“Hilary gave practical (and often humorous) advice to leaders in the area when she spoke on the topic of ‘resiliency’ at the KPMG Executive Leadership Institute for Women. Hilary is a dynamic presenter and infuses energy into the room when she speaks. It is clear that she has encountered many challenges in her career and life but has conquered these with her perseverance and tenacity. The participants could not say enough about her ability to provide frank and honest perspectives in an entertaining manner.”

“First let me say that I thoroughly enjoyed the course that Hilary Fordwich presented on Gaining and Retaining Clients. I am currently implementing the techniques with my client, coworkers, and friends. I feel that intentions when communicating are often misunderstood. The techniques taught in this class go a long way to ease and inform the manner and method of conversations that we use with clients, coworkers, and others. This is especially true when the conversations that we are having are tough ones.”

“Hilary quickly established a vibrant connection with our 1200 partners in the audience. Her infectious energy and sharp, real life insights provided each partner and manager an arsenal of valuable nuggets to use in business development and in maintaining outstanding relationships with clients.”

“I thoroughly enjoyed the smashing presentation Hilary did at VSCPA Leadership Forum. She managed to break down generational differences through the prism of basic psychology. Then followed with easy-to-remember advice on how to act in order to be better understood, liked, and accepted.”

“Hilary was so impressive in the session for our Tysons office that we invited her to keynote our Annual Partners meeting, her content was so strong and her practical advice based on her direct accounting firm knowledge, that we retained her to deliver sessions for each of our 22 offices in smaller hands-on partner sessions. From those we also had her work one-on-one with some selected partners. Because Hilary understood our industry, but also studied the nuances or our practice areas she was able to give great help to our growth strategies.”

“Hilary’s seminars were a solid hit with our professionals. She presented two client service seminars to our firm and provided individual coaching sessions. The reviews were exceptional and participants walked away with the ability to put her techniques in use immediately. Hilary has an engaging and enthusiastic presentation style that reflects her passion for client service excellence-and she successfully imparts that knowledge through memorable stories and easy to remember nuggets. I highly recommend her!”

“My partners and I retained Hilary to deliver business development sessions to our entire professional staff. We were able to use her principles throughout our firm and many months after her presentation we all were still using her principles. I can say that even our more senior partners were so appreciative of her content as well as our junior staff. I highly recommend Hilary and intend to work with her further after we complete our merger.”

“We hired Hilary because we had just received two weeks notice to compete for a very significant opportunity, and we were busy with other projects. Our team had the experience, but was not organized, nervous and inexperienced when it came to presenting. Her boot camp was so powerful that we were ramped up quickly and then… …Hilary worked closely with us individually, and as a group, to focus on our strengths and presenting styles to deliver the right message – nothing was fabricated. Hilary focused on the skills that each member brought to the team and what they were most comfortable talking about. She orchestrated the team into a solid, focused, well organized and highly professional group that made a great presentation. It was a little like pulling a rabbit out of a hat, I was nothing short of impressed with her talent. We won the deal and have now engaged Hilary on a long term basis to help us grow FOX Architects, taking us to the next level.”

“Many years ago I heard Hilary’s ‘Business Golf’ presentation. It was not only exceptionally good with excellent insights and tangible suggestions for how to leverage golf to further business but it was memorable and so powerful that it was the catalyst for me, as a non-golfer at that time, to enter the golf industry. If it wasn’t for hearing Hilary I wouldn’t be where I am today. Additionally she inspired me to get my young daughter into golf, she is now playing on her college team as a result.”

“I have worked in the golf business for 13 years as a PGA Golf Professional, most recently overseeing all levels of the business and all facets of golf as First Assistant Golf Professional with Congressional Country Club and current Head Golf Professional with Rehoboth Beach Country Club. Hilary’s Business Golf session was exceptionally interesting and informative. It was not long into her presentation that it became obvious, she is not only a very accomplished amateur golfer, but is also very successful in the business world. She used her expertise and experience to relate her information to her audience. She captivated every member of the audience. I have to admit part way through her presentation, I found myself taking notes on her talk. Working for so many years in the golf business, I thought I had heard everything about golf, but her presentation was new, refreshing and very informative. She opened up new horizons. She was also recently a panelist at a PGA Sponsored event and was far and away the best they offered.”

“Hilary’s Business Golf presentation was not only insightful and informed, it was enjoyable. She readily offers her golf and business leadership experience with enough brevity to keep everyone’s attention. Hilary recognized that her audience would be diverse, and thus challenging to a speaker, but managed to hold the group’s attention and inspire an array of conference attendees. I hope to have her share her expertise further.”

