Ken Schmidt’s bread-and-butter keynote is a fascinating story of how businesses of any size and scope can—by focusing on understanding and harnessing the most basic drivers of human behavior—improve their competitiveness and avoid margin-killing commoditization in even the most difficult marketing environments. The road to building a fanatically vocal customer base, creating a passionately loyal corporate culture, and developing leaders who inspire and motivate starts here.

We’re not wired to be loyal to products or services, no matter how well they perform. We’re only capable of being loyal to people and to well-managed brands that successfully humanize their presence by creating emotional resonance with us – even if our prices are higher. It’s time for your customers to evolve from “folks who buy from us,” into “loyal friends who recommend us without being asked,” which means your relationships with them have to evolve from superficial to meaningfully permanent. Customers come and go, but loyalists, like Harley-Davidson tattoos, become part of you and never leave.

When customers care more about what they’re paying than who they’re buying from, businesses lower prices to stay in the mix and leaders ask, “Whatever happened to loyalty?” They ask the same question as they struggle to attract and keep employees in the era of the “Big Quit.” The problem is clear: Businesses of all sizes need to understand the drivers of loyalty and how to harness them if they’re going to be dominant in increasingly commoditized, hard-to-hire market spaces. This is a how-to, natural follow-up to any of Ken’s presentations.

Ken Schmidt’s most requested topic from financial industry clients. With little differentiation among competitors, it’s no wonder potential clients opt to work with “whoever’s closest to my house,” instead of “whoever can best serve my needs.” Or stay away altogether. Where others see futility, there are unprecedented opportunities for growth. Here’s how to change the culture of your financial services business to stand out, create demand and client loyalty in your local markets, fuel marketplace advocacy and take advantage of the look-alike/act-alike competitive environment.