MarketStar Blog

For many sales organizations, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) represent a great untapped market. However, these companies require a thoughtful sales approach that may differ from how you treat your enterprise customers. Customer Success is one area in particular that is essential to your SMB sales plan.

The United States is home to more than 30 million SMBs, which account for 99.9 percent of all U.S. businesses. Small businesses are those that generate less than $50 million in annual revenue, while medium-sized businesses sit between $50 million and $1 billion in annual revenue. These figures may be small compared to those of many enterprises, but they still represent a sizable selling opportunity that should not be ignored.

In times of crisis, you need to plan for the future at the same time you address the challenges of the present. These are certainly interesting times, when the global COVID-19 pandemic has created an economic crisis and turned everyone’s operations upside down. 

For many, work has stopped, resulting in 21.5 million Americans filing for unemployment. Businesses across all sectors have been affected by the pandemic, and sales have stalled waiting for the crisis to abate. Now is the time to revisit your sales programs and lay the foundation for sales during and after a crisis.

Even during a typical summer, staying motivated and focused on work can be challenging. After all, the weather is warm, kids are out of school, and vacations are looming. This year, motivation can be even harder to come by. Because most people are still working from home, activities are still somewhat limited, and we’re all yearning for a change of pace. 

But despite this summer’s unique challenges, it’s still important for your sales team to hit their goals and keep their momentum up. Read on for five ways to motivate your sales team through the dog days of summer:

There is a reason that the Centers for Disease Control calls COVID-19 a novel coronavirus. We have never seen a virus like this one before, nor have we seen a global pandemic this severe in more than a century. 

The COVID-19 pandemic is affecting all of us, especially small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), and your SMB customers need your help more than ever. The challenge is finding the best way to help them through these unusual times.

As many companies struggle to stay afloat during the COVID-19 crisis, it’s not surprising that sales are down in a range of industries. Even as states begin to reopen certain segments of their economies, much remains uncertain. Understandably, many sales professionals are unsure how to keep selling during and after this crisis. 

A global pandemic, a recession, or any other widespread crisis is not the time for a business-as-usual sales approach. Instead, it’s a chance to take stock of your challenges and opportunities, and reset your sales strategy to address the situation at hand.

Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are often ignored because of the small contract size and the difficulty of shifting an organization’s sales strategy to meet SMB needs. Unfortunately, if your organization is one of those that are ignoring the SMB market, you might be losing out on a serious amount of money.

Introduction

With thousands of new SMBs entering the market every day, they are pinning their success on technology like yours. However, technology brands tend to focus on what they know (enterprise sales), bypassing SMB prospects because they simply don’t know how to sell to them.

You don’t have to leave SMB revenue on the table. With the right approach and expertise, any company can boost its SMB sales and generate a substantial increase in revenue. 

With the COVID-19 pandemic forcing people to spend much more time at home, many are taking the opportunity to get caught up on their reading list. In stressful, uncertain times, picking up a new book or two can be entertaining and even calming. For your sales team, this could even become a time of learning and self-improvement.

Sales and marketing teams always struggle to penetrate and sell to enterprise decision-makers. Since the traditional methods of cold calling and carpet bombing rarely work in B2B marketing, reliance on account-based marketing (ABM) is increasing every day. Different companies use different tactics and channels to execute and measure ABM. Further, a standard ABM strategy may not work for all since the requirements are not the same. 

When selling technology to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), you have to put yourself in the position of the entrepreneur or small business owner. While doing so, it’s crucial to remember that SMB sales are different from enterprise sales not just because they have smaller budgets, but because their needs and approach to technology are very different.

Whereas enterprise sales tend to be larger contracts, there are many more potential SMB sales. There are 30.7 million small businesses in the United States, and they are hungry for the latest technology.