“Every one of my fellow PGA members attending this show, all 15,000 of them, should listen to what Hilary has to say about how to grow the golf industry.” Her approach is right on the mark. The details can branch out, but her assumptions are (painful to some of us) right on the money. We will need to be more in tune with the changing demographics, and the changing patterns of American society if the game is to continue growing. Hilary delivers tangible and tactical approaches that will appeal to non-golfing Americans (82% of our population) so that they flock to golf. She includes opportunities such as addressing how to overcome time constraints that Americans face, tapping into the needs for fitness as obesity grows at an alarming rate, and how to attract a growing diverse population as well as women who could enter golf for business/career gain.”

“Our business is dedicated to individual sales service. We chose Hilary because we realized the importance of mixing business and golf and doing it correctly. Hilary provided the tool of a golf setting having revenue for clients while still having fun. Hilary’s seminar was beneficial because it resonated golf at all levels, the novice golfer, intermediate and the seasoned golfer. She hit on all levels — everyone felt they got something out of her presentation, especially as it pertains to business and golf. I recommend Hilary to any association. Her presentation was dynamic and left everyone energized. She hit on all levels.”

“A must attend for anyone in the legal profession who has played or would like to play golf in a business setting. No lawyer should get on the golf course without first attending Hilary’s business golf sessions. If you’re curious about the power of golf in building relationships, you’ll walk away eager to learn the game. If you’re already a golfer, what Hilary has to say will make you think twice about how best to conduct business on course.”

“Hilary’s business golf presentation was a tremendous success for our membership. Her content, delivery style and real life case studies made it not only an entertaining experience but also a presentation that our sales professionals could use to improve their performance. She gave tactical advice, great tips as well as examples that members said they would aim to apply. She was recommended to us and her presentation was everything and more than we were expecting. I highly recommend her presentation for any association, company or charitable organization.”

“My law firm already spends thousands of dollars on golf each year, Hilary’s Business Golf presentation was great because she delivered both strategic and tactical advice on how we can better leverage the dollars we already invest in golf. We learned how to build relationships both on and off the course. I highly recommend Hilary to all law firms who want to leverage golf as a business development tool.”

“Hilary’s Business Golf presentation was not only insightful and informed, it was enjoyable. She readily offers her golf and business leadership experience with enough brevity to keep everyone’s attention. Hilary recognized that her audience would be diverse, and thus challenging to a speaker, but managed to hold the group’s attention and inspire an array of conference attendees. I hope to have her share her expertise with my firms.”

“We are a transportation company and the US Government is our number one client. It’s funny I do not golf and initially did not want to attend this seminar today, but I am so glad I did. I would refer Hilary to these groups because she was interesting in how she put everything in to perspective. I really got a lot out of Hilary’s presentation.”

I recently engaged Hilary both to deliver a keynote at our Leadership Offsite with many SAIC executives as well as to develop and deliver bespoke training to our business development and capture teams. The initial result: outstanding. Hilary came in and engaged our learners through interactive dialog and activities. The feedback from our team was exceptionally positive, they all want to have her back. We received comments such as “Phenomenal instructor would absolutely recommend using her again” and they shared that they enjoyed Hilary’s style, benefited from her broad knowledge of BD, and her many real world examples backing up all the concepts…Her candid personality was a total hit. I look forward to continuing to work with her going forward.

“Hilary was so impressive at our InSight Conference two years ago that many attendees requested we have her back. Yet again she was spot on. She understands and addresses the needs of government contractors and professional services firms. She delivers best practices and insightful advice, exactly what our audience wants. Her solution overviews had everyone taking notes. I highly recommend Hilary.”

I recently engaged Hilary both to deliver a keynote at our Leadership Offsite with many SAIC executives as well as to develop and deliver bespoke training to our business development and capture teams. The initial result: outstanding. Hilary came in and engaged our learners through interactive dialog and activities. The feedback from our team was exceptionally positive, they all want to have her back. We received comments such as “Phenomenal instructor would absolutely recommend using her again” and they shared that they enjoyed Hilary’s style, benefited from her broad knowledge of BD, and her many real world examples backing up all the concepts…Her candid personality was a total hit. I look forward to continuing to work with her going forward.

“Hilary, I received many positive comments concerning your keynote presentation; for example: ” I could have listened to her all day,” and “What a great speaker and perfect message she delivered.” “What an incredible woman.”

“I engaged Hilary Fordwich to moderate the National Defense Industrial Association’s 2nd Annual Cyber Security Month Conference this past October. As the lead for the project, I couldn’t be happier with Hilary’s professional preparation, engaging dialogue with the panelists, and her supreme confidence and presence before an audience of industry leaders as well as the press. From Congressmen, Cyber Security CEOs, to the Defense press, Hilary is an outstanding ‘Ringmaster’ managing our conference with ease and grace. I only hope I can enlist her fabulous skills in the future.”

