Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 3 February 2015

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation

Female Entrepreneurship, Women in Tech Industries, Skills Needs and Balanced Regional Development: Enterprise Ireland

1:40 pm

Ms Julie Sinnamon:

We run an international selling programme, which is quite an in-depth programme, for approximately eight months. We get salespeople in and they are put through a programme. The bottom line is a sales plan for the company. That is a fantastic programme, which we have been running with DIT for six or seven years. We also have an excel at selling programme. That is typically one day - short and sharp - to get people to look at their value proposition and to do what they do. That is our way of responding to the needs. For years, marketing seemed to be a different form of life to selling but actually selling is really important and there has not been as much focus on selling as a career path as there has been on marketing. We would certainly encourage anything that would help to drive the development of the sales skills within the country.