Small Business vs. Corporate Sales Approach

A little over a year ago I quit my what could only be described as a corporate sales job in the telecommunications and mobile space and entered the world of marketing and selling to local businesses in rural Missouri.

In the beginning I was a little concerned about being able to translate the approaches that I had used in the past to generating new business and putting together proposals that were valuable for my customers.

There are many differences that you have to keep in mind when dealing with small businesses as compared to dealing with large or medium sized companies, here are 5 that I have found very useful to keep in mind when my sales team or myself is planning on meeting with a local business:

• Let's start with an obvious one, in most cases you will be dealing directly with the owner meaning if this person is spending money it is coming directly from their own pocket. This causes a completely different mentality than someone spending someone else's money like in a corporate environment.
• Education is key but do not overwhelm, unlike in corporate business environments where there are typically teams of people to work on individual projects or even people dedicated to just one specific topic in a small business people are much less specialized and resources are much tighter. Keep your "pitch" on topic and show the value points. Examples of how it relates to their business is key to making the point fast.
• Expect to be more flexible with appointment times even when the customer is interested. One of the things that I had the hardest time with when first moving into the small business sales world was the fact that things were not as structured when it came to meetings and appointments. Even with your best clients things can get busy and they have to cancel at the last minute. Be respectful that they are running a business and do not have a large team to do so.
• Do not be a salesman. Everyone is trying to sell something to them everyday. If you are coming into to their business and are trying to be the slick sales guy in a suit, their automatic "no" response will prevail. If you are trying to be a local person and dealing with the local community, let your personality and friendship with these potential customers be one of the selling factors in your product.
• One major difference I found between the corporate sales world and the local business world is that you cannot expect the customer to make themselves available for you after hours. In my past life much time was spent on customer calls at all hours of the night, it was expected that employees on both sides put the hours in to get projects engineered and sold. Local businesses have a different focus and have more structured business hours. Many have no interest in the "wine and dine" of the corporate world and would prefer that time with their family. Make sure you factor this in when you are pushing for time on their schedule.

For those of you that may be making the leap from selling to large businesses as compared to the core of American business, which is the small business, some of the above items may help when you think about your approach.

Focus Focus Focus

Sometimes you just have to go heads down and focus on the task at hand.

The past couple weeks (really month) have been just that way. Blog posts have been few and far between which means my todo list of blog posts is now something like 32 items long.

All that brings me to something, as much as I have always been a bit high energy and enjoyed having 30 things going on at time, which is pretty much everyday after launching a new business (on that note have I mentioned we broke our one year mark...) , there are times that you must shut all other things out and focus on the task at hand.

This goes without saying I know, but sometimes people have a hard time recognizing when they are in the type of situation that require strict prioritization. It comes down to recognizing and then executing on the opportunity at hand.

People like to say they cannot pick which item they are working on is number one, they are all number one.  That is not always true, there are many (I would say most) times that if you really admit it there is a number one. Pick that opportunity and execute.

There are some great things going on lately with Localtek and that means that ancillary items like this blog, side projects, etc tend to take a back seat for a few weeks and the larger business takes the front seat. I have read blog posts by other domain bloggers in the past that blogging is not the most effective use of time, there are many times this is VERY true. Many times the time being spent putting out posts could be spent pushing the real business forward. That does not mean that you should not blog, but it does mean that if you are really focused on growing your business there are times it is no productive to be doing certain things (in other words, does 30 minutes working on the perfect marketing pitch for your new website provide more value to your business than a blog post).

The great thing is the hard work is already starting to pay off and I see light at the end of the tunnel. I cannot wait to blog about it when the time comes.

Thanks to Owen Frager for making me think about this a bit, yesterday when we were chatting he asked when I had time to blog, my answer was right now I don't. Well, ok maybe just this one post : )

Not sure when the last time I went this long without a post was, back to focus focus focus now though....