ForumsAdvertising, Sales and Marketing

Many companies have a policy to have % of their vendors as small businesses, minority owned business etc. Let managers know that can you fill up their quota plus give them personalized service. I have noticed the best tool that we have is the quick decision. Throw a offer which they cannot refuse with time limit, it has worked for me many times. Big companies take a lot of time to offer discount or change the quote.

Thanks,

Bob

Techie: I like your question better than I like your subject. I don't think there's necessarily a great way to accomplish the latter, but the question is right on: you can use your size as a competitive advantage. First, I hope you've got some really cool features your larger competitors lack; that you're solving problems they don't solve. Given that, you are way, way more adaptable, and you care far, far more. I'm just hitting the road with my first startup, although this is the second startup I've played a meaningful role at. At both ventures, I've found adapatability and caring to be really important and serious sources of competitive advantages. In both ventures, I've played the fact that I'm small, and all my customers are a large percentage of my revenues; they're business I've worked to keep. The large guys work to keep Fortune 500s, but not mid-sized companies. Mid-sized companies know they don't matter to large software vendors, so you should feel free to state this as fact and let them know they really matter to you. Then, back it up. Demonstrate your adaptability! I've repeatedly taken customer suggestions and improved my product to show them how much I care about them. This can scale, too: if you have two people telling you the same thing, build it immediately and get leverage out of the fact that you are being highly adaptable "for them". This is how you use your size as a competitive advantage.

hello teacup i trhink that is great advice.

You've received a LOT of GREAT advice in earlier posts. Wow! Great stuff.

I'm the owner of a marketing/advertising firm so I'll tell you what I'd tell my clients.

1) As a few other members have said in earlier replies, use your size as an advantage. There is a preconception that bigger means less personalized service and smaller means more personalized service. Capitalize on that.

...however...

2) You shouldn't be directly competing against BIG companies in the first place. There was a book called, "Don't Compete! Tilt the field!" One of the better book titles of all time. What you want to do is think about an Industry and it's competitors as a whole and consider a strategy that captures that industries "refusing non-customers." Refusing non-customers are defined by the authors of "Blue Ocean Strategy" as 'people who either do not use or cannot afford to use the current market offerings because they find the offerings unacceptable or beyond their means."

You probably have expertise that could be repackaged and sold to "refusing non-customers" of an industry that you have never even considered.

To give you an example of this:

Most small business NEED quality marketing and advertising. So, why don't most small businesses have an advertising agency? One reason is because Advertising Agencies are chasing the companies with $500,000+ advertising budgets. Not able (or willing) to increase their ad budgets to $500,000+ most small businesses are "refusing non-customers" when it comes to Ad Agencies.

But, they NEED quality marketing and advertising. So, any company that was able to give agency quality results in a way that small businesses could afford would hit a grand slam for small businesses.

Which is exactly what my company has done. We created a way for small businesses to get agency quality direct mail out for well under $1 per prospect for marketing budgets as small as $1500 per month.

There's a LOT involved in discovering how you can position your company in this way but I'll guide you to the AMAZING book called "Blue Ocean Strategy." That book will give you the tools you need to see how you can create offerings that people really need WITHOUT having to compete against big companies or a ton of competitors. You can change the rules, the very environment of your competitive landscape so you market in a competitive vaccum.

As an Entrepreneur and Small Business Owner YOU are among the driving force of the American economy. Small businesses employ the majority of workers (MOST of the american families are dependent on YOU), you pay the majority of taxes and create the majority of GDP. There is no other group as important to the US economy. PLEASE keep on keeping on, in terms of economic importance the Small Business Owner is immensely important.

~ Jason Bedunah ~
Owner, Enchant Marketing

Like it is been said already, use your size as advantage, you can have a personal approach with your clients, and create a loyalty tie up, this is very important, you can become bigger with one or two loyal customers that will recommend you to all their friends, if you establish as one of your company's goal the loyalty and treat customers are equals you will have a HUGE advantage over the big dogs.