David Salyers
PROFILE
David Salyers was one of the original two marketing executives at Chick-fil-A. He spent 37 years in the Marketing Department helping to shape its marketing success including the iconic Cow Campaign. He most recently served as Vice President of Marketing, Growth and Hospitality. Starting with Chick-fil-A four hours after college graduation, his first office was in a mobile home attached to an airfreight warehouse in Hapeville GA.
He had a front row seat to watch the organization grow from those humble beginnings to a multibillion-dollar organization with over 2500 locations around the country and around the world. Having worked at Chick-fil-A for most of his career, he saw how the principles of servant leadership and generosity helped to build a remarkable brand and culture. He is now using his experience, expertise and passion to spark the growth of individuals, teams and organizations wanting to do the same.
David attended Wake Forest University, the Universidad de Madrid and graduated from the University of Georgia Business School. David currently serves as a board member for numerous organizations and has helped launch several startups and nonprofits. David has been an enthusiastic supporter of the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business. He has had particular interest the Terry College Institute for Leadership Advancement. He is a member of the Terry Dean‘s Advisory Council currently serving as the Chairman. He has been a winner of the Bulldog 100 award on multiple occasions. In 2017, David was awarded of the University of Georgia, Terry College of Business, Distinguished Alumni Award. In 2019 he was appointed as the inaugural Startup Mentor Executive in Residence for UGA.
Throughout his career, David has had a passion to serve leaders who are equally committed to building remarkable brands and cultures. He intuitively sees the potential in others and organizations, learning from his time at Chick-fil-A, that the counterintuitive approach is often the best one. After participating in and learning from the extraordinary success of Chick fil A, David realized the business principles used to catapult that organization can work anytime and anywhere… No matter the size of the team or company. He endeavored to capture many of those principles and lessons in his book Remarkable! which he co-authored with Dr. Randy Ross. The book debuted on Feb 16, 2016 as the #1 selling Business Management book on Amazon.
Now, David is attracted to the opportunity to help companies create a competitive advantage by building Remarkable! cultures and brands. He is on a mission to help create brands and cultures more defined by meaning than money… organizations that achieve success… in a manner that redefines it!
SPEAKING TOPICS
Spark a Revolution
What organization doesn’t want to create more sales? But truly remarkable organizations aren’t focused on increasing sales, they’re focused on creating raving fans.
Raving fans are people who
1) are happy to pay full price,
2) come more often and
3) tell other people about your organization.
In this talk, Former Chick-fil-A Marketing VP David Salyers recounts Chick-fil-A’s biggest successes and shares the principles and strategies behind those successes that you can use to connect deeply with customers, who ultimately demand and fund your business growth.
Remarkable
How many businesses do you come across in a day that are just plain unremarkable? They have nothing unique that sets them apart from their competitors, and they exist only to extract value from their customers. To put it simply, there’s nothing about these types of organizations that’s worth remarking about.
But what if we could shift the paradigm? What if we could truly understand what makes certain businesses “remarkable” and apply those principles to our own organizations?
In this signature talk, David Salyers powerfully does just that. In “Remarkable,” David will walk through how the shift from extracting value from other people to creating value for other people can radically change your business and the impact it will make to your customers, employees, stakeholders and even your bottom line.
Exploring key themes on culture, values, and mission, “Remarkable” is an engaging and memorable speech that has the potential to impact you and your organization to the very core.
Meaningful
Every business exists to make money; there’s no question about that. However, the bigger question is – is that all your business exists to do?
The reality is that most businesses don’t have a purpose beyond financial success, and the result is that they become commodities that can be easily replicated or, worse still, easily forgotten.
However, what the world’s greatest organizations know is that having a purpose beyond money is one of the most critical components of lasting success.
In “Meaningful,” David masterfully shares how great brands attach meaning to their basic product and service offerings, which in turn multiplies the value they are creating for customers. Using compelling service and marketing examples from businesses like Chick-fil-A, Nike, The Ritz Carlton, and Uber, “Meaningful” will both inspire and instruct your organization to think beyond making marginally more money, and instead to realizing your limitless potential.
Leadership Calling
What is the purpose of great leadership? Is it to have the most power? Get the most credit? Have the most followers? Be the best? Or is it something deeper, richer… Is it to create a lasting impact for your organization that is far greater than you and lasts far beyond the scope of your life?
In this memorable leadership talk, David explores the connections between leadership, stewardship, and culture, and discusses the idea that each of our “leadership calling” is to be good stewards.
Using powerful visual examples as well as concepts from the world of physics, David shares how a leadership mindset focused on service, collaboration, and inspiration can create a wave for good that will impact your organization – and maybe even the world – in an unforgettable way.
Remarkable Hospitality
When businesses consider their customer experience strategy, they often focus on mitigating the negative experiences – making up for the slow service, apologizing for the inconsiderate employee, refunding for the lost order.
By focusing only on the problems that need to be fixed, they set the bar at average or, at best, forgettable.
But there’s a new approach to customer experience, an approach that focuses on creating memorable positive experiences – “peak moments” – instead of just fixing the negative ones.
In this compelling talk, David will explore this paradigm shift and challenge the way your organization approaches hospitality and service. Using moving examples from Chick-fil-A Team Members across the country, he’ll expand on the ROI potential in creating daily peak moments and will challenge you to see business as not only an opportunity for monetization, but also for “moment-ization.”
