What Makes Small Business Customers Buy From You?

By Rieva Lesonsky

Are you selling business to business? Then you’ll be interested to hear some insights from the latest Enterprise Council on Small Business (ECSB) Executive Roundtable events.

In panel sessions with small business owners, ECSB asked them about cross-selling and other factors that affect their business purchases. Here are some of the results:

• Small business owners don’t “cross-buy.” Many BtoB marketers focus on coming up with strategies for cross-selling existing customers on different products or services than they currently buy. But panelists by and large said they don’t give any advantage to their incumbent suppliers. Instead, when they’re looking for new products or services, they ask other business owners for advice and do lots of research. As ECSB put it, “This is a classic case of, ‘It’s about them, not about you.’”
• Small business owners’ purchases are prompted by need. “If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it” might describe the small business owner’s mentality when making a purchase. ECSB research showed that 72 percent of purchases of additional products or services (i.e., purchases in a cross-sell context) are motivated by immediate need; just 11 percent are motivated by a future need. When they get direct mail or email from a business, most business owners discard it unless it happens to arrive right when they’re ready to buy.
• Small business owners are practical. There was a disconnect in what small business owners said and what they meant. When asked what is most important to them when choosing suppliers, the panelists said “relationship” was crucial. But when ECSB explored what that meant, it boiled down to low prices and good service. In other words, small business owners’ limited budgets and fast-paced business environments mean that price and service really matter more.
• Don’t pester, but do be present. There’s a fine line between following up and becoming a nuisance. If you’re constantly trying to sell business customers additional products and services, this frequent contact will be seen as pestering. But subtler contact such as welcome packages, surveys or check-in meet with greater receptivity than obvious sales attempts.
• Most suppliers fail at on-boarding. The panelists said they were open to check-in calls, welcome packages and surveys from suppliers they had started to do business with, but they also said they rarely received these types of communications from suppliers. That means if you’re not adequately welcoming new customers, you’re missing out on a major sales opportunity.

You can get more insights on marketing and selling to small businesses at the ECSB blog.

Image by Flickr user buddawiggi (Creative Commons)

This entry was posted on Friday, October 28th, 2011 at 6:00 am and is filed under Business Development, Sales Process, sales process, Small Business, small business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.


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