The Amazing Electronic Sales Kit (ESK)

It's all about Sales

A Publishing House has many departments each with different functions. One of these departments is Sales.

The Sales department, especially related to Print Books, is responsible for getting the book in the hands of booksellers and other retailers, which in turn sell them to the consumer.

The Sales department is represented by many (if not few) Marketing Representatives or Sales Representatives, which in-turn deal with a list of booksellers and retailers that could be locally or internationally placed.

Some of the tasks the Sales Representative need to deal with are:

1. Follow-up with the publishing team to get a list of book titles being published in the near future.
2. On the basis of the book titles and the genre they belong to, shortlist the booksellers and retailers that will need to be visited.
3. Create brochures for the Titles, which again depends upon the choice of genre the bookseller or retailer prefers to sell.
4. Create information catalogues or presentation sheets that contains detailed information related to each Title, which make it easy for the bookseller to make their choices. This may also have to be created on a bookseller and retailer basis.
5. On visiting the booksellers and retailers, promote the Titles using the brochures, catalogues and presentation sheets.
6. While promoting the Titles, make a note of the order the bookseller or retailer would like to place on a Title-by-Title basis.
7. While building up the orders, have the information about the quantity of each Title available with the Distributor.
8. Post-visiting the bookseller and retailer and create the formal work order that is sent to the Distributor, who in-turn would supply the printed copies to the bookseller or retailer.
9. Ensure that the work order is fulfilled in a timely fashion and the bookseller or retailer is happy.

Not only are the visits to various booksellers and retailers manual, time consuming and effort based; so are all the supporting tasks listed above.

The Sales Representatives generally get production assistance when it comes to creating the marketing material etc., but even that is a manual and time consuming exercise for someone in the publishing system.

Electronic Sales Kit

Faber's Electronic Sales Kit (ESK) has changed all of this.

The Electronic Sales Kit (ESK) was conceived by Faber and developed by Infogrid Pacific as an iPad App after understanding the requirements of the Sales Representative community. The goal is to make the sale professionals lives easier and most importantly more productive.

All an ESK user needs to do is supply the Metadata and Cover Jacket for the book titles that are going to be showcased in the market. ESK takes care of all the other business.

Some of the benefits for a publisher sales representative using ESK are:

1. Create groups of book titles to be showcased to different booksellers and retailers.
   Books can belong to a single or multiple Publishers.
2. Generate the marketing material like brochures, catalogues and presentations on the fly.
   There is no requirement to design or manually create these any more.
3. Use the ESK App  to display the book catalogue to the bookseller or retailer from their iPad.
   There is no need to print them in the first instance.
4. Create the order for each book title as the bookseller or retailer browses through the catalogue on the sales ESK App.
   There is no need to use a physical order form.
5. Once the bookseller or retailer has confirmed the order, it is instantly generated and emailed to the Distributor from the iPad.
   There is no need to convert an order form to a work order and then send it.

The marketing material that you can generate on-the-fly using ESK is complete because it is connected with IGP:Digital Publisher behind the scenes and the fully custom PDFs are generated instantly:

Brochures

Generate a PDF brochure which can be used as a personal reference document by the Sales Representative or as preview material that can be shared with the bookseller or retailer. Each Title is represented with its Cover thumbnail and information such as the Title, Author, ISBN and Retail Price.

Catalogues

This is a more advanced version of the brochure containing details such as the Author Biography, Sales Points, Key Notes and Marketing Reviews along with the detailed provenance metadata of each Title:

Presentations

Some bookseller and retailers prefer the traditional way of viewing the promotional content: on boring old paper! But in addition to the brochure and catalogue PDF files, ESK can also generate a Powerpoint (pptx) presentation. This can be printed and used for sales demonstrations.

Electronic Sales Kit - iPad App

The ESK App is a user-friendly tool that connects seamlessly with the Administration modules of ESK and sync's all the valuable business data. A Sales Representative needs nothing more to showcase the latest book titles to the bookseller or retailer to close a sale and instantly generate the work order.

Because the showcased book titles are grouped together, they can be presented in a Thumbnail view or Catalogue view, allowing the bookseller or retailer to choose to see the short view or full details.

As the bookseller or retailer is reviewing the catalogue, an order for any book title can be taken right then and there. The only question that needs to be answers is "And how many of this title would you like delivered?"

Once the bookseller or retailer has completed placing their order for the book title(s) the salesman just switches to the Order view, reviews it with the customer and send the work order instantly to the Distributor. A spreadsheet is created for the work order, which is emailed to the Distributor, Sales Representative and any other specified participants.

Conclusion

As the name suggests, Faber's Electronic Sales Kit (ESK) is an application that gives the Publisher Sales Representative community an opportunity to get their marketing and sales job done in a significantly more efficient and effective manner.

ESK implements all the business requirements defined by the Faber sales team working on the ground selling books. It significantly enhances the productivity of the Sales Representatives by completely eliminating all the time consuming and effort oriented administrative tasks involved in their day-to-day schedule. The transparency of the business operation makes booksellers and retailers very happy. All parties get to focus on the books and business without the administrative overheads.

About Us

Faber & Faber

Founded in 1929 in London, Faber & Faber is one of the world's great publishing houses. Our list of authors includes twelve Nobel Laureates and six Booker Prize-winners. We are proud to publish the foremost voices in fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and drama, with writers including T. S. Eliot, Ted Hughes, Harold Pinter, Sylvia Plath, William Golding, Samuel Beckett, Seamus Heaney and Kazuo Ishiguro.

Website: www.faber.co.uk

Email: gasales@faber.co.uk

Infogrid Pacific

Infogrid Pacific specialize in solutions for publishers for the production of all book formats; Print and eBooks, the distribution of eBooks to dozens of channels and the  delivery of eBooks to customers.

Infogrid Pacific also provides custom and specialized solutions required by its Publisher clients.

Website: www.infogridpacific.com

Email: sales@infogridpacific.com

Posted by Gordon Drego. ESK Project Manager