Why focus on selling small business?
For many companies that have historically focused on selling to only large enterprises, the advancement of technology solutions and business processes has expanded the market opportunity to include medium sized mid-market businesses with 50+ employees. These companies represent a significantly large market opportunity.
Small Business Forecast
Small businesses do not expect the economy to return to the boom times anytime soon and are tempering hiring while focusing on areas to increase revenue growth a
nd profitability.
Today’s small business buyer is more resilient, agile, operationally competitive, and perseverant than ever before. And that is the good news because economic growth has averaged less than 3% since the recovery.
Small businesses are a driving force behind the American economy (95% of American businesses are small businesses with fewer than 50 employees), but they are being forced to work more creatively and more efficiently than ever before because of the rising costs and complexities of doing business.
Cost of Running a Business $ Compared to Business Employee Productivity Chart:
Revenue growth and profitability challenges coupled with an uncertain economic future have fundamentally shifted small business priorities. Plus, the cost of doing business has increased due to increased regulatory compliance, healthcare and administration costs.
Additionally, the hirable workforce has shifted with the majority of workers being Millennials and a third of workers being “no-collar” workers. “No-collar” workers include contingent workers, 1099 contractors, agents, supertemps, stay at home employees, consultants, and free agents.
The Future Selling Small Business
Small and medium business has weathered the recession and re-optimized their business models to support consumer demands. In order to create profitability, however, businesses have to provide extraordinary customer care more efficiently.
Selling small business is often be a shorter sales cycle, but more complex because of the economic limitations and demands of the buyers. All size of businesses today utilize a committee buying process to review the economic ROI of any major purchase, outsourcing, or partner decision.
When focusing on small business, in addition to selling the value-proposition and ROI, it is important to understand the buyer including their preferences, buying transaction history, and persona segment. What satisfies the SMB buyer is simplifying their life while making them feel good about it. Everyone has pain, so step #1 is identifying the prospects’ primary business goal and their corresponding pains and then providing the best solution. Penetrating the SMB market requires a personalized customer experience for each buyer.
To start effectively selling small business, identify your segments and personas.
| Small Business Personas: | Attributes & Description |
| New Mover
| Champion of best practices. Technology capable. Not a founder, but an enabler of growth. 12 to 36 month work assignment stints. |
| Lifestyle | Slow to adopt radical changes. Focus on the long-term. Technology late majority adopter. |
| Serial Entrepreneur | An entrepreneur who continuously comes up with new ideas and starts new businesses. Has lots of unique ideas. Technology leader. |
| VC Backed | Highly skilled, professionally pedigreed and credentialed. Technology early adopter. |
| The Expert | Highly focused skill set. Professionally certified. Technology first mover or early adopter. |
| Community Organizer | Business for a higher cause, noble purpose. Both a leader and team player for decision making. Technology agnostic. |
| Conservative Young President Officer | Leader in business and the community. Technology majority adopter. |
| HiPo Gen Y (high potential) | Millennial. Entrepreneurship driven by community values. Technology early adopter. |
| Boomer Owner | Highly capable, interested in succession plan. 40% of family owned small business market. |
| The “Innovator” | Highly talented, entrepreneurial spirit |
SMB buyers know that the primary source of growth capital is their operations profitability. To prosper, small businesses have to be more operationally efficient than their larger counterparts and competitors.
Small businesses share many common workforce attributes due to similar pressures from the economy and employees; however, these commonalities may create the temptation to create a single sales and marketing strategy. However, this would be a mistake. Each small business buyer expect a customized approach that shows sensitivity to their needs and business requirements.
For years, marketing and sales teams have been focused on multiple impressions and multiple points of contact, but this has never been as achievable as it is today. However, in the rush to find the next new thing, businesses cannot forget to capitalize on the successes of the past.
Over the past 20 years, few business processes have seen as much change as the outgoing sales process. For decades, the cold call was the first contact—often sent out from a call center in-house. Then, the nomenclature was changed to a customer contact center, but little actual change occurred.
The transition, throughout the sales process and in all interactions, has been to a greater focus on the solution. Who can provide the best care to the customer and how can that interaction be created? That is where the focus lies for the successful business. The next evolution for businesses selling in the SMB space will be as solution partners.
Managing revenues based on customer preferences using sales analytics is very trendy and topical in 2013. But the truth is that each “customer for life” will demand a personalized, quality experience that satisfies their needs. Cold calling is dead. Dialing for dollars is a legacy concept of the past and simply does not work in today’s Internet world. Pre-call research is a prerequisite to solution selling as customers want to buy and not be sold. A critical success factor is to know and understand the profile and preferences of your customers before the sales process initiates.
Related: Sales Leadership Institute.org, Creating a Customer Experience Driven Marketing & Sales Model Starts with Sales Analytics, Strategies for Growth Selling to SMB Buyers