“Hilary is one of the best in the industry when it comes to providing team training that is focused on building and leveraging customer relationships. Her session with us was not only insightful and practical, but motivating. She provided us strategies and tools we can use to further leverage our incumbent advantage and apply a laser-like focus on our customers. My management team is now ready to take our customer relationships to new levels! Everything she said was on the mark… her presentation was not the typical “canned pitch”, but a specially developed interactive session tailored for our management team and our customers. Hilary comes with my highest recommendation.”

“Thank you for kicking off the Career Symposium this afternoon. Your talk was terrific—and extremely relevant! We greatly appreciate you sharing your time and expertise with our students… Your message was perfect for an MBA audience and it tied in very nicely with our Own It! Pillars…A fantastic start to the afternoon’s events.”

“Thank you again for enlightening us with your remarks yesterday. It was inspirational and really set the tone for an excellent afternoon of learning. I overheard classmates continuing to discuss the five C’s throughout the rest of the day.”

“Your presentation today was wonderful…already I’m hearing feedback from the students on how much they enjoyed it.” David Bartlett, Director of Global and Strategic Projects, Kogod School of Business American University “Your presentation today was so appreciated! You really made sense of so much of what I’m currently experiencing and I even talked about you during an MBA interview I conducted this afternoon. I certainly look forward to being in touch.”

“I want you to know how much I and the attendees at the government contracts seminar on Thursday appreciated, enjoyed and were well-informed on best strategies and approaches for winning government contracts. Your talk was extremely well-received. From the feedback I received, I think most if not all of the 70+ attendees thoroughly enjoyed and benefited with specific “take away” points to apply to their respective “business development” roles – regardless of their official or formal business titles!”

“I cannot thank you enough for such an inspiring presentation at our 15th Annual Leadership Colloquium here at UMW. I continue to hear from women who attended and were “wowed” by your thoughts, stories, C’s, guidance, and overall leadership concepts. It was quite impressive. I have personally been struck by comments you made that come back to me each day… and that I share with others. We learned much from your presentation, and are grateful to you for sharing your expertise with us. I hope our paths will cross again.”

“Ms. Fordwich was a guest speaker in our Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership class, composed of MBA and undergraduate students at George Washington University. She gave a speech to a class of approximately 50 students, we were taken aback by her level of professionalism, wisdom, and her expert knowledge regarding business development. Her tips and advice were extremely insightful and have proved fruitful to all the young and future entrepreneurs in the class. Many students and myself included, praised her speech and immediately purchased the books she recommended to us. She has left a lasting impression on many of us and despite her speech which was five weeks ago, we continue to talk about her and cite her work frequently. Ms. Fordwich has defined and shaped the way in which I approach my future, my own startup business, and I am certain that her principles will continue to influence and guide my future decisions and actions.”

“The Business Development Workshop Hilary delivered served to raise the awareness level of client interaction and served as a great means for our team to learn the science of retaining clients. It was beneficial not only for our engineers in terms of their professional relationships, but also for our business development, since they learned many new approaches. We plan on working with Hilary in the future both in terms of inspiring group retreats an also to coach on relationship marketing.”

“My company asked Hilary to deliver a short afternoon training session related to building customer relationships. In just a few hours, she gave our team, composed of superintendents, project managers, accounting, HR & executives, several real time tools & skills that they could immediately use every day in their roles. The entire team was engaged throughout the training & had nothing but very positive feedback about the session. Hilary is a powerful communicator & connects easily with any type of audience. We are looking for additional ways to utilize Hilary's strong experience & depth of knowledge for additional team training sessions. I strongly recommend Hilary to any business leader who is looking for ways to take their business development & customer service offering to the next level.”

“I met Hilary at a golf event, on how to mix business with golf. She had such a great seminar on business golf that we wanted to go further and use her expertise and services. We learned from Hilary how to gain and retain clients and how to strategically place business in the market place. I learned so much from Hilary that I could not wait to take back to my business and share with the employees. I felt empowered to use golf as part of our business development plan and market business with golf. The benefits from Hilary were numerous. We want to strategically place business using tactics Hilary taught us. We learned not only how to gain clients but also how to retain our existing clients. Hilary’s seminar definitely helped me on and off the golf course. She taught me when to bring up business, when to provide business cards, certain question to ask and when.”

“Thank you so much for speaking to CREW Northern Virginia. I’ve heard nothing but wonderful news! You were such breath of fresh air last night in your excitement, your message, and your delivery of your presentation. It’s actually wonderful to hear that we are still responsible for our own destination through the five C’s and can be valuable in our careers instead of getting swept up in the thoughts of “oh”, we’re just in a recession, there is nothing I can do about it”. I feel like it becomes a crutch for failure for too many. Thank you for your passion to help others succeed by providing the tools we need to gain and retain clients.”

