One of the most important activities that any publisher engages in is their sales conference. Most publishers have three seasons a year, Winter, Spring/Summer and Fall. Summer is the weakest time for book sales so it doesn’t rate its own season. In order to sell a book in to the booksellers, you have to give them 4-6 months of leadtime. This enables them, especially the large chains, enough time to review all the new titles, make their buying decisions, determine the layouts of their stores, and prepare their catalogs and other marketing support.
So, approximately 6 months before the season starts, we gather together our sales reps to take them through our new products. This week, we gathered in Cincinnati for our Spring/Summer sales conference.
We went a little high-tech this time. Let me explain. Most of our sales reps are located in Cincinnati. That would include our ten church account managers who telemarket to the churches. Our key account managers who call on the large chains in both the Christian and secular markets are also located here. But we have 5 regional sales managers located around the country, who call on the largest churches in person. We also have a network of contract sales organizations that represent our products in Canada and in to certain markets such as the big box stores.
Normally, we would pay to fly about 10 different sales reps in to Cincinnati and put them up for about 3 nights. We also pay to bring in some of our lead authors to talk about their new books. This year, we utilized web technology to enable our reps to watch the sales conference from the comfort of their own homes. Any charts and slides showed up on their computer screens. They listened to the speakers via a telephone conferencing system.
As far as I can tell, none of our “remote” reps dozed off. And it appears they were able to see and hear all of the activity.
As for our authors, by some stroke of luck, we had four new books from authors that were within driving distance of Cincinnati. So we heard from some great authors but at a fraction of the normal cost.
Obviously, the state of the economy was a driving force behind some of the cost savings we undertook. Once the economy strengthens, there will be a temptation to return to having all of our smiling faces in one room three times a year. And there is a certain amount of comraderie and morale building that you lose when you don’t gather all the troops together. So we will see where we take this in the future.
Besides all the cost savings, we had a very effective sales conference. I am very excited about our new products. In my next blog, I will talk about some of our new products.
Raise the Standard 