Is it just me or is every one you bump into these days launching (usually bootstrapping) a new business?
Turns out 99% of all businesses in the US are small (500 employees or less), but they represent only slightly more than half of all private sector employees and pay only 44 percent of total U.S. private payroll. Moreover most of these businesses are short lived, with only about half surviving into their 5th year.
Makes you wonder what on earth people are thinking, doesn’t it?
But it wouldn’t be a recession if we didn’t see growth in this space, and in fact looking at the numbers from another perspective, the story they tell is not all that abysmal. Most notably, small enterprise accounted for over 60% (more than 14.5 million) net new jobs between 1993 and 2008 and make up 97% of all identified exporters.
So I think it is no stretch of the imagination to propose that economic recovery, at a global level, relies heavily on our friend, the small business owner.
And the mid to large size businesses of the world know this, here’s a quick and dirty list of some visible moves towards the small business customer:
- MSFT gearing their bread and butter products like Office towards the small enterprise
- HP targetting their online sales to the specific needs of the small business owner
- American express focusing on customer service and making their offering flexible to better align with small business needs
- Some health insurers are even starting to target rather than avoid our smaller, entrepreneurial friends
- We at Lionbridge, long focusing primarily on the large enterprise, are now also playing in this space with Translation Workspace
As a former start-up owner, I like to think I have strong entrepreneurial chops, but the fact is I’m into my second decade of working with large enterprise customers and as my business shifts its focus to include the small and medium business sector, I’m realizing I’ve got some learning to do! In the coming weeks I’ll be documenting my learning process and mainly focusing on how this space is different, and how those of us looking to serve them need to adapt and accommodate for those differences.
What do you think makes a small business buyer unique?
Great post. Big businesses need to innovate to stay competitive and offer new products to their consumers. What do large companies, especially in technology do? Microsoft, Oracle, Google, and Apple all buy small, innovative companies to get the ideas, talent and technology to incorporate into their stable of products. So, where does innovation come from? Small, nimble businesses that invest everything they have on new ideas. The entrepreneurs take that risk and some reap millions. Others don’t but become a lot smarter for it.