PROGRAMS WHEN & HOW YOU WANT THEM
Marilyn’s programs engage, move, and inspire audiences to shift their thoughts and behavior. Her compelling, timely, content-rich programs are well adapted to virtual, hybrid, and onsite formats.
CUSTOMER SERVICE
& CX PROGRAMS
LEADERSHIP
& TEAM BUILDING
WELLBEING,
HAPPINESS & MINDSET
Keynotes
Breakout Sessions
Training
CUSTOMER SERVICE PRESENTATION TOPICS & DESCRIPTIONS
Who's Your Gladys? How to Turn Tough Customers into Vocal Advocates
Program length options: 1-hour | 90-minute | Half-Day | Full Day
Customers who express emotion, even negative emotions, are more invested in your organization. Learn to manage unhappy customers with finesse and see any challenge as a game you can win. Turn around tense situations and create breakthrough results with even the most cantankerous customers.
"Our company booked Marilyn for a small, corporate retreat. We are a customer service-based industry, and Marilyn's topics hit the nail right on the head. Each employee left our session feeling refreshed, engaged, and ready to take on the most difficult customer! She went above and beyond our expectations and was an absolute pleasure to work with." - Stephanie Porter, Property Manager,
Director of Training, CP Management
Customer Service Edition
of The Happy Class
Program length: Full Day
This isn't your regular training – It's customized into a journey that blends the creation of unforgettable happy customer experiences with empowering teams, all while boosting individual happiness levels! And the results are beyond magical.
Our full-day program is a rollercoaster of laughter, engagement, and "Aha!" moments that will surely fuel immediate action. Because who says learning can't be fun.
"What a fantastic training! Your Happy Class is wonderful as is, but the fact that you took the time to so meticulously tailor it to our theme demonstrated over the top care! Everything from the graphics to the video to the handouts and exercises tied in perfectly and made for a cohesive focus that hopefully will set us all on a positive upward trajectory for the coming year."
~ Cheryl Lacey, Director of Dining, Conferences & Campus Events, Bates College
“Marilyn’s approach was super flexible, and she really made an effort to adjust to our specific needs and context. The result is a set of customer service advisors who not only engaged actively with training but also shared how much more empowered they feel to handle the stress of the role. ‘I now own the call,’ one of them told me. There is real power in that. Thank you, Marilyn!”
~Patrícia Loureiro, Senior Director Global Customer Service, Farfetch
Resilience: Customer Service Training for Advisors/Agents
| Module | Description |
| What to Say to Calm Upset Customers | The goal of session 1 is to enable participants to:
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| Restoring Peace through Challenges and Chaos | The goal of session 2 is to enable participants to:
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| The Three Keys to Success and Happiness When Working with Customers | The goal of session 3 is to enable participants to:
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| Role-play Day | The goal of session 4 is to enable participants to:
|
Getting Personal in an Impersonal World: Connecting with Customers via Telephone and Email
It takes a special set of skills to create strong connections and improve customer loyalty via telephone and email. This training will cover:
- What to do when a customer is yelling/crying/accusing/demanding/name-calling
- Defusing an upset customer quickly, to prevent the explosion
- How to identify and manage hot button issues on the phone and email
- Creating decision trees for phone and email correspondence
- The mechanics of good telephone and email response skills
- Responding to emails for the best possible outcome
The Choice to Excel: Culture-Changing Customer Service Excellence Practices
Come to this workshop and you’ll never see your company culture the same way again. Based on over a year of interviews with the CEO’s and managers of highly successful companies, Marilyn Suttle’s timely interactive session offers proven ways to cultivate a customer service culture that generates loyal customers and long-term referrals. Passion and drive leads executives to develop their expertise, but the need for high competency in creating lasting customer connections is critical for longevity. Gain “works-in-real-life” strategies for bringing out the best in even the most challenging customer service situations.
This program will give you easy to implement skills to put in place immediately after the training. Key issues covered include:
- Impacting your company culture to attract and retain happy customers
- Reviewing internal workplace communication to create an upward spiral of service excellence
- Viewing customer service NOT as a department but a company-wide commitment
- Handling customer complaints effectively in social media
- Gaining the skills for giving uncommon appreciation to internal and external customers
- Generating continuous improvement cycles with accountability action plan for attendees to measure their service culture success
How to Calm Upset Patients and Family Members with Ease
What if you could turn around any tense situation with finesse? Crack the code on managing and calming upset patients and their family members, creating positive relationships that last. De-escalate tense situations quickly and build strong rapport with just about anybody. By growing your composure skills and your ability to identify patient styles, you will turn around even the most difficult relationships with patients, families, and health care professionals, building long-term sustainable connections.
