Small business owners are a special breed. If your business is built to serve them, you will need a sales approach that is designed to address their main concerns head-on.
Below are six tips that will help you connect with small business customers, keep them happy, and increase the chance of creating a longstanding relationship (and getting a valuable referral).
1. Demonstrate your value
The number one characteristic of a small business is that money is tight. Owners worry constantly about getting enough business to cover expenses and earn some kind of a profit. Therefore, even though they might have been willing to take a leap of faith and start their own business, they may have little appetite for risk when it comes to handing money over to third parties.
This means that proving your value is critical. Testimonials, trustworthy reviews, guarantees, and even third-party verifications all go a long way toward convincing a small business owner that you will indeed deliver on your promises. If there’s any doubt in their mind, they’ll probably put your brochure on the shelf.
2. Follow through
This ties in to the last point. Your sales promises all have to be kept, or better yet, exceeded. Make sure that your sales enthusiasm carries over into service enthusiasm, or repeat business will drop to zero. Small business owners watch expenses carefully, and if they aren’t getting immediate returns, they’ll be quick to cut you out. That is, the grace period after the sale within which you must perform as advertised will be quite short. Make it count.
3. Help them today
Long-term benefits are nice, and are great for a well-funded organization that can weather ups and downs one quarter after the other. A small business generally can’t do this, however, and investing for long-term gain is difficult if no short-term gains come along as well. Make sure that your value timeline is one that aligns with the resources of your small business customers.
If your offering requires that you convince the owner to invest for the long term, you’ll have to work that much harder to demonstrate that your offering is a lock to bring those benefits. You’ll also have to be ready to work with the owner to find ways to make the proposition work financially in the interim, which may mean delayed payments or other creative solutions.
4. Make referrals easy
Small business owners are a community, and they trust one another. If your solution helps one owner, and he or she is willing to say so, the others will be inclined to give you a shot. Make it easy for your customers to spread the word (electronically or otherwise) and provide referrals so that you can get a foot in the door with new prospects and capitalize on your successes to the largest extent possible.
5. Show how you’ll help them grow
The dream of many small businesses is to become bigger and more stable. If what you’re selling ties into growth, be sure to highlight that fact. Since many of your prospects are constantly worried about having enough business, growth means security. If your service will bring growth and security, you’ll be looked at as a savior to your customers.
6. Build relationships
You’ll usually be dealing with a single person – the owner – when you work with small businesses. It’s very rare in other industries to have access to the person who has power over the entire enterprise, so make the most of this special feature and build a relationship. If you become more than just an expense to the owner; if you’re dependable, understanding, and flexible, you’ll likely be in a position for a long-term relationship.
We hope these tips are helpful.
What tips do you have for others selling to small businesses? Let us know in the comments!
Andrew Gazdecki is the founder and CEO of Bizness Apps, a do-it-yourself mobile app & mobile website platform for small businesses and Bizness CRM, a CRM designed to make selling to small businesses easy.