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jenettAs you may or may not know, school libraries get a lot of sales calls. People want to sell us things. (And people tend to want to sell *me* things, because we've got a very healthy budget, all things considered.)
One model of this is what our Gale rep did for me on Friday: came in and spent 20 minutes showing me their biography resource center (which I am inclined to buy but want to test first). Another model is to send me a catalog of current titles of interest. Both of these models work nicely for me. The one that doesn't produced the following conversation this morning.
phone rings. I answer.
me: Hello, this is [name].
her: Hi, I'm calling from [book company]. Do you have a few minutes to talk?
me: Actually, no. I've got homeroom in a minute. Mornings are actually the worst time to try and talk for any length of time. [totally true: we have many more questions/hour in the mornings compared to the afternoon, plus all the 'hey, need this for class in 5 minutes' stuff tends to be more dire then.]
her: Oh. Well, are you interested in us sending you a box of books on pre-approval?
me: Generally not unless I'm pretty sure something in there is going to be useful to us. Could you send me some information by email instead?
her: Sorry, I can't do that. Are you sure I couldn't call earlier in the morning?
me: No, sorry. Afternoons are usually a lot better. [note that I get in at 7am, and she called about 7:40, so there's a limited amount of useful 'earlier' here. And I'm usually busy handling urgent needs at least 5 minutes out of every 10 from the time I get in here to about 8:20, so a 10 minute phone call is hard to fit in.]
her: I'm only here till 11. Are you sure I can't call back later in the morning?
me: Yes, really sure. If you can get me something by email or mail, I'm glad to take a look, but I don't have a lot of time to spend on the phone, as I'm working with students.
her: Oh. Well, I'll call back when we have our website up and running, I guess.
me: That'd help a lot, yes, thanks. Bye!
Dear company: if you want to sell school librarians books, you should be aware of the *school* part of the equation. It should not come as a massive surprise that we might in fact want to be interacting with students when they're here, rather than on the phone attempting to be sold books that are probably a lousy fit for our collection. And that if a librarian says "Mornings really lousy, try again.", the answer should not be "Well, I only work until 11." but instead a "Oh, ok. Let me see if I can find a different way to get the info to you."
And while I'm on the subject, most of the companies pushing pre-approval boxes are writing at a significantly lower reading/detail level than is useful for our collection. I generally say no to them unless I'm pretty sure that there are at least 3-5 books that I'm considering looking at. (The boxes generally have 20 books or so.) And I'm not inclined to give a lot of time to companies who can't give me multiple sources of information anyway. (Dude. Librarian. I get cranky when you don't tell me important stuff about books. This business plan factor does not involve rocket science.)
Well, and the obvious thing I have against the pre-approval boxes, which is that I think it's approaching pretty close to negligent business behavior to ship boxes of books to people on pre-approval without more details about what's in them, given various combinations of energy costs, transport costs in general, and staffing hours to look at the books and ship them back (again, remember we'd probably be returning at least 75% of a *good* box as unsuitable to our collection.) There's no excuse for it in this day and age compared to sending out an email (where I can review specific details and check on titles) or at *least* being willing/able to schedule a call at a convenient time for me. (a 4 hour block in the morning isn't it.)
Ok. Done being cranky now, and going to go finalise the $1000 order from our usual wholesaler, who lets me do the whole damn thing online with minimal fuss and bother.
One model of this is what our Gale rep did for me on Friday: came in and spent 20 minutes showing me their biography resource center (which I am inclined to buy but want to test first). Another model is to send me a catalog of current titles of interest. Both of these models work nicely for me. The one that doesn't produced the following conversation this morning.
phone rings. I answer.
me: Hello, this is [name].
her: Hi, I'm calling from [book company]. Do you have a few minutes to talk?
me: Actually, no. I've got homeroom in a minute. Mornings are actually the worst time to try and talk for any length of time. [totally true: we have many more questions/hour in the mornings compared to the afternoon, plus all the 'hey, need this for class in 5 minutes' stuff tends to be more dire then.]
her: Oh. Well, are you interested in us sending you a box of books on pre-approval?
me: Generally not unless I'm pretty sure something in there is going to be useful to us. Could you send me some information by email instead?
her: Sorry, I can't do that. Are you sure I couldn't call earlier in the morning?
me: No, sorry. Afternoons are usually a lot better. [note that I get in at 7am, and she called about 7:40, so there's a limited amount of useful 'earlier' here. And I'm usually busy handling urgent needs at least 5 minutes out of every 10 from the time I get in here to about 8:20, so a 10 minute phone call is hard to fit in.]
her: I'm only here till 11. Are you sure I can't call back later in the morning?
me: Yes, really sure. If you can get me something by email or mail, I'm glad to take a look, but I don't have a lot of time to spend on the phone, as I'm working with students.
her: Oh. Well, I'll call back when we have our website up and running, I guess.
me: That'd help a lot, yes, thanks. Bye!
Dear company: if you want to sell school librarians books, you should be aware of the *school* part of the equation. It should not come as a massive surprise that we might in fact want to be interacting with students when they're here, rather than on the phone attempting to be sold books that are probably a lousy fit for our collection. And that if a librarian says "Mornings really lousy, try again.", the answer should not be "Well, I only work until 11." but instead a "Oh, ok. Let me see if I can find a different way to get the info to you."
And while I'm on the subject, most of the companies pushing pre-approval boxes are writing at a significantly lower reading/detail level than is useful for our collection. I generally say no to them unless I'm pretty sure that there are at least 3-5 books that I'm considering looking at. (The boxes generally have 20 books or so.) And I'm not inclined to give a lot of time to companies who can't give me multiple sources of information anyway. (Dude. Librarian. I get cranky when you don't tell me important stuff about books. This business plan factor does not involve rocket science.)
Well, and the obvious thing I have against the pre-approval boxes, which is that I think it's approaching pretty close to negligent business behavior to ship boxes of books to people on pre-approval without more details about what's in them, given various combinations of energy costs, transport costs in general, and staffing hours to look at the books and ship them back (again, remember we'd probably be returning at least 75% of a *good* box as unsuitable to our collection.) There's no excuse for it in this day and age compared to sending out an email (where I can review specific details and check on titles) or at *least* being willing/able to schedule a call at a convenient time for me. (a 4 hour block in the morning isn't it.)
Ok. Done being cranky now, and going to go finalise the $1000 order from our usual wholesaler, who lets me do the whole damn thing online with minimal fuss and bother.
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no subject
Date: 2009-09-14 03:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-14 03:54 pm (UTC)It's a frankly stupid business model, though. (And, for these particular kinds of book, the main market isn't private sales, it's public libraries and school libraries: they sell sets designed for such use that wouldn't generally be of interest to individuals.)