CRM and Social Media are hot buzz words amongst the tech community, but if you attend a small business conference even in Silicon Valley the vast majority of attendees who are small business owners still do not even know what these words mean. As a result they do not know how to incorporate them into their business practices.
Their lack of knowledge and understanding is not because they aren’t tech savvy or lack business acumen. In fact many have been operating profitable businesses for longer than these technologies have been around.
The fundamental reason for this dissonance amongst small business owners even in the tech capital of the world is:
Lack of Empathy
Most technologists have never owned a cash based small business or have worked with for one. They have not experienced what its like to manage customers face-to-face, have a physical location with operating hours, and handle business processes that can only be performed physically e.g. taking out the trash, deliveries & inventory management, permitting. Moreover, performing all these tasks with limited resources and time.
What ends up happening are enterprise products that are retrofitted to meet the needs of small business owners. However, enterprise companies have 3 advantages:
- Cashflow Positive – this frees them from the incessant worry of a SMB owner of trying to make it to the end of the month with money in the bank.
- Knowledge Based Business – can operate on their on hours, whereas local merchants have the physical demand of having to be present to render a service or sell a product.
- Corporate Trainers – there is no concept of a dedicated resource to train staff, its up to the small business owner to make this happen.
Key Culprits
The three biggest flaws in most technology products that are built for small businesses are:
- Installation: this comes in a couple different flavors. It can either mean requiring a physical installation, but it can even be something as simple as cutting and pasting code. Any installation requires investing time to learn how to do the installation or pay someone to do the installation for them.
- Training: precious operating hours that could be spent bringing in cash are being spent sitting behind a computer and learning how to use products.
- Point Tools: this is probably the worst offender, because data ends of being spread across multiple products, that increases costs for an already stretched small business budget, and requires additional time in having to integrate all the data.
What About the The New Wave of Technology?
Given the limited budget of small businesses in addition to be a hard to reach and please user base many technologists have chosen the path of least resistance opting to build either for consumers and enterprise companies.
The more recently phenomenon of daily deals does even less to address the needs of these owners. It is a monetization strategy masquerading as a value proposition. Providing an metrics approach to marketing may seem like a better solution to a radio, tv or print ad. While discovery may also seem appealing like a more scalable model to more traditional word-of-mouth marketing. However, discounting and cycling through deals does more to benefit the consumer than the business.
Back to Basics
We’ve all been touting the need for user experience and user-friendly products this is not limited to just consumers. When creating any product you need to have a fundamental understanding of your user this includes understanding how small business owners tick. Learn to speak their language, understand their problems, and most importantly know acknowledge their goals.
While business owners have a tight budget unlike most individuals they understand what it means to expect people to pay for products and services because that’s who they operate. However, they need to understand a products benefit clearly. Will it increase their base of paying and repeat customers? Will it benefit their bottom line by cutting down costs or increase revenues consistently?
Keep in mind we’re on the cusp of a new era. There are a lot of small business owners who are starting up businesses, want to use technology, and are searching for products to give them the competitive edge, save them time, and make them more money. We can thank consumer internet for igniting their interest, but we have to do more if we really want to solve the long tail small business technology adoption.
I’ll be going into more depth on this topic during my talk at Groupon on May 31st: Think You Know the SMB Owner’s Mind? Guess Again
