Sales Strategy and Business Operations Manager

Line Manager: Director of Sales, Marketing & Operations UK & Europe

Overview

The role will be supporting the Group Publishing Operations team, performing analysis and reporting of sales and market trends to provide:

• Critical insight to the sales teams to maximise their focus and effectiveness
• Insight and understanding into effective areas of publishing through sales analysis
• Appropriate direction of sales resource in the Home market as well as with our International partners

You will be someone who naturally looks to data and research to find information on which to base decisions and be able to communicate that information to people throughout the company at various levels.

Ideally you will also be someone who enjoys teaching others how to find things out for themselves, teaching people to self-serve wherever possible to raise the whole company’s effectiveness and ability with reporting and data research.

Responsibilities

• Provide data and insight to the sales and management organization enabling the company to grow account sales and increase distribution into all specialty and trade book markets, as well as throughout the world in territories served out of the UK
• Provide a high-level analytical overview of the company’s market position, our channel penetration and our market share gain/loss to drive better publishing, customer ordering and product positioning decisions
• Spearhead annual budget process as well as RF processes
• Prepare sales forecasts and collect and analyze data to evaluate current sales goals and trends
• Research and evaluate current economic conditions that may affect the organization's ability to sell its products or services in the marketplace.
• Assist in the development of sales quotas and forecasts for the sales teams.
• Recommend changes to current sales techniques, procedures or promotional efforts based on market research and new trends
• Work closely with the Group Sales Director to analyse all day-to-day sales and commercial activity

Deliverables

• Design and deliver sales forecasting and analysis for budgetary reporting – providing clear and accurate reports to enable sales management and publishing to make effective decisions
• Distribute monthly department summary reporting to senior staff that includes YOY and recent trend analysis for account data, territory, channel, imprint, format performance, as well as custom reporting including price point analysis and frontlist/backlist performance
• Distribute market share analysis that plots account growth compared to total market size within each publishing/customer category
• Analyze historical pre-pub trend analysis by category, format, price point, and channel sales to establish “bench mark” metrics for pre-pub activity that the sales team can be measured against – as well as using for acquisition purposes
• Manage the tracking of per title frontlist sales as compared to customer/channel forecasts and publishing projection and provide sales teams with monthly detail on where titles are short to projection throughout the first 12 months of a title’s publication
• Analysis and reporting of productivity and profitably of our publishing, including recommendations for products, formats, territories and markets to explore based on historical trends and market trends
• Create the data for and conduct monthly ROI title meetings with key stakeholders

Required Skills and Experience

• Superb excel skills are crucial in this role, especially VLOOKUP, PivotTables and Macros
• A willingness to find answers yourself, from various sources around the company
• Confidence with data manipulation and bringing together various sources of data into single reports quickly and accurately
• Experience in the publishing industry
• Flair for visual presentation of data, and confidence of communication to internal stakeholders
• An understanding of different business managers’ requirements and the ability to provide appropriate data in the first instance to enable them to manage their businesses effectively

Desired Skills and Experience

• Experience with SAP/Extent and COGNOS
• Experience of Firebrand Title Management software
• Experience with FileMaker
• Knowledge of the co-edition and trade publishing business models
• Understanding of accounting principles including stock management, sales accruals, etc.

All applications, which should include a covering letter and CV should be sent to Andrew.stanley@quarto.com