The reasons, the report notes, have less to do with a surge in new hiring than the fact that fewer small businesses have been affected by the mass layoffs the nation’s largest organizations have faced. While America’s “main street” businesses face growing pressure from internet sales and big box retailers, small and local businesses continue to be a strong force in the national economy and an increasingly important source of American jobs.
I had the chance to visit this week with Erik Blomquist, the VP of business development for LunaWebs, a web development firm that specializes in the design and creation of sites and applications for—you guessed it—small to medium firms. Here’s what Erik had to say about the secrets to selling products and services to the nation’s hundreds of thousands of “main street” and community businesses:
1. Become Part of Your Community’s “Main Street.” To sell to small business, you should become a genuine part of small business. This requires time, effort, and most especially a commitment to spending time with small business owners on their own turf. Says Blomquist: “I learned this lesson during my first week in a new job. I had left a job where I spent significant time traveling internationally and living the dream.
“When I began my new job, I quickly found myself scheduled to attend a conference in Colby, Kansas—a far cry from Kuala Lumpur. As I drove to the conference, I asked myself several times, ‘What am I doing in Colby, Kansas, attending a conference at a Comfort Inn?’ I did not know I was about to learn one of the best ways to build a business.”
2. Work Hard. “My father and grandfather had taught me to work hard. They taught me to cut all the grass, to pick all the cherries and to finish all of my homework. Professors and mentors had taught me to work hard on analyzing the facts, building strategies around solid goals and objectives, and to continually work until the work is entirely done.
“What I learned that day in Colby, Kansas—and in many subsequent years—was a lesson that was not taught to me by parents, mentors or professors. Instead it was learned through a practice that fewer and fewer people experience, especially today. It is a simple principle, and one that has ample evidence in the business world of today, just like yesterday.”
“For example, Standard Oil experienced success because of local owners and operators who were visited by a Standard Oil business development person. These individuals went in person to the small towns and big cities throughout the nation to establish relationships and convince someone locally to open a gas station. It was a relationship sale.
“William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer built their newspaper and media industries in a similar fashion. They established relationships with local newspaper publishers and editors, invented syndication and eventually created the largest newspaper and media holding companies of their day. The same principles apply today. But in an effort to consolidate and cut expenses, we have often forgotten that what humans and customers crave is relationships.”
3. Build Relationships. “Small business customers want someone to care for them. They want someone to talk to. They want to do business with someone they know and care about and who cares equally strongly for them. Businesses today have forgotten that having a salesperson in every state or even several salespeople in each state can be the key to true success because the company’s ultimate success is based on caring for their customers.”
4. Care for Your Customers. “Technology has many uses. I have dedicated my career to technology. When technology saves money, increases efficiency and helps to accomplish tasks that were never before possible, it is a great thing.
“When technology keeps a company and the individuals in the company from engaging with their customers and building the bonds of an unbreakable relationship, it becomes a detriment. The products may be quality offerings that the market needs, but every market will have at least several participants. Without relationships, it may be easy to lose a customer.
“It is very easy for a customer to leave and move to another vendor if their only relationship is what I would categorize a ‘light relationship’ (based on marketing emails, support forums, and limited communication with the people of the company). However, it is nearly impossible to break the bonds of a deep relationship between a customer and vendor. When you know your customers’ birthdays, the names of their children, their hobbies and you know each customer as an individual, it is a relationship you are never likely to lose. These principles help to drive brand loyalty.
“I would never advocate reverting back to the days of the milkman and the paper delivery boy. I would, however, hypothesize that for every business there is an appropriate mix of light and deep relationships, and that every sales and marketing plan should include the right mix. In other words, when building a company and a sales plan, you must first know the type of relationships you want to have with your customers, and determine the ways you can and should take the working relationship to them (a la pharmaceutical companies), or whether the relationships will come to your company.”
5. Be Proactive and Personal. “The deepest relationships are proactive and personal. These are the relationships that hold the most value, and, by extension, will bring the most revenue to your growing business, as well.”
Erik’s secrets for selling to “main street” are a fundamental secret for my own company’s increasing success. Of every award, Fishbowl’s most prized acknowledgement is the one that came from our local community: Utah’s Best of State award for enterprise software (which we have now received for two years in a row). Our community has some of our most avid customers, and our partner relationships (which I would characterize as strong and genuine friendships) with our customers run deep. This, indeed, is the secret of selling to small business. Are you up to the task? I welcome your thoughts.
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