What is your company's competitive edge today? Sounds like a simple question, right? As I travel around the country meeting with owners, sales managers, marketing managers and sales teams, I have been incorporating this question into my presentation. I asked that question at a recent FPDA (Fluid Power Distributors Assn.) meeting and received the following answers:

"Our people"

"Our service"

"Our inventory"

"Our value added"

"Our experience"

Does this sound like the answers you would give? This is my point. If I were to ask your competitor the same question, wouldn't he give the same answers? Doesn't having a competitive edge necessarily imply differentiation?

So what is your real competitive edge today? Think about focusing on the following concepts that can set a company apart from the crowd.

Better manage the "Front End" of the sales cycle—Better managing the front end of the sales cycle requires putting focus and visibility on this critical part of your business, defining processes and providing tools to facilitate, perpetuate and manage those processes. Most companies have made significant investment in systems to manage the "back end" of their business. But very few companies I visit and work with have viable systems in place to manage the part of the business that generates the revenue, before the order, from lead management and qualified opportunity management to quote management.

Excellent management of the front end, with the right tools, not only provides vital insight into the team's activities, pipeline and future prospects, but also creates operational efficiencies at all levels. Sales drive the business. If you want to improve sales, focus on the processes that drive them.

Share and leverage internal knowledge among your team—The single most valuable asset your company possesses is the collective knowledge of your team. Why not share that information and leverage it to your best advantage? Every day, I see companies with islands of data not being effectively shared and certainly not fully leveraged. Every individual on the team has their own store of information—e-mails in folders, those spreadsheets on your hard drive, unshared contact management software, project files in a cabinet at the home office, and even spiral-bound notebooks.

Consider the competitive edge, the professional impression, the ability to up sell, cross sell, and the cost-saving efficiencies that would be created if all pertinent information could be accessed in real time, by any member of the sales team that interacts with a customer.

So what is your competitive edge? Are you effectively managing the "front end" of the sales cycle? Sharing and leveraging the internal knowledge inside your company?

If not, then I challenge you to put focus and attention on these two areas, change the way you do business, create true differentiation and give your company and sales team a real edge in today's competitive sales environment.