances exceed all parties needs and expectations.

Collaborative Negotiation: "Negotiating For Better Solutions through a Win-Win Approach." This material takes a thorough look at the role of negotiation in relationships today, and lays the foundation for success using the win-win or collaborative approach. While win-win has been mistakenly seen by hard-ball negotiators as playing a strong hand weakly, in reality it is the key to growing the size of everyone's solution.

Marketing Strategy: "Recognizing and Capitalizing on Market Opportunities." Most organizations today struggle with how to maintain or infuse growth in their business. This program covers how to capitalize on opportunities, providing direction in assessing the fit of opportunities to an organization's mission and competencies.

Personal Strategic Planning: "Personal Strategic Planning for Success With Balance." More roles and fewer resources are a formula for life crisis that most employees face today. This life-changing program gives participants a process and workbook to plan all their SLUs (Strategic Life Units) for greater happiness and success in all their roles.

Retailing: "Attracting Profitable Consumers in Retailing's New Era." With more retail space chasing a highly fickle and situational customer, this program provides retail managers and employees with direction on how to position and operate their stores to attract and retain business at higher margins.

Profit-Impact Selling: "Are You Building Sales or Building Relationships? Your Future Rests With The Answer." This program contrasts the strategy and required skill sets for short-term transactional selling and consultative relationship building. All signs point to a much greater role for the latter in firms that will survive and prosper into the next century. Skills addressed here are key for firms wanting more dynamos than dinosaurs.

Category Management: "A Proven Process To Deliver Greater Customer Loyalty, also Profitable for Vendors and Retailers." Many manufacturers, wholesalers, and retailers see category management as a quick fix for all that ails marketing channels. This program provides a realistic overview of what this most recent customer focus catalyst can and cannot do, and what it will take to make it work.