Selling as a Woman: Intrapreneurship, Growth Mindset and Leadership – Speaking with ‘The Entrepreneurs Godmother’ Alison Edgar MBE

An inspirational and motivational episode where Christina interviews her second MBE guest, Alison Edgar. Alison is a sales and marketing powerhouse, she is also a speaker, mentor and bestselling author.

Known to many as the ‘entrepreneurs Godmother’ Alison has worked with many start-ups including Dragons Den winners, right up to large corporate companies such as SKY and EasyJet. Alison brings her breadth and depth of knowledge to this episode and talks to Christina about women in business, her unique perspectives on sales and marketing and delves into the importance of mindset and ethics.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Alison is an author of two bestselling books. Her first book, The Secret to Success, was based on the top performers and sellers of organisations, which most of the time was and still is women. Only 5% of all books on sales are written by women, even though at least 50% of sales are by women. Women sell differently, they have a unique way of building relationships and emotional intelligence and this is reflected in their performance.

Standing out is great but you want to stand out for the right reasons. Alison believes that this can often be the difference between men and women. She doesn’t care about everyone knowing who she is, she is proud to be known for the right things: practical sales, positivity, authenticity and following through.

Alison and Christina are both passionate about the concept of intrapreneurship: When you are in a job, working for someone, but you work and believe in the same way as an entrepreneur.

A growth mindset is something Alison has always had, it is also something entrepreneurs, top performers and intrapreneurship have in common. It has made her hard to manage in the past simply because she always wanted to improve things and make change. Now, she is passionate about focusing on changing one person into an entrepreneur at a time: this is how you make significant changes in culture.

People overcomplicate business. Sell more stuff, spend less money and make a profit. That’s the formula for success.

Sales isn’t just a numbers game. Having time management, good data, great questions and effective processes can make an immeasurable difference to success.

Sales and marketing are two separate entities. They need to be treated as such.

Alison recognises that sometimes she will be asked to be on a panel to ‘tick a box’. But she doesn’t care, she just uses it to her advantage and as an opportunity and knows by the end she will have proved herself. Women have to go up there to show women that we can do just as much and more than men: when we get the opportunity, we have to take it to inspire others to do the same.