Booked: Sales Tales. Conor Kenny. Oak Tree Press. €14.99

This book is an easy read packed with anecdotes about the lessons Conor Kenny has learned and the various characters he has met in his 30-year career in sales and training. It's an engaging and light-hearted read that salespeople will relate to.

Great sales and great selling are simple. It’s often the human condition that throws the spanner into the works is Kenny’s message. To succeed in selling, you must have a potent mix of character (who you are) and skill (what you can do). Attitude to the customer is important. Some salespeople consider the customer as the opposition, but others see them as their reason to exist.

Emotions play a huge part in the selling process. People will rarely buy from those they don’t like or do so only if there is no alternative. Where possible, they will buy from people that they consider friends. Motivation is the hidden layer that lies behind our own personal emotion or conflict. Emotions are hard to ignore and applying logic to illogical emotions is doomed to fail. Great sales people find out what the customer’s emotions are, they don’t assume.

Fear is a huge problem for salespeople and Kenny says that is often a consequence of phobia. If you are trying to sell against a hidden phobia, you have no chance.