Alternatives to Dale Carnegie for Executive Presentation Training: A Comparison

By Kraig Kann · October 7, 2026

Dale Carnegie has been teaching people to speak since 1912 and they do it well. If you are reading this, you have probably looked at them, maybe sent a few people through, and now you are asking what else exists. Fair question. I have sat on both sides of it: as the executive buying training for a team and as the person delivering it.

So here is the comparison I wish someone had handed me. Four kinds of provider, what each is best at, and where they fall down. I will tell you where Kann Advisory Group fits and, just as important, where we do not.

A Kann Advisory Group workshop team

The four kinds of executive presentation training

Legacy curriculum companies. Dale Carnegie, Toastmasters at the volunteer end, the big corporate universities. Strength: a proven, standardized curriculum you can roll out to five hundred people in twenty cities and get the same thing every time. Weakness: it is the same thing every time. Your team learns a method that was not built around your message from an instructor who did not choose the material.

Boutique executive coaches. One coach, one leader, six to twelve sessions. Strength: depth. A good coach will change how a CEO shows up. Weakness: it does not scale and the quality varies wildly with the individual. Ask who they have coached and call two of them.

Broadcast and media trainers. Former journalists and anchors who teach interview skills. Strength: nobody handles pressure, the pivot, and the sound bite better because they lived it. Weakness: many stop at the interview. A media trainer can make you quotable and still leave your town hall flat.

Hybrid firms. A small number of practices that combine the broadcast pressure training with leadership presence and personal brand built around your company’s actual messages. This is where we sit and I will be direct about the tradeoffs below.

Which one fits which team?

• You need to train hundreds of people to a common standard: legacy curriculum. Nobody else does this as reliably.
• You need one leader to be ready for a bigger job: a boutique coach, chosen by references, or a hybrid firm’s coaching track.
• You have an executive who will be on camera or in front of the press: a broadcast trainer or a hybrid firm.
• You have a leadership or sales team that needs to sound like one organization while each person stands out and you want them to remember the day a year from now: a hybrid firm.

Where Kann Advisory Group fits and where it does not

We are the last category. The Elevate Workshop is a choreographed day led by me, a former Golf Channel anchor and LPGA Chief Communications Officer, built around your top messages, with live mini presentations, small-group breakouts and a green shoe handed to whoever stands out when they stand up. ,Teams at Accenture, KPMG, SAP, Transamerica and the Chicago Cubs have been through it. One executive called it “a freakish combination of C-suite strategist and TV entertainment,” which is the most accurate review we have.

Where we are the wrong fit: if you need a fixed curriculum delivered to five hundred people by a dozen interchangeable instructors, we are not built for that and I will say so on the first call. If you want a certificate more than a change, the legacy companies do certificates better. And if your leader needs six months of deep one-to-one work on something other than communication, hire an executive coach, not us.

Three questions to ask any provider

• Who, specifically, will be in the room teaching and what have they done under real pressure?
• Will the content be built around our messages or will we adapt to yours?
• Can I talk to a client from a year ago about what stuck?

I’ll leave you with this…. Every provider on this list can teach someone to give a presentation. Very few can teach someone to be remembered. Decide which one you are buying before you compare prices.

Remember This: Standing up on the stage is easy. Standing out is the challenge and it is the only reason to pay for training at all.

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Thanks for reading!

– Kraig