Session objectives:
- Managing and calming upset patients & family members with ease
- Crafting ways to de-escalate tense situations and solve problems quickly and efficiently
- Identifying customer styles (patient styles) to quickly build rapport
- Using creative problem solving to anticipate a positive outcome
- Using “emotional management skills” to handle patients, families, doctors, and co-workers appropriately and skillfully in just about any situation
“The staff commented on how helpful the training was. They appear more confident in handling upset patients both in person and on the phone. They enjoyed the interactive style of your training and once the ice was broken stated everyone participated. This was a positive experience for them as individuals, employees and for our company as a whole.”
~ Kathleen VanPoppelen, Troy Gastro
LEADERSHIP & TEAM BUILDING TOPICS
Future-Ready Teams: Unifying Teams with a Vision for Success
Imagine a workplace where every team member is on the same page, where collaboration feels effortless, and where everyone is pulling in the same direction. That’s what you’ll get with our full or half-day workshop. In this interactive session, your team will use LEGO® bricks to build a shared vision of what it means to be effective and successful together. But this isn’t just child’s play—it's a proven method to break down silos, spark creativity, and solidify a team’s commitment to a common goal. Participants will leave with a concrete, hands-on reminder of the vision they’ve built together, ready to bring that energy and focus back to the workplace.
Key Takeaways:
- Shared Vision: Your team will walk away with a clear, unified vision that everyone is committed to.
- Creative Collaboration: Through playful yet powerful exercises, team members will connect and collaborate in ways that bring out the best in everyone.
- Real-World Application: This isn’t just theory—your team will leave with practical steps to turn their vision into everyday actions that drive results.
"Marilyn Suttle has become a favorite trainer for us at Bates. Able to easily and skillfully adapt her training sessions to whatever theme we choose, she creates engaging, energizing sessions that promote learning, team building, and understanding among participants. This year's LEGO theme (Learn, Elevate, Grow, and Opportunity) had people working independently and together to make visual representations of the things affecting them most and the ways in which they can work together to move forward in positive, enriching ways."
~Cheryl Lacey, Director of DCCE, Bates
"Marilyn's unique personality-based training using sea creatures helps generate understanding in a humorous way that is much more accessible than a full Myers-Briggs or DISC format. She creates engaging, energizing sessions that promote learning, team building, and understanding among participants."
~Cheryl Lacey, Director of DCCE, Bates College
The 4 Motivational Styles: Uniting Teams Through the Wisdom of the SEA
Plunge into strong team dynamics by discovering motivational styles through the fascinating lens of sea creatures. This imaginative approach uplifts and enriches communication, illuminating how recognizing and embracing each team member's unique motivational style can lead to a more cohesive and supportive environment. Perfect for those looking for an entertaining yet deeply impactful team-building experience, "Motivational Styles" is set to transform how your team interacts and collaborates. Entertaining, and enlightening, this program is crafted to spark curiosity, connection, and inspire positive change. Dive in and explore the depths of the value that all four Motivational Styles bring to a team, and what makes your team tick.
Key Takeaways:
- Identify Motivational Styles: Uncover your team’s unique motivational traits through engaging, memorable sea creature analogies.
- Enhance Empathy & Communication: Foster deeper understanding and more effective communication across your team.
- Overcome Communication Barriers: Equip your team with tailored strategies for navigating stress and improving collaboration.
- Strengthen Team Cohesion: Create an inclusive environment where every team member feels valued and essential.
- Drive Continuous Success: Leverage motivational styles to fuel ongoing growth, innovation, and team success.
Ideal for team building, leadership development, sales teams, and DEI
Conflict Handling Intensive:Equip Your Leaders to Navigate Tough Moments with Clarity and Connection
Built Around the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI)
This isn’t another generic conflict workshop. This full-day, high-impact leadership intensive uses the TKI to uncover how your managers handle pressure—and teaches them how to choose the right approach for every situation.
What Your Leaders Will Learn:
- Recognize their default conflict mode—and when it backfires.
- Flex into all five TKI styles with intention, not impulse.
- Deliver tough feedback while preserving trust and respect.
- Respond to real-time friction without defensiveness or delay.
- Build shared language that strengthens alignment across teams.
Go Beyond Conflict Awareness
Most training stops at identifying conflict styles. This program goes further. It integrates proven models to build leadership muscle in the moments that matter most.
Your team will also learn how to:
- Reframe feedback as leadership support.
