1st Edition

Action Research for Professional Selling

By Peter McDonnell, Jean McNiff Copyright 2014
    252 Pages
    by Routledge

    252 Pages
    by Routledge

    Action Research for Professional Selling by Peter McDonnell and Jean McNiff is for people working, or hoping to work in sales, who wish to improve their capacity for selling, and who may be involved in providing or participating in a structured sales training programme. It provides a basis for professional selling that connects the sales process to different philosophical models for understanding human interactions and contains much practical advice for selling in a tough economic environment. Action research is used across the professions as a powerful methodology for improving performance and outcomes and will enable sales practitioners to generate their practical theories of selling. The book answers calls for evidence-based practice in sales education, placing special emphasis on the strength of a values-based approach over the outmoded manipulative models of the past (many of which are still in evidence). It is essential to develop your understanding of what you are doing, and be able to explain it, and the book shows you how to do this through researching your practice in action. It focuses seriously on selling as a field of research offering an innovative, practical approach to selling, underpinned by strong theoretical and philosophical frameworks.

    Action Research for Professional Selling

    Biography

    Peter McDonnell has spent over 15 years in direct sales in the financial, health and lifestyle industries. He previously spent many years as a health care manager and has operated his own health care business. Peter works with practitioners in a range of professions, including health and education, and has written and presented papers at international conferences on research-based professional development. Jean McNiff is well known worldwide for her writings in action research and professional education. Her books are used internationally as core texts on continuing and higher education courses. Jean is Professor of Educational Research at York St John University, and also holds visiting professorships at universities in China, South Africa and Norway.

    ’This is an interesting and engaging book about selling which finds the right balance between how to style guidance, with research, theory and background information. The authors have created an accessible contribution to sales literature by exploring the use of reflection and other transferable skills in a sales environment, and by furthermore reiterating the place of selling skills in all of our 21st century lives in the ways in which humans relate to one another. The thorough investigation of action research, and the connections this has to professional knowledge, identity and self-image is both useful and fascinating, as well as helpfully backed up with case studies and examples.’ Ruth Helyer, Head of Workforce Development Team (Research & Policy), Teesside University, UK ’This is an exhilarating book. McDonnell and McNiff give us an enlightened and enlightening perspective on action research which is thoroughly modern. The text’s modernity lies in its clarity of vision and future-orientation for professional practice in higher education. Drawing deeply on inter-disciplinary theories of practice, they challenge academics in business schools and education departments alike to embrace the democratisation of knowledge for 21st-century learning.’ Jenny Naish, Dean of York St John Business School, York St John University, UK