The pandemic that hit the world in 2020 has brought about many changes around the world. This has led to numerous changes in the world of business and new trends have emerged in the world of sales. Artificial intelligence became more prominent, the impact of videos increased and automation of sales processes became the order of the day.

One of the more noticeable sales trends that emerged in the past years is creativity. The business world changed and salespeople had to work harder to meet targets. This also led to more intense competition, which in turn, resulted in more innovative ways of doing business. Salespeople were forced to work smarter and not harder during these trying times. One of the cyber-age strategies focused on was the use of the Internet to drive sales. This, however, quickly became annoying to customers. To prevent this type of strategy from becoming an also-ran, it needs to be adjusted and adapted to be one step ahead. Creativity is called for in sales – not silliness!

It is clear that customer expectations of personal selling are constantly changing and that businesses must adapt to these changes. The days are gone where a business can tell customers what they want to hear; or will close a deal fast; or talk a lot to influence customers. Customers expect businesses to change the way they approach them.

In this edition of Personal Selling, the authors outline the key steps in the selling process that lead to a successful sale, from prospecting for a sale to the follow-up once the sale has been completed. In addition, it explains the role and place of personal selling, the impact it has on the economy and how it ties in with and supports marketing. The importance of communication in the act of selling, as well as different approaches and sales presentation methods, are explained and clarified, and a comprehensive discussion on how salespeople should manage themselves and their time is included.

Unravelling the complex worlds of public relations practitioners and journalism in a single publication is a challenge, but when the dynamic synergy of these two occupations are established their interaction is easily apparent. Dynamics of Public Relations and Journalism unravels and explores these worlds to enhance the journalistic skills of Media Studies students and give journalists invaluable insights into the complex, multidisciplinary world of public relations. It also highlights the interdependency of the two professions and explains the need for their smooth interaction

Customer service is not a new topic in marketing. Although most marketing texts cover customer service in some form or another, the topic is generally not given the attention it deserves. In a society where customers are becoming more informed, more protected and more demanding than in the past, it makes good business sense to ensure that your customers receive a high level of customer service. After all, a happy customer is a satisfied customer, and a satisfied customer will remember the experience and purchase from you again and again.

Customer Service draws together the important issues regarding customer service. It addresses all the key elements which need to be considered when developing a service strategy for a business. The text is not only written with undergraduate students in mind, but also for the entire spectrum of businesses – both large and small – and for employees at all levels.

This book:

• Considers the topic of customer service within the context of its role in marketing strategy
• Stresses the importance and role of verbal and non-verbal communication
• Highlights the role that physical evidence plays in supporting a service strategy
• Addresses the causes of service failures and how to fix them
• Provides guidance on how to develop a service system
• Shows how technology can be used to enhance customer service
• Gives advice on how to develop and train staff to deliver exceptional customer service
• Addresses the important issues of quality, value, expectations and satisfaction and why they form the foundation of a service strategy
• Outlines the concept of customer experience management and how to apply it to a business

Hello! And Every Little Thing that Matters will transform the way businesses interact with customers - delivering a big impact with small ideas. Impactful ideas for businesses on how to treat their customers, from saying Hello to everyone who you encounter to making sure the chairs in your place of business are comfortable.

The world's most widely used and seminal introduction to public relations--now fully revised and updated for the 21st century with online strategies that work

Every Fortune 500 corporation, movie star, and scandal queen knows that a good publicist is essential to building success and maintaining public support. But if you're a small business owner, an entrepreneur, or an undercapitalized beginner seeking an edge in a highly competitive arena, it's unlikely that you have your own high-powered publicist.

"Guerrilla P.R. 2.0" offers all the resources necessary to mount your own campaign and get the media exposure you need. In clear and concise language, Michael Levine, one of the top public relations counselors in the country, reveals the same procedures he uses every day to get press on major stars--and how those strategies can be utilized on little or no budget. You'll learn how to think like a publicist and map out the perfect strategy for success.

Although much has been said and written about the need for government to adapt to the new realities that resulted from the transformed paradigms in the Information Age, the world is lacking practical, tangible solutions on how to respond to these changes. This title analyses the trends that can be regarded as manifestations of transition, as the world struggles to get to grips with adopting deeply entrenched paradigms and traditional truths to enable effective service renderings and restore the declining relationship between government and its clients, the Information Age citizenry.

At a time when quality in education and training for all sectors of the South African economy has become a crucial issue, many education, training and development (ETD) providers, practitioners and organisations are earnestly seeking ways to improve their education and training practices to ensure compliance with the national legislative requirements. This title suggests practical guidelines for ensuring quality in learning provision.

