The reason that I love Seth Godin's stuff so much is that even when I don't understand him I love what he's saying, or at least that he's making me think.
His post about "edges and clusters" forced me to re-read the post three times before it started to sink in...and I may need to read it again a few times to really comprehend how it relates to good old fashioned selling.
Let me take a stab at it...
...if you're a company selling a product or service, its natural to want "clusters". Clusters mean revenue, consensus, a crowd, and buyers. But to get (and keep) clusters, you have to have "edges". And the edges need to constantly be changing, evolving and creating a buzz. As Godin points out, the tendency is to find an edge that draws a cluster and then come up with a bunch of variations of that edge that, in fact, slowly dulls the edge.
The challenge for companies and sales professionals is to keep finding those unique edges on an ongoing basis. That takes a lot of time and energy. It goes back to the "easy" button vs. the "certain" button. Many sales professionals tend to gravitate to "easy."
Thus, it goes back to the same conclusion that I reached in that earlier post: Only a few talented, motivated, "edgy" sales professionals will take the time and energy to find new and creative "edges" in their approach, in the way they support their products or services, or the way they take care of their customers...most won't, and will settle for "easy".
Of course, that's also why most large sales organizations have 20% oftheir sales reps doing 80% of the business...and why there are so many ads for salespeople on Monster.com.
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