- Boost morale with simple, repeatable strategies that increase clarity, consistency, and psychological safety.
"We hosted Marilyn for an all-day management training that dove into the TKI assessment for handling conflict. What an eye-opener for all of us to understand our strengths and weaknesses in how we address conflict in the workplace and with each other, and the modes for which we do it. Understanding each other's modes will give us better tools for dealing with work conflicts that we hope will strengthen our work relationships, build trust and gain greater cooperation. Marilyn did an excellent job facilitating this workshop for our team and opening us up to new ways to approach conflict."
~Julie Farkas, Director, Novi Public Library
Turning Goal Setting into Goal Getting
In this half-day training, learn to design, refine and put into action your professional goals so they align with your strengths, interests, and desires. In this half-day training, you will learn to:
- Identify where you are with your goals and determine where you want to be
- Apply a written system for translating vague goals into measurable and achievable ones
- Break large goals down into small manageable and actionable steps
- Identify and eliminate habits of behavior that block your progress
- Utilize specific resources to accomplish your goals
You will benefit by:
- Planning ahead to overcome roadblocks and personal barriers
- Leaving the workshop with focused goals and an action plan
- Increasing your motivation by experiencing your goals as if they already happened
- Discover the skills you need to climb the ladder of success in your professional career
"Your seminar is, by far, the best job-related seminar I've attended. I was so surprised by how much I got out of it. It's very powerful stuff. It's the kick in the butt that I've been needing. Thanks." ~ Steve Cole, Admin, University of Michigan
Seven “Suttle Shifts” for Leadership Breakthroughs
Imagine breaking through your business and personal barriers. No more leaving opportunities in the dust. It only takes a subtle shift to catapult you to the top of your game. This program will show you how to stop playing the waiting game, and get you into action. Start turning your desires into notable achievements. You’ll walk away with a new clarity, your next steps, and a supportive accountability plan to fuel you forward.
Discover how to:
- Avoid the top mistakes you don’t even realize you’re making, that prevents you from being taken seriously by leaders and influencers.
- Discover the competencies to advance your success and happiness.
- Turn your desires into notable achievements.
“Marilyn Suttle is the ultimate coach, leader, speaker and role model because she embodies all the success qualities which she teaches: authenticity, enthusiasm, clarity, deep compassion, 100% accountability and positive energy. Maybe this is what allows her to so graciously connect with teams and individuals at all levels, from CEOs to salespeople-in-training. Caring, articulate, humorous and hugely competent, she is a true star. Marilyn has helped me in numerous ways.”
~ Jane Ransom, author of Self-Intelligence: The New Science-Based Approach for Reaching Your True Potential
Success Mastery Series
Marilyn Suttle has studied the principles of success for over 20 years. She helps her audiences, and coaching groups to get clear about what they want, and how to get it. With an emphasis on putting accountability into action, she sheds light on how to turn desires into achievements. In addition to her own body of work, Marilyn has trained large multinational audiences taking part in intense year-long Train-the-Trainer programs personally lead by the founder of the billion-dollar book empire, Chicken Soup for the Soul’s Jack Canfield. Combining deeply impactful experiential exercises with practical works-in-real-life skills, Marilyn programs offer life-changing insights and experiences that lead to lasting positive change.
Marilyn’s empowering series includes:
- Shifting into Top Performing Mindsets and Habits
- Raising your Happiness Set Point for Success and Self-Fulfillment
- Visualizing Techniques
- Taking Goal Setting to the Next Level
- Rejection-proofing – Handling “No”
- Masterminding Your way to Success with a Mastermind Group
- Relationship-strengthening to Grow Your “Networth”
- Activating the Power of Passion and Priority
- Managing Feelings and Emotion-Management
- Maximizing Outcomes by Challenging Beliefs
- Putting Accountability into Action
- Reinforcing What Works and Celebrating Successes
"Marilyn Suttle's empowering presentations will motivate you to reach for your goals both personally and professionally. She has all the tools to inspire her audience to meet and exceed their potential."
Jack Canfield – Founder of the Chicken Soup for the Soul® Enterprises
EMPLOYEE WELLBEING & LIFE/WORK INTEGRATION
Where'd My Wellbeing Go?
How to restore it in the midst of challenge and chaos!
One-Hour Zoom or On-Site Keynote
This fun-filled interactive program will leave you feeling energized and ready to increase your sense of peace and ease!
