Lou Diamond: [00:00:00] Welcome to Exactly What They Say About Phil.  We are here with Tom Early, Senior Vice President at Citizens Bank. Tom, how are you today?

Thomas Earley: [00:00:10] I am great, Lou. Thank you so much for having me here today.

Lou Diamond: [00:00:13] So, Tom, tell us a little bit about yourself and your organization.

Thomas Earley: [00:00:17] Yeah. Lou, thanks for asking again. Tom, Early Citizens Bank, we are a large regional bank in the New England area all the way through the Midwest.   We focus on customer service and one of the ways that we do that is by listening to our customers. And Phil Jones really helped us do that. So we look forward to talking to you today about Phil.

Lou Diamond: [00:00:32] Absolutely. So what was the specific event you had engaged Phil M Jones for?

Thomas Earley: [00:00:39] Yeah. Thanks for asking. So what we do is every year we bring our sales force together, about 450 colleagues together once a year. We always look for a dynamic keynote speaker to help challenge us, to help give us a good opportunity to improve our sales skills and also to spend a little bit of time thinking about how we can impact our customers. Phil hits each one of those marks.

Lou Diamond: [00:01:01] I don’t know if you’ve looked at other speakers that are out there. What was the main reason you chose Phil Jones for your event?

Thomas Earley: [00:01:11] So Phil really hit the mark for us with regard to practical application of interaction with our customers. One of the things that we like to do at our sales conference is to make sure that we give usable, actionable items that our colleagues can take away and implement in their interaction on a daily basis.  And Phil really filled that role. We look at five to ten speakers every year. We go visit them, we talk to them, we we observe them and Phil really just stuck out for us as being a primary provider of what we’re looking for this year.

Lou Diamond: [00:01:44] So if you could, share a little bit about what he did with your group when he participated, because I know Phil has a unique way of working with groups like yours.

Thomas Earley: [00:01:54] Preparation is key. One of the things that impressed me about Phil is that he took the time to learn about our organization, our leaders, and then took a sample of good conversations with those in the field. So Phil prepared prior to the event.  Then on the week of the event, Phil arrived very early. He was at the venue the day before. He integrated himself into our culture, into our event. He was able to integrate into the sessions that we had preceding his presentation and he was able to integrate that into his presentation to really bring home the fact that he was delivering just for us a very specific presentation that really added to our experience.

Lou Diamond: [00:02:38] Share with us a little bit about the feedback from the attendees of Phil’s presentation, not only yourself, but obviously those that work in your organization.

Thomas Earley: [00:02:49] So we had “back of room sales” and we don’t normally do that. But for this event we had back of room sales and I can tell you that right after Phil was off the stage, we took him back to the back of room where we had some back of room opportunity to have him sign. We had a long line and colleagues were coming to me saying this is the best presentation that they’ve ever seen and they’ve been coming to our sales events for quite some time. They talked about how they could use it not only in their personal life, but also the professional life. They  were so excited about the book. Many of our colleagues had already gone out and purchased the book prior to Phil speaking to us. So he already had a buzz about it. And they also saw him on YouTube so they were very excited to see him there. So it was an exciting high energy and the colleagues got immediate gratification out of, wow, this is something that I can use both in my personal and professional world.

Lou Diamond: [00:03:39] Tom, if you could share the highlights or key takeaways that you personally took away from Phil’s presentation that really resonated with you still today.

Thomas Earley: [00:03:52] One of the things that really resonated with me was being very specific, being very action oriented, being making sure that we are very defined and making sure that we really do some great job in planning and being intentional. Phil did a great job. He tells some amazing stories and connects with the audience and really challenges us to think about the way we’ve been thinking, interacting, the way we’ve been preparing and then moving forward.  I can’t tell you how impressed I was with how he was able to jump off the stage, get into the audience and spend time really engaging “one on one” with our colleagues to make sure that they were getting what he was really giving us as good action items to take home.

Lou Diamond: [00:04:35] Is there one that sticks out for you in particular?

Thomas Earley: [00:04:38] “If/Then”.

Lou Diamond: [00:04:40] Share what that is.

Thomas Earley: [00:04:44] Magic Words…Are you open minded enough to see how he does it and to see how he uses his technology, if you will, and then how he used it in the presentation and he did that with some of his interactions in the audience. It was just fascinating to see our audience who sometimes are a little reticent with the mindset of “They come to a sales conference, sort of like entertain me”.  But these people got engaged and Phil was really able to pull out some good interactions out of some of our colleagues.d

Lou Diamond: [00:05:13] Tom, after a speaker has an impactful event, at the moment an organization is really jazzed and jacked up and they’re all ready to take it to the next level. Since Phil is left, does his message and his key points that he’s helped, your team has that been resonating throughout your organization even still today?

Thomas Earley: [00:05:34] Lou, every day!! I can tell you fact based that every day I’m on a call with our colleagues, on call with our sales force — if I’m on a call with anybody who participated. You can hear the Phil Jones strategies of the contents of Phil Jones book. You can hear it resonate in our conversations. It’s incredible to see how they use the Exactly What To Say material in his book and in our daily process and interactions with ourselves and with our customers.

Lou Diamond: [00:06:09] If you were to speak to another organization, why should they have Phil M Jones be the speaker that they should have at their upcoming event?

Thomas Earley: [00:06:20] He will exceed your expectations. Phil Jones is a true professional. We work with countless speakers over the years, and I can guarantee you that Phil has scored the highest in preparation, delivery and follow-up. And one of the questions I asked Phil when we were preparing for our engagement was, “Phil, what will our team have to take back with them after the presentation?” And Phil was very candid he said “they will be able to execute, and have stronger interactions.” Phil delivered beyond our wildest dreams. It was absolutely an outstanding event and people talk about it to this day.

Lou Diamond: [00:07:06] Can’t thank you enough for coming on today. Tom, thanks for sharing all your opinions about Phil Jones.

Thomas Earley: [00:07:11] Thank you.