It's the People, Not the Product

Guest Contributor: Albert Luk
Albert's Posts - Albert's Site


I primarily read two blogs on selling to small business: Rick Spence's blog and this one. In the last month, both Rick and Evan have posted articles on building trust before successfully selling to an entrepreneur. I agree whole-heartedly. A good first step in building trust is finding some type of affinity with small business owner before you can sell anything.

Affinity is typically built through common experiences. Those with common experiences tend to relate better than those with divergent life experiences. For simplicity's sake, I am going to describe account managers I have met who have a lot of success selling to small business and those that do not based on the life experiences of each.

Let's call the successful account manager Mary (Mary is not a real person but rather an amalgamation of many different successful SME account managers I have met). Mary is typically on her 2^nd or 3^rd career, worked in some type of entrepreneurial setting (or, to put it another way, has not worked in a big corporation all of her life), understands from practical experience the industry she is selling to (or perhaps has worked in it herself) and understands how to create solutions for clients.

Without ever selling a good or service, Mary already has the following unique value propositions:

1. Entrepreneurs tend to experiment so they appreciate Mary's many life experiences;
2. Mary can speak from experience and not the text book; and
3. Having worked in an entrepreneurial environment, she understands the daily life of her clients.

Bob- an amalgamation of many unsuccessful SME account managers I have met- is typically on their first career, spent his entire professional life in an institutional setting, is well educated but never ventured much outside that world.

Bob tends to be a turn-off for many entrepreneurs for some of the following reasons:

1. Bob is perceived to be too institutional; Bob is a "suit" and "not one of us."
2. Bob is perceived to be bureaucratic; he understands corporate policy well but does not tend to know how to make that work for his clients; and
3. Bob speaks "MBA"- big words that do not matter much in the entrepreneurial world.

Mary and Bob are generalizations. Nonetheless, having met both Mary's and Bob's in the course of my practice, my preference is to buy from Mary.

For anyone wanting to selling to the small business market, a good starting point would be to analyze hiring practices and determining whether you have a lot of Mary's or Bob's in your sales staff. After all, sophisticated marketing campaigns only go so far- it's the people selling your good or service that will be the real difference-makers.

Gain a SMB Competitive Edge

Small companies are always looking to their bigger counterparts to get best practices and learn how to grow their business. How does Xerox get positive press coverage? How does Microsoft hire the best people? How does Bell prepare its business plan?

The success of the Service Corps Of Retired Executives, a national nonprofit organization comprised of retired professionals who offer free counseling to small business owners, is only one example of how SMBs are looking up to tap the knowledge of bigger companies.

This all leads to a very important question: Why are you not sharing some of your best practices with SMBs?

There are many processes that your organization takes for granted that would be of tremendous value to a small business owner. What questions do you ask in a job interview? How do you motivate your staff? What kind of incentives do you offer? How do you make sure your suppliers and partners are loyal to you?

With all the new small business resource centers and portals popping up across the Fortune 500 websites, none of them are offering information that is of true value to small business owners. The opportunities lies in providing useful tools and resources by tapping into the intellectual property of your staff and by sharing some of your processes that are taken for granted. Remember, small businesses do not have the structered systems in place to help them grow and are often learning through trial and error.

The first big company to do this will go a long way to winning the hearts and minds of small business owners.