A veteran buyer polled a number of buyers and sales reps and generated this list of Best Practices for Sales Reps. This is a dynamic list, so if you have any additions please let us know at support@abovethetreeline.com.
-Share markups as early as possible. The sooner you send them, the more likely they’ll be useful to your buyers.
-Verify with your buyers the email they use to log in to Edelweiss! This will ensure that when you share markups with them, they will be viewable for your buyer in the site. A plus icon next to a contact’s name on your People page signals that this user has an Edelweiss account.
Bonus: Learn how to share a markup with an entire organization.
-Use the Priority feature in your markups to Feature (highlight) important titles, especially in a larger catalog. Use this judiciously, of course.
-Use Tags to indicate local authors, local tours, titles you’d like to discuss with the buyer, etc.
–Relevant Comps! Relevant Comps! Relevant Comps! If you’re selling the paperback edition of a title, you must include the hardcover as a comp, or incur the fiery wrath of your buyers. Include that author’s last title or two, but not their last 40 titles. Try to avoid “wishful thinking” comparable titles: If you think this book could sell as well as Wild, that does not make Wild a relevant comparable title.Catalog admins can add default publisher comps which reps can “star,” as shown below. You can also pull in additional comps if necessary by selecting Find Additional Comps.
-Never submit an order without first checking with your account. They may not be finished. Encourage the use of the Send Notification tool to aid in communication!
*Buyer’s view
-For drop-ins or previously cataloged titles, add the title as a comp of itself so your Edelweiss-using stores can quickly see if they have already ordered that title.
-If you are a larger publisher, hopefully, your organization supplies an “omnibus catalog,” or a catalog that combines all your disparate publishers, distribution clients, and imprints into one catalog. If they don’t, you can greatly ease the burden on your accounts by creating a Collection that combines them. Learn more about creating and sharing Collections here.
-Keep your Markup notes uniform. If you highlight the print run in green in the top left of the markup note, do that every time. A buyer’s eyes get trained where to look as they’re plowing through a catalog, and changing things up on them each time can slow them down.
-With those Markup notes, avoid copying and pasting catalog copy. A markup note is your opportunity to sell a title using your own unique knowledge of the title, the store, and how your publisher views this title.
-If an account is an Edelweiss Analytics store, ask them to check out the Analytics View of their last seasonal order in Edelweiss to view the performance of the titles bought this season a year ago. This can be viewed as a report card, of sorts, to not only see how your titles performed in this store, but also how this store performed with your titles. You can do this too if your publisher is an Analytics subscriber! It behooves you both to know if a certain sort of book will most likely sell, or not, based on this hard data. Data combined with experience is a very powerful tool.
-Use Suggested Orders judiciously to call out titles you think are worth ordering more of…or fewer of, for that matter.
-Talk to your buyers well ahead of appointments to discuss your Edelweiss strategy. If you plan on talking about every title in a 900 title catalog, it’s best if you both know this. If you both plan in advance, you share your markups in advance, your buyer goes through and adds order quantities, and you check their orders before you meet, the buying appointment could easily be 45 minutes rather than 5 hours. Discussing expectations and recommendations with your buyer beforehand is beneficial for you both.
-If you encounter an issue when working on markups or orders, contact support@abovethetreeline.com. We always respond as quickly as possible!
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