- Gain skill in finding the gifts received from challenges
- Explore ways the mind supports and challenges wellbeing
- Choose effective responses to difficult situations
Marilyn Suttle is fun and engaging. She got our members involved with her "Where'd My Wellbeing Go?" program and offered many practical perspectives and tips on how to handle thoughts and emotions when times are good and not so good. Marilyn's knowledge, experience teaching, and expertise using Zoom are impressive. We will be inviting her to speak again in the future.
~Marcia Green, Board Member, American Business Women's Association.
The Happy Class
Elevating Wellbeing, Self-Fulfillment and Success
Wellbeing practices are known to:
- Improve workplace experiences
- Increasing productivity
- Build trust and confidence
- Lower turnover
- Increase customer satisfaction
- Improve employee physical & emotional health
These multi-session, action-packed, fun-filled sessions offer tools to create joy, focus, peace, and positive results in every area of life. It offers the know-how to become happier and more resilient, even during challenging times.
These are not fluffy notions. You’ll get practical skills that work.
Discover ways to:
- Increase Happiness, Self-Awareness and Gratitude
- Restore Peace During Challenges and Chaos
- Practice Three Keys to Success and Happiness at Work & in Life
- Gain Wellbeing Practices for Uprooting Habits of Unhappiness
- Challenge Self-Limiting Beliefs
- Ignite passion and purpose
Bring the Happy Class to your organization. Click to see the full description and contact Marilyn to set up a program for you.
Here's what people are saying about The Happy Class...
Our firm brought Marilyn in to lead a summer-long version of The Happy Class—and it was everything we hoped for and more. More than 150 employees registered, which is an enormous feat for a law firm. Our team had long been asking for strategies to become happier, more resilient, and more engaged, both at work and at home. The six-part series delivered exactly that, providing practical, actionable tips each week.
Beyond the content, The Happy Class created a shared space for colleagues to connect and work through common challenges we all face. It fostered conversation, community, and a renewed sense of optimism. I genuinely believe our firm is happier as a result—and we have Marilyn to thank for it.
~Jake R. McMillian, Director of Diversity
Dickinson Wright PLLC
“Marilyn has presented engaging keynotes, and workshops at Visteon for many years. We brought her back twice for her most recent workshop because employees rated her highly for offering practical, helpful tools and insights they could use.”
~ Kate Manley, Senior Benefits Specialist, Visteon
"I’m participating [in the] Happy Class and I’d like you to know that your teachings are definitely making positive changes on my journey!"
The Happy Class was a true gift for our employees. Thank you for teaching people how to find more happiness!
"I want you to know how much I enjoyed the Happy Class... I learned so much. I was on vacation during session #6 and I finished it today. The way you explained how to identify passions was so helpful. Thank you so much! This class has been so helpful to me!
I recommend The Happy Class for any organization that values their employees. It builds resilience, wellbeing, and offers practical, yet profound practices that have made a positive impact on my life. It's a great investment in the individual and the team. One cannot help but to get into action.
~ Stephanie Perez, Senior Director of Global Accounts, HelmsBriscoe
LinkedIn Comments about The Happy Class...
The Gratitude Challenge: Practicing Uncommon Appreciation
Gratitude holds significant value for workplace wellness. It has a positive impact on both individuals and the overall work environment. Gratitude and appreciation are two of the highest emotional states you can experience. They are states of abundance. Like attracts like. If you appreciate and are truly grateful for what you already have, you will effortlessly attract more into your life. Challenge yourself to make gratitude a bigger part of your personal and professional life.
- Enhance wellbeing, foster resilience and adaptability.
- Discover how gratitude can improve quality of life, even when difficult and challenging situations arise. For it is often, through these challenges that we experience the most profound personal and professional growth.
- Identify ways to make appreciation and gratitude a daily part of your routine.
Get a Clue! Solving the Mystery of LIFE/WORK Integration
No one wakes up in the morning saying, "I think I'm going to let my life spiral out of balance today," but it's a mystery at times to keep on track... especially with the demands that remote workers are facing today. Celebrate your successes and learn new ways to approach conflicting needs. This interactive presentation gives you proven skills and habits for success while managing life’s challenges. You’ll learn to reduce stress, increase productivity, and wellbeing. Focus on creating harmony between your personal and professional life. Gain insight into increasing self-satisfaction and become more fully present at work and at home. This entertaining presentation gives you the know-how to produce positive shifts in the quality of your life and gain valuable skills for succeeding at work.
“You did a splendid job with your presentation to the folks at the Pfizer Women's Network! I recommend for you as an inspirational speaker.” ~ Barbara Clarke, Pfizer Corporation Women’s Network Chairperson
