The session at our Practice Excellence Conference which really got the most positive feedback was lead by Heather Townsend. Based on that, I think we will be working with Heather Townsend again.
Our delegates absolutely loved Heather. Her style is very personable, relaxed and encouraged interactivity with the delegates which they liked. I am 100% sure we will be working with Heather again.
I saw Heather Townsend speak to my Warwick MBA course on networking and so booked her to speak to the PAIE (Netherlands) to run a networking workshop. I am delighted that I booked her as she scored the highest of any presenter on the day with scores of 9/10 from over 100 delegates. In the feedback delegates said she was engaging, interesting, brilliant, very useful and entertaining. She was easy to work with and comes highly recommended.
13 reasons to book Heather for your next event for accountants:
- Heather is a top online influencer for the Accountancy Profession globally. She speaks to accountants around the world which means you know she really understands accountants, wherever they are in the world. In fact:
- the ICAEW (Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales) decided in 2015 that Heather was the number one online influencer for the accountancy profession.
- Getapp decided in 2017 that Heather was one of the top 5 global influencers for accountants.
- Sage decided Heather was number 19 in their list of top 100 global influencers for businesses
- She is the author and founder of The Accountants Millionaires’ Club. A resource for accountants who want to grow a ‘future-ready’, ‘cloud-based’, ‘advisory-led’ one million pound accountancy practice with over 40% profit margin.
- The ICAEW, ACCA, CIMA, AAT, South Africa Accounting Academy, AccountingWeb, Accountancy Age, Xero have all trusted her to speak to their audiences of accountants which means you can trust her to deliver for your events for accountants.
- She is one of the very few credible thought leaders for the accountancy profession who is under 45 and female. This will help you attract more of the younger partners and practice owners, as well as the female accountants to your events. By booking Heather, she will also provide some much needed diversity to the speakers you are planning to use for your event.
- Heather writes a paid column for CCH in the UK and is a featured blogger for AccountingWeb and Big4.com. She is also a brand ambassador for Accounting Web’s Practice Excellence programme. This means that you know Heather knows her stuff and will make your audience stop and think.
- She is a fellow of the Professional Speaking Association in the UK and Ireland, which is the nearest you can get to a guarantee that Heather will have your delegates talking positively about your event for years to come. (She is one of the youngest speakers in the UK who is seen to have earned the right to be a fellow)
- She came to speaking from a background of training accountants at BDO LLP, so you know that she can engage and motivate an audience of accountants to take action.
- She will help you publicise your event through her extensive communities on Twitter (12k+ followers), and LinkedIn (4300+ followers) and her targeted mailing list of over 5000+ accountants, lawyers and consultants
- She is an award-winning author of 4 books; ‘The FT Guide To Business Networking’, ‘The Go-To Expert’, ‘How to make partner and still have a life’ (co-authored with Jo Larbie), and ‘Poised for Partnership’. This means you have the reassurance that Heather is a known and credible expert in the areas of ‘marketing and selling yourself’, (e.g. networking, winning new clients, being the go-to expert) practice management and career progression in the professions.
- Heather’s been commission to write, featured in or quoted in The Telegraph, The Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, The Financial Times, Economia, Accountancy Age, XU Magazine, AccountingWeb and many other accountancy trade publications.
- If Deloitte, PwC, BT, The Telegraph and Warwick Business School trust her to deliver for their events, you can too.
- Along with the credibility of being an FT published author, she brings fresh thinking and is definitely not ‘pale, male and stale’. Your audience will not be bored with Heather!
- Delegates consistently rank Heather as one of the best speakers at events she is involved in. See more feedback here
- Your audience will be entertained with her unique brand of humour, whilst coming away motivated to do things differently
Heather and her team made it so easy to work with them and put on the event. They were responsive to all our requests and prompt at communicating with us. It really felt like we were “one team”. Nothing was too much bother for Heather and her team. Heather provided unique content to help us generate buzz before the event with our ideal audience, and emailed her list to increase attendees to the event.
