Most startups and small businesses may start out small but have an enormous growth potential, which, if correctly harnessed, can yield results in a relatively short time. Such businesses usually follow a carefully crafted plan when it comes to charting their economic improvement and hold a broad outlook for the future.
According to a joint survey of 339 small-business principals by Salesforce and Bredin, ‘99.5% of all U.S. companies qualify as “small,” and most of them display the following
According to a survey of geographically and industrially diverse companies, a large number of small businesses have been operating for more than five years and within that, half of them have been around for more than 10 years.
When it comes to sales, it has been seen such businesses place heavy emphasis on building, maintaining and improving customer relationships. The key elements that stand out in the customer relationship building process are acquisition of new customers, forming deeper customer relationships, providing value to existing customers, retaining existing customers and attaining the position of a trusted partner or advisor vis-à-vis the customer.
While price is a factor in sales, solving the customer’s business problems takes top priority in small businesses since that is the key driver behind measuring value. Since a lot of their customers are solution-oriented and companies are constantly forced to evolve their sales processes to meet their demands.
By combining marketing, sales, and customer service, a number of small businesses have discovered the formula to success and customer satisfaction which, in turn, translates to overall performance improvement. New business development makes up a large part of this and is complimented by marketing and lead generation tactics.
Customer service is of utmost importance to a small business and most companies invest heavily in good customer service teams to increase their revenue and sales, retain existing customers, increase the overall efficiency, improve customer experience and also reduce operational costs.