While public relations practitioners have long focused on the relationship between organizations and their stakeholders, there has never been a time when that relationship was so dominated by public participation. The new model of multiple messages originating from multiple publics at varying levels of engagement is widely acknowledged, but not widely explored in scholarly texts. The established model of one-way communication and message control no longer exists. Social media and an increasingly participatory culture means that fans are taking a more active role in the production and co-creation of messages, communication, and meaning. These fans have significant power in the relationship dynamic between the message, the communicator, and the larger audience, yet they have not been defined using current theory and discourse. Our existing conceptions fail to identify these active and engaged publics, let alone understand virtual communities who are highly motivated to communicate with organizations and brands. This innovative and original research collection attempts to address this deficit by exploring these interactive, engaged publics, and open up the complexities of establishing and maintaining relationships in fan-created communities.

Strategic Communication deals with the principles behind strategic communication planning. It covers the professional practice steps involved in researching, planning, writing, evaluating and implementing a communication strategy. This book links strategic communication campaign planning to medium and long-term business activity and to how organisations deal with issues. This thoroughly revised third edition includes: New international cases and professional exercises that will enable students to work through the cases and apply theory to real-life situations; New discussion questions on important aspects of campaign planning; Chapter exercises that encourage students to think more broadly about communication strategy and work through the particular aspects of a strategy; In Theory panels that highlight key theories and demonstrate important links between theory and practice Accessible and comprehensive, this is an essential text for students of professional communication and professionals transitioning into the field of Strategic Communication.

Addressing 21st-century issues, threats, and opportunities with time-tested principles, this book empowers corporate communications professionals to protect, inspire, and energize organizations in the face of a crisis. Whether due to an external incident or an internal misstep, every major company or institution will find itself scrutinized, its normal operations disrupted, and its reputation and business continuity threatened at some point-and how it prepares for, and reacts to, a crisis can make a critical difference in the ultimate outcome of events. This book focuses on strategic crisis communication as a function of three elements: 1. crisis preparation-establishing a robust and nimble infrastructure and plans, in advance of any crisis 2. crisis management-rapidly gathering information, activating and adjusting plans, making decisions, and relentlessly monitoring outcomes 3. crisis communication-reaching multiple audiences, on multiple platforms, with clear, consistent, and purposeful messages that tell the truth and defend the organization. Bringing together best practices gleaned from hundreds of recent case studies, this book is an unmatched resource enabling corporate communications and PR professionals, and the organizations that employ them, to understand how to weather any reputational storm that may threaten their enterprise.

Contains a variety of in-depth, international case-studies covering real-world organizational settings Online resources, including discussion questions, interviews with case authors, and assignments for instructor use, help bring the discussion to life A combination of theory and practice makes this an ideal resource for students, academics, and public relations and communications professionals

The British Media Industries offers an accessible introduction to how the media in Britain operates and the impact that recent political, economic and technological developments have had on the nature of media industries today. Split into two sections, this book starts by exploring approaches to understanding contemporary media industries through political, economic and technological terms. The second section delves further into issues and practices relating to individual media industries including newspapers, magazines, film, television, music, videogames and social media. The book adopts a political economy approach and is designed to engage students in an accessible way with key issues around the ownership and control of different sectors of the British media; UK and EU government regulation of the media, including content regulation and market/economic regulation; and the corporate strategies employed by leading media players, such as the BBC, News Corporation, Google and Apple. Topics are contextualised within an increasingly international media marketplace and students will be familiarised with concepts such as globalisation and media imperialization. End-of-chapter exercises and case studies help readers solidify their understanding of key concepts as they work through the text. This is an essential textbook for undergraduate students approaching British media industries for the first time and will also be relevant to students undertaking introductory courses in Media Management and Media Economics.

This practical, multidisciplinary text teaches high-quality public relations and media writing with clear, concise instructions for more than 40 types of documents. Strategic Writing takes a reader-friendly "recipe" approach to writing in public relations, advertising, sales and marketing, and other business communication contexts, illustrated with examples of each type of document. With concise chapters on topics such as ethical and legal aspects of strategic writing, including diversity and inclusion, this thoroughly updated fifth edition also includes additional document samples and coverage of writing for various social media platforms. Packed with pedagogical resources, Strategic Writing offers instructors a complete, ready-to-use course. It is an essential and adaptable textbook for undergraduate courses in public relations, advertising and strategic communication writing, particularly those that take a multidisciplinary and multimedia approach. Strategic Writing is ideally suited for online courses. In addition to syllabi for both online and traditional courses, the instructor's manual includes Tips for Teaching Strategic Writing Online. Those tips include easy guidelines for converting the book's PowerPoint slides to videos with voiceovers for online lectures. The book's recipe-with-examples approach enhances student self-instruction, particularly when combined with the companion website's sample assignments and grading rubrics for every document. Visit the site at www.routledge.com/cw/marsh.

