Overview

HarperCollins is looking for a seasoned Sales Director for Usborne books, a distribution client of HarperCollins. This position will report directly to the SVP, Director of Sales for Children’s Books.

We are looking for a dynamic, hardworking, results-driven, and creative individual with a passion for book selling. This person will work towards exceeding annual sales goals while managing day-to-day tasks and providing feedback and market insights to Usborne and internally to sales colleagues.

This position will work directly with Sales management, the Key account Children’s sales specialists as well as with the Field and Telesales teams to direct our selling efforts for the Usborne product, including developing and implementing promotions at accounts, and will be the main point person with the Usborne UK office. The Sales Director, while operating independently, will be expected to escalate appropriate queries, issues, and Usborne requirements as necessary and will also build relationships with, and have direct standing with, the heads of relevant divisions of HarperCollins, including warehouse, customer service, inventory, IT, systems, and accounting, as appropriate. Reporting to this position will be a Senior Inventory Associate.

This position is based out of NYC on a hybrid schedule.

Responsibilities

• Provides regular feedback and market insights internally and to Usborne home office.
• Crafts seasonally themed merchandising plans highlighting Usborne titles.
• Establishes a presence in the mass merchandise channel for Usborne titles, including on seasonal titles and bestselling novelty and board book formats.
• Monitors orders and sales performance producing sales analysis to maximize opportunities.
• Works closely with Inventory on long lead printings and forecasting.
• Oversees the sales, marketing and merchandising of Usborne titles across the marketplace.
• Provides forecasting and budgeting of titles with SVP, Director of Sales.
• Communicates with internal sales teams, and coordinates with Usborne to maximize title growth.
• Monitors appropriate reports and interact with client to stay aware of upcoming release schedules and up to date hot titles and reprints.
• As a key member of the senior sales team, sets direction for Usborne titles, works to address challenges, assists with inventory control & respective warehouse on inventory issues.
• Attends and actively participates in regular and ad hoc meetings and provides relevant input while proactively making recommendations, performs gap analysis to identify opportunities for product sales, while developing broad relationships across the HC team.
• Delivers market insight from key channels both from sales team and through direct market contact.

Qualifications

• 10 years of sales experience in publishing with direct selling and management experience preferred
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office, Microsoft Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint
• Excellent problem-solving skills
• Excellent written, verbal communication and presentation skills
• Detail oriented with a keen ability to execute independently
• Analytical thinking skills and expertise to innovate, think critically and leverage data for insights
• Deep knowledge of the overall book marketing and familiarity with industry supply chain, authors, titles, category performance, publishing trends
• 4-year college degree or relevant work experience

HarperCollins Publishers is a company full of people who are passionate about books. When you apply for a position, we want to know why you want to work here, and why you are interested in the job. That’s why cover letters are strongly preferred.

The salary range for this position is $100,000-$120,000. We recognize that attracting the best talent is key to our strategy and success as a company. As a result, we aim for flexibility in structuring competitive compensation offers to ensure we are able to attract the best candidates. The quoted salary range represents our good faith estimate as to what our ideal candidates are likely to expect, and we tailor our offers within the range based on the selected candidate's experience, industry knowledge, technical and communication skills, and other factors that may prove relevant during the interview process.

Pay-for-performance is a key element in our strategy to attract, engage, and motivate talented people to do their best work. Accordingly, offers extended for this role will include an annual incentive opportunity expressed as a percentage of salary or a fixed amount. Similarly to salary, annual incentive opportunity targets are set based on a variety of factors including competitive market practice. 

In addition to cash compensation, the company provides a comprehensive and highly competitive benefits package, with a variety of physical health, retirement and savings, caregiving, emotional wellbeing, transportation, and other benefits, including "elective" benefits employees may select to best fit the needs and personal situations of our diverse workforce.

HarperCollins Publishers is an equal opportunity employer.