Selling to Small Businesses

Here’s another piece of advice for you bankers — and for any business with retail outlets serving small businesses.   The advice?  “Get in the mindset of making it easy on small business startups.” Last week I wrote about key features that startup small businesses want from their banks.  Then this past weekend I happened upon an article written [...]

Do you know the four information preferences of B2B decision-makers? If you don’t, you should.  Bryan Eisenberg writes in an article at ClickZ that business decision-makers fall into one of four preference categories: methodical, spontaneous, humanistic or competitive.  Most people favor one of these decision-making styles.  Depending on the style of decision maker you are trying to reach, [...]

The Kauffman Foundation is out with a report that ranks the U.S. states according to how well they do in the entrepreneurial ”New Economy.” In “The 2008 State New Economy Index” the 50 states are ranked for such things as number of knowledge workers, IT jobs, inventor patents, and venture capital investment.  It also measures some puzzling [...]

The forum (discussion board) is still quite alive and kicking.  Many corporate brands use discussion boards on their own sites to build community and also assist customers in finding answers to technical issues. But if you are looking for proactive marketing to reach small businesses, don’t overlook forums and discussion boards run by third parties.  They [...]

What do startups and young small businesses want from their banks and credit unions?  It’s not just friendly service (although that helps a lot!). Today’s startups and early-stage small businesses want a helping hand to make banking as inexpensive and as easy as possible in the early years.  The early years are when they can least [...]

So the NFIB’s Small Business Optimism Index for November 2008 came out this week. And it’s ugly. Bleh. But business, like the show, must go on. When last month’s report came out, we’d had two months in a row of improvement on what was an otherwise awful-looking downward chart. But for that short 2-month period [...]