Convincing The SMB To Buy Your Product

Entrepreneurs are notoriously cheap. They cut corners, delay payments, and have many holes in their operations all in an effort to save money. Business owners will often also tend to try to take on more than they should within their companies when they are not the right person for the job.

A good example is a recent survey put out by 1&1 Internet. 1&1, one of the most popular web hosting companies in the US with over 6.5 million customers, found that over 30% of small business owners use do-it-yourself packages to create their own company's website.

The survey found that business owners agreed that if they did not have a website, they would lose business to their competitors and that a poorly designed website would also lead to lost sales opportunities.

This is the typical situation many SMBs face when making a purchasing decision: They do not act until there is so much pain that they are forced to do something. Entrepreneurs now realize that if they do not have a website they can no longer keep up with the competition - so they are forced to get a website created. Even though they acknowledge that a poorly designed website can lead to lost opportunities, 30% still opt for do-it-yourself packages because it is cheaper and a poor website is better than no website and it is not painful enough yet for them to make the leap to a better looking website.

The challenge for professional website designers and for any company trying to sell to the SMB market is to show that the entrepreneur needs to act today - or else they will lose out. You need to demonstrate the clear pain points to the small business owner if you hope to get her attention and her money.

Is your company creating a clear value proposition that shows the pain the business owner will experience if they do not buy your product or service immediately?

Small Businesses Live On The Edge

A new report from England highlights the risks that small business owners take while running their companies. The new study found:

• Almost 20 per cent of UK businesses suffer some kind of major disruption in the course of one year
  
  
• Nearly one in five enterprises experiences a significant interruption to business each year
  
  
• 90 per cent of companies which lose data as a result of a major disruption are forced to close down within two years of the event

Many small business owners are predominantly focused on the now. They wear many hats within their company and are constantly putting out fires. They make decisions (especially purchasing decisions where they have to spend money) based on solutions that will help them solve an immediate pain. Many entrepreneurs do not have contingency plans, do not prepare themselves for potential disruptions in advance and end up getting hit very hard when they happen.

Lesson for selling to small businesses: target your message to solving the immediate pains of business owners instead of painting a picture of what the future might look like. If your message is not immediately relevant to the entrepreneur it's likely to be overlooked.