Bss Brilliant Communication

Communication seems so simple, yet breakdowns in communication abound and serious misunderstandings can have you losing your temper, face or credibility and failing to achieve what you want. But both written and presentational business communication are career skills – affecting your current job and future prospects – in which you simply must excel. This book reviews the key factors that will help you prepare and communicate clearly, effectively, impressively and memorably. In five steps, the book will help you: avoid communications pitfalls; plan what to say, what not to say and how to put it across; set out a clear written message; prepare a formal presentation; overcome “nerves”; win attention and give a clear, calm and confident presentation; and use language to put over technical, financial and other details effectively. In every way it will help make sure that your communications achieve what you want and position you as effective and competent.

Job hunting is a job in itself. But too many books are aimed at helping career no-hopers get into a job – any job. This book is aimed at helping ambitious high fliers to, well, fly even higher. It will make sure you get the right job and maintain upward momentum in your career. The book helps you to understand the product – ie, you – that is on offer. What are your strengths and weaknesses, achievements and the kind of career that you should be chasing? It then helps you to scope the job market (investigating jobs, using the grapevine, building a profile with headhunters). It lays out the practical rules for shining at interviews (learning the secrets of the “three Cs” – competence, chemistry and capacity for growth) and sealing the deal (ensuring you pick the right job offer for you and negotiating a package).

This is a quick-read instructional book, packed with anecdotes and advice for all those people who are generally terrible at negotiating and would like to do it better! Based on several years of practical and successful negotiating around the world, the approach adopted by the author in this book will help anyone (with little or no experience or confidence in negotiation) seal deals on favourable terms. Written in Bob Etherington’s distinctive style, combining highly practical advice told in an entertaining fashion, Great Negotiation Skills is all you will need to ensure you don’t lose out in your next negotiation.

Nearly everyone within a company is involved in selling at one level or another. Yet, the majority of those people are not professional frontline salespeople – they have never received any training in selling or in dealing with customers. As a result, opportunities are missed and, worst, you may even have wrecked the relationship with the customer for the long term. Written in a quick-read and practical way, this book presents a set of simple, basic skills for selling, aimed exclusively at those people who have never been trained in the art of selling. Based on the successful courses which the author has been running for over ten years for beginners in sales, this book is intended to enable anyone to make a sound contribution to the overall sales process.

Time is a resource like any other. Using your time effectively can transform your personal productivity and determine your level of success. Moreover, it can change your level of job satisfaction and confidence. This book provides a practical framework to help anyone manage their time better at work. The principles of good time management are not complex, but having the right kind of attitude to the process can make a big difference in your efforts to get on top of your work. This book also inspires and shows you how to adopt certain mental attitudes and thinking towards your working day and the tasks facing you.

Like many things in life, becoming a great manager is in fact a simple process – if only we knew how and changed our current habits. The authors in this book have identified 15 fundamental principles that are exhibited by great managers and which can easily be followed by mere mortals when they have something or somebody to manage. These fundamentals derive from the real experience of successful managers. One by one, the fundamentals are described and illustrative examples given of their use, especially in relation to what great managers do and importantly what bad managers fail to do. The objective is to give the reader a clear understanding of the meaning and importance of each fundamental. Stories, proverbs and aphorisms that will help the reader remember and apply these fundamentals are also included.

Why is it that effective action is so often difficult to take? How do you make it work when you do take it? Human nature tends to make action difficult – or make it more likely to be delayed or be done half-heartedly (with subsequent negative impact on results). There are so many unpleasant issues to be faced, such as firing people or dealing with poor or unacceptable behaviour and performance; tackling sensitive issues such as bullying and discrimination; and handling awkward or embarrassing situations like networking or prospecting. Too often, managers and others find themselves in the ‘discomfort zone’ with no chance of avoiding involvement and every wish to steer clear of the unpleasantness. This book faces these difficulties head-on and offers a wealth of excellent advice about reducing the discomfort, taking the right action and increasing the result. The key is to recognise the problem of inaction or avoidance, and to put yourself in the discomfort zone on a regular basis.

Learn and practice the powerful skills of good communication to get the very best from relationships both at work and home. Clever tips, techniques, practical pointers and real life examples will help you boost and polish your communication skills as you learn the best ways to say what you mean to get what you want.