Selling to Small Businesses

Entrepreneurship keeps attracting younger and younger people — including “millennials,” i.e., those twenty-somethings and teens born since 1980. Since entrepreneurs are consumers first and business owners second, you have to understand their thinking as consumers. A recent article in Advertising Age offers a fascinating glimpse into millennials’ thinking and debunks certain assumptions we may make [...]

You might have heard the term, “virtual small business.”  But do you really understand what it means if your small business customers operate “virtually”? One definition of a virtual business is a business that operates leanly, outsourcing to third parties whenever possible.  It may not have any full-time employees except the owner and possibly a few others.  The headquarters [...]

One thing that most small business owners say they need is more customers. Your small business customers will love you forever if you can help them make a sale.  That’s one of the points I got from watching Donny Deutsch’s Big Idea show last night. Called Destination Millions, this particular episode featured four successful entrepreneurs revealing their secrets [...]

Nick Carr writes about the “bad ad fad.”  He’s referring to user-generated ads, pointing to a campaign by Heinz that he claims is backfiring.  The New York Times wrote about the campaign, which enables consumers to create and post video ads about Heinz ketchup, pickles and other products. I agree that user-generated ad campaigns – besides being expensive [...]

Back when I wrote the Selling to Small Business column for BNET.com, one of my articles was about how “entrepreneur” could be a dirty word in certain parts of the world, especially Europe.  Here in the United States we associate “entrepreneur” with startups and innovators — outsiders who buck the existing business establishment. To us the [...]

Experian, the credit reporting agency, conducted a study of the small business market, dividing it up according to incorporated businesses and unincorporated businesses.  The study covered 1.2 million small businesses with no more than 25 employees and $10 million in sales. The picture it painted was of business owners being wealthier than the general population.  Business [...]