Selling the art of selling

The Irish Auctioneers and Valuers Institute represents more than 1,550 auctioneers, estate agents and valuers around the country. My job as PR and marketing manager is to market the IAVI to members and the public alike, so the public is aware of the service we offer and members know that we can promote them as a professional body.

The first thing I do in the morning is to scan the newspapers to see what's going on and to check if there's something there that could possibly affect the profession. The second thing I do is turn the radio on. The radio is beside me 90 per cent of the time; again, I'm listening to what's going on and keeping up to date on issues that might affect us. The third thing I'll do is have a cup of coffee. What happens after that changes from day to day and from minute to minute.

At the moment we're relaunching our website as a portal, so there's a number of promotional activities happening around that. The IAVI's conference, which was due to start on May 29th in Tralee, Co Kerry, has been postponed and is now set for September 6th to 9th, so at the moment I am busy trying to reconfirm speakers for that and making sure everything that was originally organised is put back in place.

The IAVI has an education programme and we run fine art courses, so they also need to be publicised. Then I could have things to do like drawing up an ad or having a meeting about advertising, or getting a brochure together, or proofing copy, or getting a press release out in 10 minutes - and all the time I'm getting queries from members and from the general public. I'm always kept busy.

There's a lot of general stuff that goes on all day. I'd often be dealing with members of the regional media. They may have a query, or be looking to set up an interview, or they may want the IAVI to make a comment on something. The days I expect my work to be consistent it's not, and vice versa. As well as the on-going matters, there are shorter, finite projects. For example, we have students graduating from the BSc in property studies and the one-year course in residential land agency. So we would have to organise everything for that and get separate press releases off to the regional papers, wherever the graduates are from.

It's always a very varied day and that's the way I like it - I like going from one project to another. Fortunately, I get very few complaints, but you will have a few people who ring up and I always encourage them to write in. However, the number of complaints is small enough.

Essentially it's nine to five, but there's no rigidness in my role. I could leave here at 5.30 p.m. or at 7.30, it depends on the day. If it is a very heavy day - Budget day or the day we release our national property survey, when there's a lot of reaction - I can end up staying quite late. Days like that can go very, very quickly, because all day people are looking for you to get the IAVI chief executive, Alan Cooke, to comment on events.

When you work to deadlines things can be a bit stressful, but there's usually enough breathing space between events to clear your head. I impose deadlines on myself and I'm one of those people who doesn't mind working late under pressure and getting the job done. It's not the kind of thing that everyone could do, but I'm suited to it - I'm good late at night.

In conversation with Olivia Kelly