The response was so positive to both events that we have taken out full page press advertisements as a result of the event to carry on the conversation with delegates and keep the momentum going. The videos taken are providing us with high quality video content to help us cement our position as thought-leaders in our marketplace.
We now have initial plans to make these events annual and to carry on working with Heather and her team in the future.
I’ve heard Heather speak to our MBA students and alumni in person and virtually many times now. She always manages to engage her audience and leave them motivated to take action. Her IP is fresh and always easy to “get” and her use of stories and humour are really valued by her audiences. I was amazed how she had a recent audience of 170 MBA students, many of whom were beyond tired and jet lagged at the end of the day, eating out of her hand. If you are a business school or professional services firm looking for a speaker on networking, becoming a ‘Go-To Expert’ or ‘How to make partner’ then I can highly recommend Heather.
About Heather
Heather is always up for a challenge. Perhaps this is why she specialises in, predominantly, helping accountants, lawyers & consultants market and sell themselves. Either to profitably grow their practice, take the final step up to partner or create work-winning conversations with new clients. You know, the really difficult bit, how to actually kick the door down to get a meeting with a potential client.
In fact, over the last 12 months Heather has supported her clients to build their profile, differentiate themselves, grow their reputation, and in the process add over £1 million in fees to their client portfolio, and often make partner in the process. These include:
- An audit client securing a £200k contract with a new utilities company client
- A 120+ accounting firm being 6 months ahead of forecast as a result of our work together
- A 150+ global consulting firm used our ‘Go To Expert’ programme as an entry for a prestigious award. They used our programme as they have tangible proof that it has impacted the top and bottom line of their firm, and been a driver in helping them generate new clients to achieve their target of 27% annual revenue growth.
Each year the Pro-Group puts together a number of candidate events directed at career advice and coaching. In 2016, we partnered with Heather Townsend in order to focus on candidates that wished to make Partner.
As a thought leader and published author, Heather was the perfect person to undertake these sessions and we were not disappointed.
Both events were fully booked and over 400 people registered across the two events. The attendees across the board rated Heather as a speaker as ‘excellent’ and ‘brilliant’. Not an easy feat, as lawyers are a very tough audience! Our delegates really valued Heather’s creative and humorous talk and found her truly engaging. Her talk caused many ‘pennies to finally drop’ and multiple ‘light bulb’ moments for the delegates. We are finding that our consultants are now having different type conversations with the delegates that attended the events.
Who Heather works with:
Her work splits into 5 distinctive areas:
- Helping high potential accountants, lawyers and consultants take the step up to partner by building a cast-iron business and personal case
- Supporting small practice owners, mainly accountants and lawyers to grow their practice
- Working with intact sector teams to radically increase their new client leads and wins without resorting to cold calling
- Helping business book authors grow their business through writing their own book.
- Helping students and alumni of business schools achieve their career and business goals via their network and networking activities
Accolades and endorsements include
- Becoming a fellow of The Professional Speaking Association of UK and Ireland in 2015.
- ICAEW deciding that Heather was the number one online influencer for the accountancy profession in 2015. (ICAEW #ROAR)
- Economia decided Heather was in the top 50 influencers on finance & business on social media in 2013, 2014 and 2015.
- Judging the Practice Excellence Awards in 2015 and 2016, British Accountancy Awards in 2011, 2012, 2015 and Women in the city’s Future Leader Awards 2016
- Publishing 3 books with Financial Times Publishing and Kogan Page, which have collectively been translated into over 7 different languages, sold over 20,000 copies and received over 150 five star reviews on Amazon.
I’ve now seen Heather speak at three events, I’ve hosted. She is great at engaging with the audience and getting them to laugh. Her audience come away inspired to implement her great tips on networking. If you are looking for a keynote speaker who your audience will love, or a speaker who can help you get people talking and building relationships at your next client/networking event, then I highly recommend Heather.
When Heather is not speaking, coaching or writing she can be found…
