I don't know about you, but I'm getting plenty tired reading about this dicey economy. Seemingly every week I'm hearing the same messages and hand-wringing about jobless claims, consumer confidence, housing prices, manufacturer activity, the price of oil, Wall Street's reaction to just about anything. the debt crisis in Europe, the deficit, the Fed and unemployment going up or down by a tick or two.
It's time for promotion products to come to the rescue! How? By distributors banding together and concentrating our efforts on helping small business. I keep hearing from the experts that small business is the sector that really drives the economy. Consider these statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau:
- 7 out of 10 new jobs in the private sector come from small business
- 91% of business out there have 10 or fewer employees
There are 51 million small businesses that need our services. Sometimes we as distributors miss the forest for the trees, looking for that bigger company we can hook into, the Fortune 1000 firm or the Inc. 500 company we can hit a home-run with. A bunch of singles with small business can push your sales across home plate as much as those occasional home runs.
The key to your success with this target market is to position yourself as a small-business owner yourself who is attuned to the needs and challenges of growing a business because you're trying to do the exact same thing. You are a small-business specialties (I'd put it right on a set of your business cards) ready to offer your expertise in helping them build their business.
When I'm dealing with a small business, I break their potential promotional product needs down to three buckets:
- Staff/Employee Needs - What work-related branded apparel, head-wear or accessories do they need in doing their work; or what branded lifestyle apparel might they be interested in wearing away from the workplace?
- General Marketing Needs - branded premiums to increase their name exposure and impressions
Customer Reward Needs - gift with purchase or customer appreciation premiums that drive customer loyalty, sense or satisfaction and probability of repeat business.
This last bucket is especially important because this is where the small business can actually return on investment, which it probably isn't tracking with it's other marketing and advertising activities. We've all seen the industry studies that show empirically the positive effect that promotional products have on customer feedback, referrals and repeat business.
Obviously, with small business it's much easier to get face time with the decision maker. And that's important because small-business owners like personal attention. They want to feel they are being taken care of. I've done it both ways: hitting the streets and just cold calling small business in person asking for five minutes with the decision-maker, and cold calling on the phone. Either way, the message is the same:
"I'm a small-business owner in town like you and I see you have this _________ business. I like to do business with other small-business owners because we think alike and face the same challenges. My specialty is helping small businesses like yours. Can I have just a few minutes of your time?"
I'm a big proponent of going into these selling situations with opportunities for small-business owners to purchase packages of promotional products that address all three of my aforementioned buckets. I call them business-builder packages. They may be at various price points - $299, $399, $499 or $599. The owner doesn't have to choose from 10 or 12 different items. Here are multiple packages to choose from to just start out. Maybe there are some writing instruments and/or refrigerator magnets for general exposure; some hats or t-shirts for staff; and $3-$5 customer gift or appreciation items with higher perceived value. These packages are also positioned so there is a value component to them.
Obviously, I'm flexible and able to substitute items based on a customer's preference or type of business. But the package concept remains the same. I have found that many of my small-business customers like the package concept to begin with. It allows them to reap the benefits of products in different promotional categories and then narrow their focus going forward on the products they feel are the most effective for them.
The one challenge for traditional distributors in dealing with the small-business market is the competition against the online sellers that are so prevalent now with hundreds of products only a click away. There is certainly a generation of young people involved in small business who are quite comfortable with B-to-B commerce. But again, you need to brand yourself as that small-business specialist with expertise that you can offer from your own experience and your familiarity with your and your prospects local business environment. This expertise is a resource that an online seller can't match.
By: Pat Cavanaugh
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