The book contains a wealth of detailed and fascinating case studies of New Public Management (NPM) in practice in the UK, exploring the enactment of NPM in its specific organizational contexts. A range of public services are covered including local government, education, social work and the police, with particular attention paid to the National Health Service. The editors introduce the case studies through an examination of the 'hydra-headed' nature of NPM, its variability between sectors and its contested character. This provides themes that are developed within the case studies, where, in varying organizational contexts, the meaning of NPM is negotiated and its impact on those working in the organization is explored. The book points to the complex, fluid and negotiated character of NPM, as well as its centrality in reconfiguring occupational identities and relations within public service organizations.

- Expanded scope from a purely journalism focus to include public relations, broadening the market. - Contains lots of current and global case studies and excerpts, including remote interviewing techniques and technologies necessitated by COVID-19. - Pedagogical features have been expanded to include practical exercises have been added to the end of each chapter, as well as checklists and top topics.

Public relations provides the means to communicate your ideas and get them accepted-a skill vitally necessary when dealing with new ideas. It is a way to gain support for your projects and endeavors. Generally considered a method to gain publicity, public relations has previously been subjected to severe limitations. This was a practice that lacked certain key elements. Now, because of some important discoveries in Scientology, advances have made the entire activity significantly more useful and effective. L. Ron Hubbard's refinement of public relations not only makes it essential for any group and any individual, but removes the previously inherent limitations. Although the full technology is extensive, the basic principles covered here will be of immense value to anyone with a worthwhile purpose.

This book details how the processes of communication are affected by the presence of a pandemic and establishes a research agenda of those effects across the broad field of communication studies. Through contributions from experts in communication subdisciplines such as crisis, organizational, interpersonal, health, intergroup, and intercultural, this book provides the reader with a comprehensive view of the emerging field of study "pandemic communication." Each chapter has four primary objectives: to 1) define critical issues of consideration for pandemic communication from its subdiscipline's perspective, 2) examine how communication varies during pandemic(s), 3) provide examples of how pandemic(s) have affected communication, and 4) propose a research agenda to build pandemic communication theory. This book is suited to undergraduate or post-graduate courses or modules in communication studies across a variety of subdisciplines as well as a reference for researchers in the subject.

Combining theory with practical application, this collection of real-life, provocative case studies on social issues in sports provides students with the opportunity to make the call on ethical and professional dilemmas faced by a variety of sport and communication professionals. The case studies examine the successes and failures of communication in the corporate culture of sport intersecting with social issues including race, gender, religion, social media, mass media, public health, and LGBTQ+ issues. Topics include the COVID-19 pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, sexual abuse scandals, domestic violence, cultural appropriation, and mental health. Each chapter contextualizes a specific issue, presents relevant theory and practical communication principles, and leads into discussion questions to prompt critical reflection. The book encourages students to view the evidence themselves, consider competing ethical and professional claims, and formulate practical responses. This collection serves as a scholarly text for courses in sport communication, business, intercultural communication, public relations, journalism, media studies, and sport management.

The rise of Asia has changed the world, now shaped by greater global connectivity, geopolitics and shifting spheres of influence. Tapping into research and decades of experience in the world's fastest-moving markets, this book makes a compelling case for a new and future-ready approach to communications planning and implementation, which the Asian Century demands. Facing a new operating environment, policymakers and business leaders have to act quickly. This book outlines the necessary adjustments to long-established practices and value propositions in both corporate and government communications and provides a step-by-step plan for strategy development, laid out in a two-pronged approach designed to appeal to a multicultural audience. It is an essential read for global practitioners and students in international relations and mass communications.

