Selling to Small Businesses

Raymond Keating, Chief Economist of the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council poses this question at the Capitalist Chatter blog: Does too much “Desperate Housewives,”  ”24,” and “Oprah,” not to mention cruising the Internet, mean less entrepreneurship? Are we less entrepreneurial and more couch potato? He cites some research by economists Andrew Burke, University of Cranfield [...]

Some vendors that sell to small businesses go for a “start with them small and grow with them” strategy.  They try to earn the loyalty of small businesses while those businesses are still fledgling efforts  – startups or one-person businesses.  Then as the businesses grow the vendor up-sells to higher level offerings, all the while retaining highly loyal customers. You [...]

Is brand strategy overrated?  One commentator says it is.  Marcia Hoeck, writing in B2B Marketing Trends, says companies ought to just try to be themselves: Most companies don’t stand out in the marketplace “sea of sameness.”  And because they don’t stand out, they are not connecting with potential customers. What’s the solution?  Be yourself. Be [...]

The cell phone is becoming a way to reach consumers with marketing messages.  In this article in Destination CRM, Scott Springer of Smart Reply, speaks about the potential: “In the U.S. 67 percent of the population subscribes to a mobile phone service, with an estimated 36 percent of the subscribers using some kind of mobile data application, [...]

In the category of “no big surprise” comes the Yankee Group’s report that Intuit, Sage and Microsoft lead the market in accounting and ERP software among small and midszie businesses (SMBs).  CRMToday notes: “Yankee Group finds that within this market, Inuit’s QuickBooks and QuickBooks Online products dominate the 2-to-99-employee market, followed by Sage Software. Microsoft leads the 100-to-999-employee [...]

Steven Nicks outlines five ways to capture and leverage word of mouth from business customers, in an article at MarketingProfs.com.   Pay attention to those references!  According to this article you need to create programs to identify good references from important influencers.   Read: The Real Buzz: B2B Word-of-mouth Marketing for IT