What futurists (or “futurologists”) do is to help people plan and prepare for the future, as opposed to offer predictions about the future. This can involve looking at future trends, notably about new technologies and technology trends, and a lot more besides.
If you’re looking for a conference speaker, a keynote speaker, or a workshop presenter or facilitator on this topic, the examples below represent some of the keynote speeches or workshop presentations I’ve given as a futurist speaker in the past. But each presentation is created specifically to suit your needs. If you don’t see a presentation about the future that would work for your conference, by all means contact me, and we’ll see if we can create one specifically for you.
Demographics Is Destiny: How Population Trends Affect the Economy
It’s easy to forget that people are the basis of everything relating to economic trends, including consumer demand, housing, tourism, and potentially even inflation and deflation. Or, to put it another way, without people, there is no economy.
That being the case, how are national and global demographic trends shaping the destiny of tomorrow’s economy?
- As America’s population ages, its labor force growth falls, which leads to lower, slower GDP growth.
- An aging population buys replacements rather than increasing demand, hence an aging consumer force leads to lower economic growth and lower demand.
- Aging boomers will look to sell their family homes, but those who can afford to may wind up with two domiciles instead: one for winter down south, the other for the rest of the year up north. Or one in an urban center, the other in a calmer, more rural setting.
- Meanwhile, younger consumers, especially Millennials, are finally starting their long-delayed move into their household formation years. This will goose demand for housing, cars (somewhat – younger consumers are less interested in car ownership than earlier generations), baby clothes, insurance, and even the beginnings of retirement planning.
- Globally, the developed countries will face significant financial problems because of aging populations, established developing countries (except China, which is aging faster than almost anyone else) are burning through into their “demographic dividends”, and newly developing countries, notably in Africa, with their still-growing populations will win their place in the spotlight as quickly as they can develop stable governments and legal systems that protect property rights.
- All told then, at every level, demographics is signaling a changing of the guard, with some groups losing influence, and others gaining them.
Strategic Selling & Your Desired Future: How Much Money Do You Want to Earn?
This workshop will help you learn how to plan according to what your customers are thinking, with tools that can assist in not only spotting new opportunities, but gaining momentum to secure ‘customers for life.’
These tools help you first identify major goals and objectives that will kindle excitement in you and your organization, and then help you break those major goals down into concrete steps that can take you from where you are, to where you truly want to be.
This is strategic selling that uses sales today as a lever into even greater sales tomorrow. ‘These tools enable you to achieve the future you really want,’ says Richard. ‘You’ll have to work hard to get there, but it will be more than worth it.’
The workshop is comprised of three parts: an overview of the future challenges and opportunities you and your clients will face; the presentation and exploration of The Desired Future, and Backcasting planning tools, and an electronic handbook that you can take back to your organization to help you put these tools into practice.
‘These tools work in conjunction with your existing sales efforts, but can change your business and your life,’ says Richard. ‘All you have to do is use them.’
The Upgrade Society & the Future of Luxury Automobiles
If we learned anything from the Great Recession and its aftermath, it’s that while money sometimes goes into hiding, it’s always around, and the demand for luxury cars tends to persist and rebound faster than for most other kinds of automobiles.
But what’s ahead? With slowing growth both at home and in many parts of the world, with new technologies bursting onto the scene, and with a growing interest in alternative fuels and energy sources, the future seems more uncertain than at any time in the recent past.
Richard Worzel, a Chartered Financial Analyst, strategic planner, and one of today’s leading futurists, covers this and more in a provocative overview of tomorrow, including:
- The nature and prospects for the Upgrade Society, and how to aim for its heart;
- The coming switch in demographics: Where’s the money going, and how do you play for position?
- The technological surprises ahead, and what they mean for the luxury car market;
- Social media: why it’s not just for college kids any more, how to address it, and where it’s going; and
- What climate change means for the driving experience, alternative propulsion systems, and customer preferences.
You’ll come away not only with a better appreciation for the world of tomorrow, but with a toolkit for coping with, and capturing, the uncertainties of the future.
The New Attitudes for Selling Success
Technology and globalization are shifting power from suppliers to decision-makers at both the consumer level, and in business-to-business transactions. This means that the selling propositions and attitudes of yesterday won’t cut it in the markets of today, and will lead to disaster in the markets of the future.
Futurist and strategic planner Richard Worzel will help you survey the changes we are experiencing right now with an eye towards closing sales today while positioning yourself for future success. Along the way, he’ll talk about the power of clientship, the need to earn the first right of refusal on your clients’ business, and how to use informed intuition to plan for both today’s successes and tomorrow’s needs.
This up-beat and enjoyable presentation will help you change Monday morning behavior, and put practical, use-it-now techniques in your sales arsenal that will help you fashion the new attitudes that will take you to new altitudes in sales.