Sales Reps – Edelweiss Best Practices

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.

  • Send Markups as early as possible. The sooner you send them, the more likely they’ll be of use to your buyers.
  • Verify with your Buyers the email they use to log in to Edelweiss. Send your Markups there, or to the 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.
  • 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.
  • For drop-ins or previously cataloged titles, add that title as a comp so your Treeline-using stores can very quickly see if they have already ordered that title.
  • Hopefully, your publisher 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. This helps your accounts keep track of things. You can find 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 really slow them down.
  • With those Markup notes, avoid copying and pasting catalog copy. This is your opportunity to sell this title, using your 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 bigger than usual…or smaller, for that matter.
  • If you’re having an issue, contact support@abovethetreeline.com. We always respond as quickly as possible. There’s no reason to work through a frustrating issue if you can quickly get help to remedy the situation.
  • Talk to your buyer well ahead of the appointment 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, and you get your buyers markups in advance, they go through and add numbers, and then you check their orders before you meet, the buying appointment could easily be 45 minutes rather than 5 hours. Talking about this with your buyer beforehand is beneficial for you both.