The Package Master: Dave Edmonds, SVP of FedEx Worldwide and Corporate Sales, Supply Chain Services, and SmartPost.

What FedEx Supply Chain Services does: Provides clients with FedEx technology and resources to move goods from one end of the supply chain to another and back again.

What FedEx SmartPost Overview does: Will pick up, sort, line haul, track, and deliver high volumes of low-weight packages to residential customers to their nearest USPS outpost, which makes the final delivery.

Sales team by the numbers: Edmonds manages five VPs (each of whom handles different segments of corporate and worldwide accounts) and two directors of sales. Together they oversee about 500 sales reps, who account for 60 percent of the company’s business worldwide.

Largest sales division: Government sales.

Technology then: When Edmonds landed his first job in freight services “eons ago” in 1981, he kept all his records in a paper binder. “You had very little information to work with. You didn’t have a lot of access to customer trends or needs; it was just hand-to-hand sales combat.”

Technology now: Satellites to monitor and manage weather conditions, online tariff database that calculates tax and customs-related  information, 45 international call centers that manage half a million calls a day, and a real-time package tracking system for customers.

“We are growing faster than the market, and I think that’s attributable to the fact that this is more of a structured, scientific approach and process versus the old style of selling, in which you simply manage by numbers and the more calls you make the better.”

What makes a successful sales rep: “People who can adapt to the use of the tools that we provide today. You could confuse some of our best performers with scientists. They have a strong aptitude to understand an individual’s business, and how the services that we provide can impact the balance sheet and enhance a customer’s ability to reach a certain market that maybe they hadn’t thought about. The level of creativity and ingenuity is based on a strong business acumen.”

Biggest lesson learned about sales: “Customers are more receptive, trusting, and faithful when they realize that you’re going to help them succeed and be more successful in their day-to-day activities.”

Edmond’s winning sales strategy: “We try to get to know a customer’s business as well as or better than they know it.”

Last year, FedEx sent 78 of its drivers to the National Truck Driving Championships, where they competed against nearly 400 others for national titles in eight different classes of vehicles. Two drivers representing FedEx were crowned National Champion in their respective driving classes: Scott Watts, in the Straight Truck class, and John Smith, in the Flatbed class.

FedEx operates 672 aircraft and serves 375 airports worldwide. The company owns more than 75,000 vehicles.

On December 17, 2007, FedEx experienced the busiest night in company history when it processed more than 11.3 million packages through its worldwide networks. This exceeded the company’s forecast and beat the existing record of 9.8 million packages. On an average day, FedEx handles more than 7 million packages.