WORKING LIFE: New chief executive of the Sales Institute of Ireland is keen to shed the traditional image of the salesperson. Ella Shanahan discovers it's an old business with a very modern outlook

Catherine Bodley is hardly your archetypal sales person. She's not pushy, not brash, she's even, well ... kind of self-effacing and considerate.

Yet the woman who has just taken over as chief executive of the Sales Institute of Ireland sure gets her points across with spades.

Indeed, the image she projects probably is the image she wants for her 1,300 members.

"The customer has changed a lot in the last couple of years. You now need to be knowledgeable about your products and what people are now selling; from IT to software, it's all changed.

"A lot of items have become more technologically advanced and the sales person has to be much more educated and promoting a lot more, at the same time bearing in mind that what's important is the relationship between the customer and the sales person. They have to have it in a personal and professional capacity."

And there is a code of practice for her members: "It basically ensures that members aren't selling things to people who don't want them, that they are being professional in their selling."

The institute, formed in 1995, aims to promote professionalism and standards of excellence and to make a sales career a professional career, she explains.

This is done through its education and training functions, supported by meetings and workshops that give sales people access to some of the top personalities in business and industry.

Its members range from sales directors of companies to those who have just graduated, and there are 90 corporate members, including all the major banking groups, the main food-processing companies, semi-state companies, insurance, computer and IT groups. "It's a high-calibre membership and it's important for the institute to have people at this level," she says.

Forget the traditional image of the salesman, she says. It is no longer a job someone just goes into. "The customer has moved on so much now, it was important for the sales person to be educated to deal with a more educated customer, and until now there wasn't specific training there for the sales professional. The whole idea of the institute was to turn it into a professional career, developing education and training and to improve the whole impression that people have of sales."

In conjunction with the Dublin Institute of Technology and Cork IT, the institute offers its members a certificate in professional selling. In Dublin, members can do a further 18 months study for a diploma in professional sales practice.

The courses are supported by industry and a key element of the programmes is a series of lectures by industry specialists.

The institute also runs a series of one- and two-day workshops in topics such as negotiation skills, time management, advanced selling skills and coaching skills. There also are monthly breakfast symposiums in Dublin and Cork - 300 of the members are based in Munster.

Ms Bodley has plans to further the education and training programmes as well as developing the membership. A strategic plan has been drawn up by the council of the institute.

"The certificate and diploma have been very successful but now there are areas to look into - a degree course, e-learning, there are huge opportunities here. Training needs will become more and more important, particularly in the sales area."

She says she would like to double the membership and is looking at forging links with similar institutes in other countries.

She points out that by comparison with many other professional institutes, the Sales Institute of Ireland is relatively new, but it has achieved a lot in the last seven years.

"It's done a lot for the whole sales profession in the last couple of years and hopefully, as we grow, it will develop further. I think it's become an institute anybody in sales will want to become part of."

The daughter of a banker, Catherine Bodley was born in Cork, but the family moved to Dublin when she was very young. After school at St Joseph of Cluny in Killiney, she went to DIT Cathal Brugha Street to study hotel management.

"The hotel industry was just an industry that appealed to me. There is the operational and the business: some people go into operations and some people into sales. In hotels, sales has become very important. It's also very competitive."

With her BSc in Hotel and Catering Management under her belt, she went to work as a sales co-ordinator with Forte Hotels in London and returned to Ireland, first to Fitzpatrick Hotels, then to the Slieve Russell and Quinn Hotel group as group sales manager, and more recently as sales manager with the Burlington Hotel in Dublin and the Johnstown House Hotel and Spa in Enfield, Co Meath. "I've been lucky in where I've worked to get training and development, and with products I believe in."

The Sales Institute was a natural progression, she believes, and sees it as beginning the second phase of its development. "It was a position that really appealed to me as a challenging position."

That challenge means putting in long hours, but then her working day in hotels was very varied. "You're entertaining clients, bringing people in to see properties... Being new, I'm meeting with a lot of the trainers. Like any new job, you are looking at what you're going to do. It will be more structured as you get into the role."

Outside office hours, the 35-year-old goes to the gym two to three times a week, loves skiing and swimming, is an avid soccer and rugby supporter and is starting to play golf again. And she's currently waiting to take possession of a new apartment in Dublin city.

Suitably qualified sales people will be needed in increasing numbers in the future, she says. She points to a survey of members at the end of last year that showed no appreciable fall in sales despite the wobbly economic situation. "No matter how tough times get, sales people are always needed. Management is an area developing for the sales person and the growth in technology and systems... it's a whole developing area."

Meanwhile, she is knuckling down to the job in hand in her Pembroke Road office. "It's a whole new role and already I'm passionate and excited about it. It's a whole big challenge."