Small business owners like to buy from companies that they have a personal connection with and your sales team can often be the only people your SMB prospects meet with before making a purchasing decision.
The difference between getting a sale or not is often how well that salesperson can relate to the entrepreneur. Companies looking to sell to small businesses should therefore hire salespeople who have had direct or indirect entrepreneurial experiences in their careers so they can better connect with their SMB prospects.
Andy Birol explains this concept in an interview with Anita Campbell:
[Y]ou should always give your small business accounts - whether they're prospects or customers - to individuals that have had at least a close encounter of the second kind, if not the first. For example, Lowes and Home Depot always hire individuals in their stores that have been contractors, so that when a contractor comes in, they're speaking to somebody that can identify with what it means to be a small business. So, if you can't hire ex-small business owners yourself, or retired ones, look around and see if you can at least hire their kids. Or hire folks that have already worked in a small business.
Anita Campbell writes a popular blog (also called Selling To Small Business). In a recent post she discussed the trend towards content based marketing.
What is it?
The idea behind content based marketing is to use content you've written to attract attention, provide valuable information and create awareness. The assumption is that instead of just pushing advertising and marketing information on business owners, companies should be providing information to help entrepreneurs solve their problems. Helping SMBs solve their problems with the right information leads to establishing yourself as a trusted business advisor which leads to the creation of a loyal customer base.
Some of Anita's suggestions for creating a content based marketing plan are:
White papers - Today's white papers are more than advertorials. They are often how-tos - specific documents well worth saving and going back to. A good white paper can establish your credibility and goes a long way toward establishing you or the even the company as an expert on the topic. If you can get other sites to distribute it as a free download, you extend your reach even further. And a white paper with an excellent descriptive title can be a carrot to generate leads, if you have the reader fill out a contact form in order to receive the white paper.
Press releases - Press releases today are written for search engines and for end customers, more so than for the press. Today's press releases should be distributed online, and if done properly can get picked up by online news outlets such as Google News, where customers and prospects find them and read about your company, your product, your service. Indirectly, the media sees them, too, in the same online venues the rest of us frequent. So it can have benefit for generating press, but what you really are getting is online visibility. When a press release is treated like any other online content and is properly optimized with keyword-rich text and links back to a website, it brings lasting search engine value. It adds to your own personal Google number (number of citations in Google for your name) or that of your business.
Articles in publications - Look around you. Many media companies are cutting back. People are reading more online, and they expect content to be free. What that means is that media companies are looking for articles submitted by professionals and experts in a particular topic. It's a lower cost way for them to generate content. This translates into a great opportunity for you. Write articles and submit them to publications. You get to display your expertise and impress prospects and potential clients. It's prestigious because you appear in a media publication. And it helps your online branding and search engine visibility. Insist on a byline and a short "About the Author" block at the end, with a link back to your website - most media publications readily agree. Writing articles can be used to get visibility in trade publications, business magazines, technology publications, Chamber of Commerce newsletters and various online publications.
Self-published articles - Blogs are being talked about everywhere, and it's for a reason. An excellent, fast and low-cost way to bring attention for your business is to publish your expertise yourself by writing on a blog. Others will find the posts and link to them. Eventually your blog posts get picked up in the search engines, and the indexed posts may send traffic your way for years afterwards. Also, a blog is a backdoor to media coverage. It's well known that journalists monitor blogs for experts to interview and quote for articles. You can even repurpose blog postings for your email newsletter and reach out to a wider audience. Finally, blogs have the advantage of RSS feeds. The search engines are indexing feeds quickly and giving them special treatment, and more and more people are signing up to get RSS updates on mainstream sites such as your personalized Google homepage or at My Yahoo. When you publish your message yourself, you can control your own destiny and not be at the mercy of the press or have to engage in an expensive advertising war.
What are small business owners looking at for technology in 2007? Anita Campbell, writer of a small business trends blog, recently compiled a list of the top tech tools small business owners can't live without in 2007.
They include:
iPod Shuffle - The newest iPod on the market is a tiny inch-and-a-half long gadget that clips on your clothes for convenience.
Laptop wheelie bag - If you do much traveling with your laptop, a wheelie bag means you arrive at your destination without feeling like you need a chiropractor.
Bluetooth headset- I can clip the headset on, walk into another room away from the phone and still continue my conversation. Ah, liberation.
Free Google account - You can get everything from email (over 2.5 GB of storage) to spreadsheet software, to image editing software and much more.
Kate Spade notecards- To stand out in an electronic world, go counter-culture and send handwritten paper thank-you notes.
U.S.Postal Service website - You can calculate and purchase postage online; print mailing labels with postage; schedule a pickup of a package, and track delivery.
Accounting software - Accounting software tracks and organizes your finances; makes it much easier to get prepared for tax time, and lets you run sophisticated reports that help you stay on top of your business.
Virtual Switchboard - With an inexpensive, software-based virtual switchboard, we are able to have one business phone number for all of us, even though we are spread out over the country.
PayPal- PayPal is the shopping cart that I use on my websites. It is now an essential part of my business processes.
Smartphone- Smartphones and similar devices are the best choice today if you want to send and receive email regularly from your phone.
EvanCarmichael.com is the world's #1 website for small business motivation and strategies. Evan also runs a series of successful Mastermind Groups in Toronto for entrepreneurs.
