Dean Brenner

We discuss in every single workshop the power and importance of knowing your audience. It is a fundamental belief here at The Latimer Group, and we embrace the fact that knowing your audience is a key differentiator between mediocre and great communication skills. Here is a story to illustrate the point. We partner with many […]

We live in a world of distractions, constant and loud. We are expected to be available to everyone all the time, we compete for mindshare with unlimited amounts of content and entertainment, we have a social media landscape which can turn every day into an all-day conversation with friends all over the world. Quieting the […]

Recently I had an outstanding customer service experience in my small town in Connecticut. My wife and I decided that a 100+ year old walnut tree needed to come down. It was now a risk to our house in a storm, and we decided it needed to go. So we called a company we have […]

Today’s post was written by Kelly Slater, co-owner of Slater’s Garage Ads & Audio. This afternoon I made a sales presentation to a client remotely, using a screen-sharing app. Of course, it involved a multiple-slide PowerPoint presentation (because the common thinking is that customers NEED to see your offer, idea, strategy, etc. in a multi-page […]

Recently we shared a framework my colleagues and I use at The Latimer Group,  that captures the different levels of delivery skills possible for business communication. We got a great deal of reaction on that piece, including a question via Twitter from good friend John. John asked, “What happens when you need to work on […]

There are lots of ways to think about how we speak, and the way we deliver our message in the workplace. There is no one single standard for what is required and what is considered “great.” Authenticity always needs to rule the day, and we all need to have the confidence to speak in our […]

We write all the time in this space about the importance of getting to the point. No one likes to sit in a meeting, or presentation or on a conference call and listen to someone delay or ignore the most important information. We hate it when others do that to us. And yet many, if […]

We recently contributed another article to our friends at Switch and Shift, a business blog focused on “the human side of business.” Our latest piece is called, “Leadership is One Big Sandbox,” and is all about the little demonstrations of respect that we as leaders need to show our coworkers every day, and how even […]

Simply get to the point. I write about this topic a lot… and I keep writing about it, because every day we see people speak who take their sweet time getting to the point. We are all busy, we are all suffering from reduced attention spans, and we all hate sitting in meetings, presentations or […]

We spend an incredible amount of time speaking with our clients about capturing attention right up front when we speak. In a hyper-speed, over-scheduled, attention-starved world, it is critical that we have the skills to capture our audience’s attention right away. Otherwise, they will never engage, they won’t be listening, and they won’t absorb anything […]