Selling to Small Businesses

There’s an increasing trend of big companies partnering with small businesses.  I wrote about this a few weeks back in my article,   Stop Selling and Instead Partner with Small Businesses.
And if you are one of the forward-thinking companies that already has set up partnership programs with small businesses, kudos to you.
Now, how about publicizing your [...]

The SBA Office of Advocacy has come out with an updated annual snapshot of small businesses in the United States (PDF).
This chart shows the number of small businesses, the industries they are in, and the number of employees (click chart to open larger image):

Click for larger chart
In reading this chart remember these points:

“Nonemployer firms” means single-person small [...]

Uh-oh. It could be bad news for small businesses in the lumber business that hire immigrants or aliens.  They have to deal with two of the least responsive agencies in the U.S. Federal government for small businesses: the U.S. Forest Service and Immigrations.
The National Ombudsman Report (PDF) just came out for 2006. The National Ombudsman, Nicholas [...]

The need for clear and consistent terminology to define “what is a small business?” has been obvious for a while now. Let’s go over some of the existing definitions.
The U.S. Small Business Administration adheres to its definition of under 500 employees.  That is, except in the case of about a zillion exceptions for various industries (so many that the SBA needs a 42-page PDF [...]

Are you finding it a challenge to reach niche markets?  Too costly to go after on your own? 
Has innovation inside your organization stalled or become stale?
Perhaps it’s time to do what companies like Google and Proctor & Gamble are doing: partner.  A growing trend is that of large companies partnering with small businesses to their mutual [...]

It just goes to show:  there is money in the small business market.
Constant Contact, the email marketing services company that made its bones selling to small businesses, went public on the NASDAQ yesterday.  Today was its first trading day. 
Here is the announcement (sent via the Constant Contact email marketing software, of course):
We have some exciting [...]