What is your Edge over your Competition?

If you can’t put a Square Peg in a Round Hole, then what is your EDGE over your competition?

Too many times sales organization try to emulate what their competition is doing. They create products and services that are “me too” and that dilutes your ability to be unique, special, innovative, i.e., different.

I sell products that are highly standardized. As a matter of fact, my clients can purchase many of the brands that I sell elsewhere.

So what makes me different? What is my “Edge” over my competition? It is my red hair, my wild and crazy personality; it is the Brownies that I have made for my clients each year during the holidays.

Brownies! Seriously, that is what one client told me several years ago. I asked, “Kyle, why do you do business with me?” He said, “It’s those wonderful brownies that you bring me every Christmas.”

Usually around July, he and some of my other guys will start in on me by asking, “Isn’t it about time for some of those Brownies?” I answer, “It ain’t Christmas yet!”

In the marketplace, when all things appear to be equal, there are just a few little details that can make you stand out and shine to your clients. So share with me, what is your Edge?

Peggy P. Edge (c) 2013

To write or not to write…that is the question!

Hugh Prather wrote in “Notes to Myself,” “If the desire to write is not accompanied by actual writing then the desire is not to write.”

With the invention of social media, that is all we are doing now is writing.  All of us are writing about something–our likes, dislikes, our religious persuasion, our political stance, comments on cats, dogs, ex-husbands and wives, etc.

Because every single one of us is an expert in something, now we have the venue to spout out our innermost thoughts and opinions.

For years, I thought my only expertise was what I did for a living–packaging.  I don’t know everything there is to know about packaging but after 30 years in the industry, I think I’ve learned a thing or two about the subject.

Most recently I have discovered I know a thing or two about several other topics:  business networking; sales training; mentoring.  Why?  Because over almost 30 years in industrial sales, I have some pointers and tips that I can teach other, younger salespeople as well as share my expertise in having owned 2 businesses.

Wow!  I’m a writer now!  You can be too.  Pick up that pen and pad and write what’s on your heart.  It doesn’t matter if you post it on FB, Twitter or any other media but what happens is that it is exciting and exhilarating when you are finished.

Let me know what is on your mind that you are writing about today.

“The Edge” Over Your Competition!

Good Morning Everyone,

This blog is going to be all about tips, tricks, and pointers on how to have “The Edge” over your competition.

For 30 years, I have attended sales seminars, heard some of the best in the industry of leadership, management, sales and training.

I realized recently when my husband and I downsized our home that many things that we had collected over the years were going to have to be sold, given away, thrown away, or stashed in the attic.

One of the things that I discovered in cleaning out my office was folders on top of folders of notes from these many seminars that I have attended over the years since I graduated from college in 1976.

Back in those olden days, personal computers had not even hit the market.  They would not come along until in 1983-84 thereabouts.  At least that was my first recollection of their existence.

Therefore, when you went to any type of seminar, you received a handout of some sort and you took copious notes.

Some of you younger folks who are in sales might say, “What in the world can I learn from tips that are 37 years old?”  Well, oddly enough, the basics of selling one-on-one have not changed too terribly much.

For example, many sales organizations still rely heavily on cold calling.  They require even their senior account executives to do a certain amount of what we call “dialing for dollars.”

Now days, companies purchase lists of prospective clients that have been tailored made for their particular products and services, streamlined to reach their target market and have been given the name of the contact person to call.

Whether you have been in sales for 40 years or 4 days, your main objective that you have been given by your sales manager is “to go sell something today!”

I will be intertwining a variety of: sales techniques, do’s and don’ts of prospecting, examples of my many years of experience…some are quite humorous…like the time my boss was chewing on my leg as I drove him around to see some of my clients and I threatened to put him out on the side of I-35 in Dallas if he kept berating me!  Yes, that is a true story and I was a serious as a heart attack that day, even if it meant that I got fired.

© Peggy P. Edge, 2013