Talk Is Cheap at $300 per Head

They’re vivacious and vociferous, blatant and boisterous, articulate and … well, audible. Very audible.

So it’s no wonder Elise Mitchell and Blake Woolsey got together to form Executive Communications Consultants LLC of Fayetteville.

Their mission? To make businesspeople better “presenters” — in other words, better public speakers and better communicators in general.

Since launching their consulting business in the spring of last year, these ladies of locution have done five one-day workshops for J.B. Transport Services Inc. of Lowell, four for Wal-Mart Stores Inc. of Bentonville and two for Arvest Bank of Fayetteville. The workshops, titled “Reaching Peak Performance,” are limited to 15 participants, so about 150 people have attended them so far. They like to keep the one-day workshops small so everyone will have time to do their presentation at the end of the day.

Betsy Reithemeyer, director of corporate affairs for Wal-Mart, said company managers were better communicators after taking the workshop with Woolsey and Mitchell.

“I saw two managers make phenomenal progress in just a day,” Reithemeyer said. “What was so wonderful was [ECC’s] presentation content was applicable to things [the managers] need to do on the job … It gets them to think in a different way. It gets them to organize.”

And, Mitchell said, it’s a bargain at a little less than $300 per person, which includes food, a book and a backpack full of public-speaking survival tools.

Since the workshops are held in Northwest Arkansas, Reithemeyer said, a whole department from Wal-Mart can attend.

“The advantage for us certainly is it’s something we can do as a team, and the entire department is benefiting,” Reithemeyer said. “It builds camaraderie and team spirit … I’m very excited about this program, and to have it here in Northwest Arkansas is phenomenal.”

Mitchell is president of Mitchell Communications Group Inc., a Fayetteville public relations and communications firm whose clients include Wal-Mart, J.B. Hunt and Tyson Foods Inc. Woolsey is a development director for the University of Arkansas.

Together, they’re sort of like a communications tsunami.

PResenter

Public speaking always came easy for Mitchell. While growing up in Carbondale, Ill., she was in plays, musicals and on the speech team at school.

When she discovered that she could make a career out of being a good, articulate speaker, Mitchell knew public relations was the field for her.

She founded Mitchell Communications Group in 1995 when she and her husband moved to Fayetteville from Memphis. After working as a one-person operation for five years, Mitchell hired five employees who work on a consulting basis. Mitchell said her company’s revenue jumped by 176 percent last year.

When people started asking Mitchell to do public-speaking seminars, she thought of Woolsey.

“She’s the best presenter I know,” Mitchell said.

“She’s the best presenter I know,” countered Woolsey, hooking a thumb in Mitchell’s direction.

Woolsey resigned from her job as a senior development officer in the UA’s business school two and a half years ago when her son was born. She has since gone back to the UA on a part-time basis to help with development efforts.

In October 2000, the two women started working on a program for ECC. For six months, they worked on the curriculum, developed exercises and used their friends as guinea pigs.

Then they landed their first client. They did five workshops for J.B. Hunt and traveled to Atlanta and Phoenix to work with the trucking company’s sales and operations teams.

“Their expertise about what they do was off the charts,” Mitchell said.

But the technological whizzes at Hunt weren’t as good at communicating. That’s where Mitchell and Woolsey were able to help.

“We train them to present,” Woolsey said.

After the Hunt workshops, the two women tweaked the program a little. Each time they do another workshop, they tweak it just a little more.

Woolsey and Mitchell then did four workshops for Wal-Mart and two for Arvest Bank.

“We had loan officers who went through the training first,” said Gary Head, president of Arvest in Fayetteville. “It has improved their abilities in loan committee in my opinion, and they seem to have more confidence when they’re presenting in front of a client.”

“Their formal presentation was the best part of the whole class,” said Xochitl (pronounced “sa-chi”) Baxter, a vice president of private banking at Arvest, who attended the workshop. “They were very excited about it, and they made us feel comfortable about everything we were doing … They made it feel like a fun time rather than a class time.”

The Climb

The “Reaching Peak Performance” workshops begin with a general introduction that is followed by a two-minute segment from a National Geographic Society video about climbing Mount Everest.

Workshop participants watch the team prepare to ascend the mountain. They also watch as the team members work together to reach the summit.

“We call this our fearless start,” Mitchell said. “We try to hit them with a bang … The fearless start and fabulous finish is what your audience does not expect.”

Then Woolsey asks the participants if they want to play hooky for the day.

“They idea is we’re going to take you some place away from where you are,” she said.

There are four base camps along the workshop trek: accepting challenge, preparing for the climb, overcoming obstacles and summit fever.

The participants are given backpacks, which contain water, a Power Bar, possibly some trinkets of some kind and a notebook that is chocked full of information to help them along the way. The bags also contain small red-and-white checkered flags that participants give to each other as a reward for doing a job well.

“It ends up being a day that’s strong on team-building and strong on individual [training],” Mitchell said.

Reithemeyer said Wal-Mart liked the flag idea so well, they incorporated it in her department at the company’s headquarters in Bentonville. Wal-Mart also adopted another one of Woolsey and Mitchell’s kudos props: paint brushes that employees can use to stroke coworkers for deeds done well.

The Summit

In the workshop, Mitchell and Woolsey teach that the key ingredients that make a great public speaker are a problem-solving approach, expertise (which includes the desire to be a lifelong learner), articulate speaking and knowledge. Those ingredients form the acronym PEAK.

“One great thing all presenters have is charisma, which comes from a Greek word meaning beautiful gift,” Mitchell said.

Participants draw pieces of paper from a hat. They contain messages like “your first date” or “a favorite relative.” The attendees are then given three minutes to prepare and one minute to do a presentation pertaining to what was written on the paper they got. That’s just to get their feet wet, though. Later, they’re prepared for a longer presentation.

During the workshop, the women show video clips from classic movies such as “The Godfather,” “Rocky” and “Animal House.”

“Hollywood is the best corporate storyteller out there,” Mitchell said.

At this point in the workshop, Woolsey leads a section on storytelling, overcoming obstacles and presentation style. Eye contact, vocal variety, gestures and body language, and confidence are discussed during this section.

At the end of the workshop, Woolsey and Mitchell do private coaching sessions with each attendee. The sessions last 15 to 20 minutes each.