It's been nearly a week since DrivingSales Executive Summit. After sifting through my notes and trying to organize my brain thoughts I came up with my list of top tidbits I'll walk away with and apply (what were yours?):

1. John Boudreau - An investemnt in your people always comes back and multiples. Minimize obstacles for your people that stop them from being great!
2. Dan Zarrella - There is more data in the world than I ever knew... Pictures get more shares, but even the quality of the pictures matter. Somehow some people think that black and white still counts for "#nofilter".
3. Jared Hamilton - There are over 100 competencies that sales people need to be successful. Retaining and growing people comes down to: 1. Assessing thier skills, 2. Developing growth goals, 3. Aligning training to goals/assessments, 4. Measuring success, 5. Incentivizing based on performance.
4. Jim Parker - Build a buisness that your customers want to see succeed and survive. The problem isn't finding the right people, it's building the right enviroment; people adapt to their surroundings.
5. Ken Schmidt - Get your customers to tell stories about you. People don't tell stories about numbers. You know you are a commodity when no one can tell the difference between you and your competition. Speak your customers' language...not yours. 
6. Julie Hoffmann - "If you had half the time to commuincate with your customers, what would you say?" Connecting your systems (integrations) should benefit your customers with better experience and faster processes.

Those were the big ones from the keynoters. Looking back on my notes it was hard to trim it down to these...dang there was a lot of learning packed in to three days. Then of course there is the micsellanious category. 

• Still my favorite eats in Vegas is the Serendipty II Frozen Hot Chocolate with Peanut Butter (craving one now).
• I averaged 17,000 steps per day over 3 days (can anyone beat that?). Side note - never go to DSES without shoe in-soles... never. 
• Favorite quote: "Marketing is solving a problem at a profit." - Jeff Cryder | Canadian Session.
• Virtual reality/augmented reality is on the verge of stepping out of the gaming industry and into the automotive industry.
• Brent Wees has the best hat collection in the world.
• If you want to get into Joe Chura's presentation, come early. 
• Somehow it rains at every DrivingSales event. Vegas gets 4.9 inches of rain a year and its mostly came during the past two DSES events. 
• The Best Idea competition was one of the best ever at DSES.... THOSE WERE AWESOME!

To sum it up this year's DSES was a blur of awesome learning and great times talking to some of the smartest people in the industry. Thank you to everyone who came and made it great. Now time to get off my duff and get to applying some awesome ideas.

What did I miss? Truth is I can't be everywhere so I want to hear your take-aways....