Dealing With Dealer Catalogs Part 4: Designed to Sell
Dealer catalogs can be sell-in superstars. They can speed up sales calls, facilitate fill-in orders and serve as a handy product reference for dealer staff. They can even minimize paper waste and production costs. But only if they’re designed well.

Mediocre workbook design will do a mediocre job at all these things. Just as poorly designed packaging converts fewer browsers into buyers, poorly designed sell-in materials get in the way of pre-season orders. Like packaging, workbooks sit between the product and the buyer. If that interface isn’t bridged by good design, you’re losing potential sales.

Designing a good workbook takes talent, experience and a solid understanding of what happens during a sales call. While different markets and different brands place different demands on their workbooks, there are a few common goals to keep in mind when you evaluate how well your workbook design is working for your brand.

Sell-In Sidekick

• Be easy to navigate—because reps show different assortments to different accounts, buyers seldom page through books one product at a time.
• Careful with collections—well-formed collections help buyers make sense of a large line. The design should help readers make distinctions between collections.

Ready Reference

• Facilitate product comparisons—that means regular layouts, smart data hierarchy and good typography.
• Help them find it—users often want to check a spec on a single product. Good tables of contents and indices can make this happen without headaches.

Paper Pig

• Don’t waste space—workbook design is a balance between a comfortable distribution of products and wasted space. Be smart with your pages or your print costs will suffer.
• Spec what you need—choosing the wrong stock can cost thousands. Good design matches brightness, opacity and feel to the needs of the piece.

Ready for Robots

• Hand work adds up fast—the best design allows for automation but doesn’t look like it.
• Get out fast—sometimes workbooks are the first place complete product data comes together. Good designs allow that data to be exported for reuse.