Fast Facts

Capstone seeks a driven Sales Manager for Trade & Specialty to plan and direct sales activities, ensure budget adherence, and develop trade strategies from either Edina or North Mankato, MN, with potential for remote work.

Responsibilities: Key responsibilities include managing sales across various trade channels, maintaining competitive pricing structures, coordinating trade marketing activities, and overseeing trade expense budgets.

Skills: Candidates should possess excellent communication skills, sales management experience, and familiarity with Microsoft Office and Salesforce, along with the ability to solve problems creatively.

Qualifications: Preferred qualifications include a 4-year degree in a relevant field and at least 5 years of experience in trade publishing sales.

Location: This position is located in Edina, MN, with the possibility of remote work.

Compensation: $80000 - $90000 / Annually

Description

Capstone is seeking a driven and entrepreneurial individual for our Sales Manager, Trade and Specialty role. This role is responsible for planning and directing trade sales activities of the company. This position works with the Senior Director of Business Development, Chief Revenue Officer, internal sales teams, management, and marketing in the planning and implementing of sales activities and programs that will meet or exceed the company’s projected sales levels for assigned territories while operating within a framework of policies, objectives, and budgets that are agreed to with top management.

This position will identify, aggressively seek out and prioritize trade opportunities. Also, this role will set specific objectives and action plans to accomplish them and monitor all distributor sales activities to ensure that these objectives and opportunities are achieved.

Our preference is for this role to be hybrid, based out of either our Edina, MN or North Mankato, MN locations. However, fully remote work may also be considered.

Why You’ll Want To Join Capstone

Have you ever read something that increased your understanding of the world around you? An article, a book, a research paper, a piece of local legislation, even a poem or short story?

Capstone is a mission-driven community of passionate, creative people like you who believe in the power of literacy. Our mission is to make reading fun for kids, so that they never experience literacy as the barrier that prevents them from understanding and engaging with the world around them. 

For more than 30 years, Capstone has led the way in K–5 educational publishing, creating award-winning books and digital learning experiences (PebbleGo). The information landscape has changed dramatically since we first started out in 1991, and competition for kids’ attention is at an all-time high. This changing landscape inspires our continued growth and innovation – today’s kids need trusted sources of content more than ever, but their standards for what’s considered engaging have never been higher! At Capstone, we’re excited by that challenge – are you?

YOUR RESPONSIBILITIES

Trade & Sales

• Manage all channels and responsible for meeting annual sales budgets. Including bookstore (Amazon, B&N, and indie bookstores), book trade distributors, trade mass market, special sales, toy and gift channel, select trade rights and select e-book accounts. 
• Responsible for maintaining/implementing competitive and consistent discount structures. This also includes negotiating special sales prices and approving P&L’s based on margin guidelines provided by the executive leadership team. 
• Responsible for closeout and remainder sales of products/listings as provided by inventory control and finance. 
• Coordinate all trade marketing activity with marketing including catalogs, Edelweiss, sell sheets, Amazon marketing support and other as needed. 
• Facilitate new title presentations with sales ops, editorial and marketing as necessary. 
• Coordinate and manage all trade shows deemed non-corporate. 
• Manage trade expense budgets. 
• Work closely with sales operations to help support above activity. 
• Coordinate timely data feeds across all channels with the data team. 
• Frequent travel for customer visits, rep meetings and support.    
• Responsible for all sales activity, structure and strategy. 
• Develop monthly forecasts, manage and report sales throughout each month to ensure such objectives are met. This includes keeping track of pending returns and incorporating such data into the monthly forecasts and forecast updates. 

Managerial

• Hire and manage all commissioned bookstore representatives. Hire, manage and support commissioned channel managers (Amazon, Toy/Gift, Special Sales and Mass Market) and each channels network of commissioned sales representatives. 

Collaboration & communication 

• Work closely with editorial to develop the trade publishing strategy and provide seasonal trade list input and direction. 
• Work with executive team and finance to set annual sales, expense budgets, and sales strategy.
• Work with various departments to ensure implementation of various sales initiatives and to resolve issues, questions and internal processes. This includes project management, purchasing, book development, operations, finance and marketing.

Education, Experience, and Skills desired: 

• 4-year college degree in Sales. Marketing, Communications, Business, or related field preferred.
• 5+ years of industry experience in trade publishing sales and sales management preferred.
• Excellent interpersonal communication skills (verbal and written).
• Desire to thrive, learn, and grow in a dynamic entrepreneurial environment.
• Expertise in industry concepts, practices and procedures.
• Extensive experience and judgment to plan and accomplish goals.
• Ability to lead and direct the work of others.
• Creative problem solving.
• Self-directed within the organizational goals.
• Experience balancing multiple priorities.
• Intermediate skills with Microsoft Office Suite, Teams, and Salesforce preferred. Biblio experience a plus.

Travel Requirements

This position requires travel – around 15-30%.

Inclusion & Belonging

Capstone embraces equal opportunity and a culture of belonging for all employees and applicants. We are an Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity Employer. All candidate information will be kept private according to EEO guidelines. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request to [email protected].

The pay range for this role takes into account the wide range of factors that are considered surrounding compensation including but not limited to: skill sets, experience and training, work location, and other business and organizational needs. At Capstone, it is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top of the range for their role. A reasonable estimate of the base range for this position is $80,000 - $90,000. This role is eligible for a sales commission plan, with the annual total on-target earnings (OTE) range of $125,000 - $145,000. 

Capstone strives to provide comprehensive and market-competitive benefits to meet the needs of our employees and their families. Click here to see our benefits. 

Pre-Employment Background Check Required

California Applicants: 

Applicants from California can access our California Privacy Notice here. 

Employment Authorization: 

At this time Capstone unfortunately cannot sponsor or take over sponsorship of an employment visa. To be considered for one of our roles, applicants must be authorized to work in the United States.