Sales Manager

AKHIRE is recruiting for the following position:

The Juneau sales manager position for Todd Communications, a wholesale book distributor and publisher, has responsibility for sales throughout Southeast Alaska where the company has more than 200 customers. Todd Communications is an Anchorage-based wholesale book, calendar, map and other print media distributor which has been in business since 1978 when it was founded by its current president Philip (Flip) Todd, a former newspaper reporter in Anchorage, Juneau and Fairbanks.

The Juneau sales position involves operating a warehouse with more than 400 titles, many of them specific to Southeast Alaska including children’s, Alaska history, Native lore, cooking, hiking, mountain climbing, fishing, aviation, biography and dozens of other genres including fiction. Many are by Alaska authors and new titles are added regularly as they are published by Todd Communications and more than 200 other publishers including Random House, Simon and Schuster, Harper Collins and dozens of regional and local publishers including Chronicle Books, Epicenter Press and the Milepost.

This position is very busy in the spring and summer as it stocks book stores, museums and gift shops for summer tourism and slower after October when sales are more focused on Alaskans reading needs before pre-Christmas sales stimulate business. Owning a full-sized reliable vehicle is mandatory in this position, which pays a ten percent commission on most products with a few products such as calendars paying 20 percent.

Commissions are paid twice a month. Book sales in Juneau are delivered to the door of the store and the salesperson is encouraged to develop a good personal relationship with store buyers which we have found greatly facilitates sales. Orders for other communities like Ketchikan, Wrangell, Petersburg, Craig, Icy Strait Point/Hoonah, Sitka, Skagway and Haines are mailed or sent via Alaska Seaplanes, which several of our customers have accounts with.

This salesperson is encouraged to travel by ferry or air to outlying communities to service customers there, develop relationships and find new customers.

The company encourages the salesperson to always look for new customers and try to match specialized inventory to specific customer’s interests. There is lots of room for creative selling in this position.

A good salesperson can make $40,000 or more per year and a superior salesperson can do better than that if they reach out and show our products to new stores, as well as expanding our sales to more than 50 long-time customers. Although a full-time job during the spring and summer, the salesperson can enjoy a slower pace of work during the winter which is the best time to take a vacation.