“Hilary, we thank YOU! Your presentation had a standing-room-only crowd of leaders riveted, learning and laughing. Thank you for encouraging our employees not to “sell,” but to “give our members what they want.” Your simple and memorable tips will help our employees take perfect care of each member, each business partner, and each other. Our CEO, James Schenck, has been hearing positive feedback about you, and James is most thankful to you for sharing your insights and your passion!”

“Hilary, Thank you so much for doing such a terrific job with your keynote speech. I have to say that I knew you would be good, everyone I spoke to prior to our event said you are outstanding, but I did not know you would blow our socks off! I was very impressed with how you tied everything in that you and I had spoken about. Your tailoring everything to my team made it so powerful too. My reps could not stop speaking about your presentation at dinner.”

“Hilary’s Business Golf presentation was not only insightful and informed, it was enjoyable. She readily offers her golf and business leadership experience with enough brevity to keep everyone’s attention. Hilary recognized that her audience would be diverse, and thus challenging to a speaker, but managed to hold the group’s attention and inspire an array of conference attendees. I hope to have her share her expertise further.”

“Hilary delivered a business development boot camp to all of our Business Development Officers and senior leadership. Not only was her content extremely relevant to our relationship oriented banking business but she totally inspired our group which has led to us retaining her to work with us further. We see her as contributing to our growth via working with our business development officers and being most beneficial to our bank.”

“Hilary’s Business Golf presentation was not only insightful and informed, it was enjoyable. She readily offers her golf and business leadership experience with enough brevity to keep everyone’s attention. Hilary recognized that her audience would be diverse, and thus challenging to a speaker, but managed to hold the group’s attention and inspire an array of conference attendees. I hope to have her share her expertise with my firms.”

“It was such a pleasure hearing you speak last night at the CREW event. I took away multiple “nuggets” and plan to use them in my every day communications. You were inspirational and, in a short amount of time, gave the audience things that they can use instead of just the “warm and fuzzies” that motivational speakers usually provide.”

“I have worked at Wachovia Bank for the past 18 years. I do not play but thought the seminar was great. Hilary’s presentation was enlightening and intriguing. Hilary is a great resource, outstanding speaker and very motivating. I would attend other seminars conducted by Hilary. Excellent resource.”

“I appreciated your presentation on Business Golf very much. As someone who plays occasionally, and understands the written etiquette and rules of golf, I learned many new subtleties of the game through your presentation. More importantly, I learned how to leverage the experience of the game to help understand potential clients and partners in business. I never really truly knew the importance of the game, though I have always heard how powerful it was! Thanks for putting a great presentation together that helped novices and experts get more out of their game.”

“Hilary’s address to the D. C. Dental Society was spot-on. Her high-energy program outlined five basic business success tactics and other client relationship strategies and how they applied to our professional practices. Hilary’s insightful examples created a solid starting point for any audience member to take stock of his or her own situation and start making the necessary changes to improve. The talk was inspiring.”

“Thank you for your terrific presentation at CESSE yesterday. Yours was the best presentation I saw during the conference. I really enjoyed it and found it a valuable experience. You hit upon important principles that it’s so easy to lose sight of in day-to-day life. Thank you for helping us re-focus in such an engaging and memorable way.”

“I just wanted to thank you for an incredible presentation today at the Board of Trade event. You were very impressive! It was my first time to a networking event in DC and I was very inspired by your captivating and informative presentation. I learned a lot in a short time and thank you again for sharing your amazing wealth of knowledge in really understanding how to build a strong network.”

“Wanted to say once again how much I appreciated your content and presentation. I’ve been to countless events on ‘Effective Networking/Relationship Building’ and yours was one of the very best I’ve seen.”

“I am still talking to people about the wonderful program and what a dynamic speaker you are. Later in the year, my firm might be interested in having you do a workshop for our lawyers. We are actually going to talk about the 5 C’s at our upcoming Board meeting… You would knock any audience off their feet…”

“Hilary’s presentation at our Holland & Knight annual retreat on ‘How to Gain and Retain Clients’ was by far the best program on the subject I have experienced in 38 years of practicing law. I hope we will have you back for our partners next year.”

“Your content for our female attorneys in our Rising Stars program was well received and really had such a positive impact. We would like for you to work with the next group next year.”

“We received outstanding feedback from our young professionals and attorneys who were in your recent session on ‘How to Gain and Retain Clients’. Now we would like to move ahead with specific sessions to structure their individual plans and will be back to you after internal discussions.”