Understanding the Customer - The Art of Selling
Hilary Kenny
Draws on a wide range of research and good practice, and on case studies and interviews to provide easy-to-follow guidelines for genuine, lasting success in selling.
When training salespeople became part of Hilary Kenny’s role as a training manager, she looked for a good book on selling. She found little or no material published in Ireland for Irish audiences – lots of US books, some UK books, but nothing specifically Irish. When she trains people who sell services and products for business, she sees how instinctive much of what they do is, but the research is clear about what works, and much of the instinctive stuff simply doesn’t.
Selling is a skill as well as an art. Skills can be learned – and perfected – but salespeople need to start with the customer in mind and not their own wonderful product or service. This moves salespeople from mechanical ‘always be closing’ mode to thinking about the real interests and priorities of companies and individuals, and seeing themselves as partners in finding long-term solutions.
In Understanding the Customer: The Art of Selling, Hilary draws on a wide range of research and good practice, and on interviews and case studies from some of the top business people in Ireland, to provide easy-to-follow guidelines for success in selling.
Listen to Hilary interviewed on The Last Word
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Write and Get Paid for It
Terry Prone
Shows you how to be a writer: the tools of the trade; how to earn your living as a freelance writer; how to find an agent/publisher for your novel and maximise the exposure and sales of that novel once it is published.
Published originally by Arlen House and in a revised edition by Poolbeg Press in 1989, Write and Get Paid for It is the book that, more than any other, has influenced Irish writers, from the unsung heroes and heroines of freelance journalism to bestselling authors like Patricia Scanlan and Cathy Kelly. If you want to be a writer, this book shows you how – in Terry Prone’s inimitable no-nonsense style: the tools of the trade; how to create a writer’s environment and stick to your guns (and your computer keyboard or pen) in the face of scepticism and rejection; how to pitch ideas and earn your living as a freelance journalist or magazine writer; how to find an agent/publisher for your novel and maximise the exposure and sales of that novel once it is published. Cheerful, inspiring and realistic, Write and Get Paid for It should be part of the armoury of every aspiring writer.”
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The Career Doctor: How to Get – and Keep – the Job You Want
Eoghan McDermott
Getting and keeping a job that is interesting, challenging and preferably well paid is a key goal for most people. The Career Doctor is the book you need if:
You’ve seen the job you want and you want to know how to get it.
You’re fresh out of college and dying to get your teeth into something interesting.
You need to return to the workforce to supplement your family’s income.
You’ve just been made redundant.
You’re bored in your current job and want to change to something completely different.
You like your job and want to maximise your promotion and earning opportunities.
You’ve taken early retirement but don’t plan to spend the rest of your life watching daytime television.
The Career Doctor provides a detailed, practical map for navigating the employment market: from networking, CVs, covering letters and interview skills to in-work presentations and performance reviews. If you follow this advice you will radically improve your chances of getting the job you want and making the most of it when you do get it.
Eoghan McDermott is Head of the Careers Clinic in the Communications Clinic in Dublin and has many years of experience working with people in the employment market, in good times and bad. On a daily basis he is helping people get the jobs they want. He is a frequent contributor on career-related, communication and media topics to newspapers, professional publications and other media.
“McDermott is a canny operator: he has recognised the dearth of jobs out there and, consequently, the need for any prospective job candidates to perform to a high standard to secure – and keep – employment.”
- Sunday Business Post (Read full review here)
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What Every Working Woman Should Know (and Do!)
Terry Prone
In this book, Terry Prone, communications expert and adviser to politicians and top business-people, turns her attention to women at work, the choices they make, the obstacles they face in their search for a successful and rewarding career.
Areas covered include:
- Getting the job: CV, interview etc.
- Moving up the ranks, reviews, promotion
- Women in management
- Sexual harassment and bullying
- Assumptions made by and about women
- Appearance, clothes, weight, ageism: specific 'women' issues
- Women and money, saving, shopping, pensions
- Why women at work differ from men at work (if they do)
- Babies, families, aged parents and other distractions: how best to cope
- Ten things that every working woman needs to know
Written in Terry Prone's inimitable lively and irreverent style, What Every Working Woman Should Know (and Do!) will inform and entertain readers.
“A must-read for working women everywhere.” – Sunday Business Post Book Review (read full review here)
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Spin & Win: How Politicians Get Elected
Anton Savage
You're an aspiring politician, desperate to be selected as a candidate. You're a sitting TD, desperate to be re-elected. You're a party leader or a party whip. You're a press secretary in Dublin, a tallyman in west Cork or a keen observer of the Irish electoral process who makes use of all the preferences on the ballot paper on polling day. Whoever you are this book is for you. In Spin and Win Anton Savage, a communications consultant of considerable experience, explodes some of the myths surrounding politicians (that clothes maketh the man, that body language can be reliably read, that all politicians are liars) and draws interesting comparisons with other electoral systems, notably the US. He demolishes the myth of focus groups, brings the reader behind the hilarious scenes at ard-fheiseanna and suggests that politicians are harder-working and more put-upon than many of their constituents realise. But their real job is to get re-elected and it is in describing the myths surrounding that relentless preoccupation that Spin and Win excels.
“Anton Savage has produced a book that will give the reader a peep inside the bigger tent that is Irish political life, with its warm air, jibes, and all too easily peddled half truths.... The book even drew the occasional, knowing smile, from this participant in the political life.”
– Conor Lenihan TD Review, The Irish Times (Read full review here)
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