Winner of The American Journalism Historians Association Book of the Year Award, 2015 This study of American public relations history traces evangelicalism to corporate public relations via reform and the church-based temperance movement. It encompasses a leading evangelical of the Second Great Awakening, Rev. Charles Grandison Finney, and some of his predecessors; early reformers at Oberlin College, where Finney spent the second half of his life; leaders of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and the Anti-Saloon League of America; and twentieth-century public relations pioneer Ivy Ledbetter Lee, whose work reflecting religious and business evangelism has not yet been examined. Observations about American public relations history icon P. T. Barnum, whose life and work touched on many of the themes presented here, also are included as thematic bookends. As such, this study cuts a narrow channel through a wide swath of literature and a broad sweep of historical time, from the mid-eighteenth century to the first decades of the twentieth century, to examine the deeper and deliberate strategies for effecting change, for persuading a community of adherents or opponents, or even a single soul to embrace that which an advocate intentionally presented in a particular way for a specific outcome-prescriptions, as it turned out, not only for religious conversion but also for public relations initiatives.

The first definitive book on researching gay and lesbian market behavior, Untold Millions: The Truth About Gay and Lesbian Consumers in America will help marketers, advertisers, and public relations managers learn how to successfully market and research products for gay and lesbian consumers. Author Grant Lukenbill, a leading consultant on the cultural and motivational aspects of gay and lesbian consumer behavior, provides you with important procedures, research, and guidelines that businesses today are following in order to develop successful marketing strategies to this growing target audience. From this updated and revised edition, you'll receive current methods, new data, and sure-fire strategies that will help your company break into this market segment, satisfy intended customers, and boost company sales.Providing you with statistics and data from the first market research study of its kind, the Yankelovich MONITOR's Gay and Lesbian Perspective, this book gives you suggestions on what things need to be done within your company before planning your marketing strategies. You'll benefit from ideas and suggestions in Untold Millions that will help you create consumer-driven market strategies to gays and lesbians, including: recognizing that there are families and relationships in society that are not heterosexual acknowledging age differences and the needs of particular generations attracting customers by circulating non-discriminatory hiring policies through press releases and company memos, installing domestic partner health care plans, and identifying cultural reference points to which gays and lesbians can relate remembering that many gays and lesbians may look at business with cynicism and doubt and may be quick to interpret actions as victimization referring to the Wall Street project before addressing gay- and lesbian-specific issues focusing on the areas of individuality, a need for association, and the need to allevia

Exposes the insider tools used to facilitate distortion and deceit and provides practical ideas on how to fight back against each tool and how business can use alternative tactics. Offers business new insights on how to authentically build trust. Educates as well as informs - each chapter ends with what we can do, individually and in our teams, businesses and communities to fight back against deceit.

Modern approaches to public relations cluster into three camps along a continuum: conflict-oriented egoism, e.g. forms of contingency theory that focus almost exclusively on the wellbeing of an entity; redressed egoism, e.g. subsidies to redress PR's egoistic nature; and forms of self-interested cooperation, e.g. fully functioning society theory. Public Relations, Cooperation, and Justice draws upon interdisciplinary research from evolutionary biology, philosophy, and rhetoric to establish that relationships built on cooperation and justice are more productive than those built on conflict and egoistic competition. Just as important, this innovative book shuns normative, utopian appeals, offering instead only empirical, materialistic evidence for its conclusions.This is a powerful, multidisciplinary, and well-documented analysis, including specific strategies for the enactment of PR as a quest for cooperation and justice, which aligns the discipline of public relations with basic human nature. It will be of interest to scholars and advanced students of public relations and communication ethics.

Embracing listening as a useful tool for strengthening organization-publics and organization-employee relationships, this book offers theoretical and practical insights for listening across myriad strategic communication contexts. Chapters authored by a diverse global collective of communication scholars and professionals present original research and case examples of listening for strategic communication in corporate, government, and nonprofit environments. They explore topics such as utilizing artificial intelligence and social media; activism, social justice, and ethics; and fostering diversity, equity, and inclusion within and outside organizations. Each chapter concludes with recommendations for strategic communication practice. This book will be of interest to researchers and advanced students in public relations and strategic communication, organizational communication, and listening.

This book examines third-party review sites (TPRS) and the intersection of the review economy and neoliberal public relations, in order to understand how users and organizations engage the 21st century global review economy. The author applies communication and digital media theories to evaluate contemporary case studies that challenge TPRS and control over digital reputation. Chapters analyze famous cases such as the Texas photographer who sued her clients for negative reviews and activists using Yelp to protest the hunt of "Cecil the Lion," to illustrate the complicated yet important role of TPRS in the review economy. Theories such as neoliberal public relations, digital dialogic communication and cultural intermediaries help explain the impact of reviews and how to apply lessons learned from infamous cases. This nuanced and up to date exploration of the contemporary review economy will offer insights and best practice for academic researchers and upper-level undergraduate students in public relations, digital media, or strategic communication programs.