7 things small business owners wish corporates would understand

Many corporate organisations say they value small businesses, but struggle to relate to their small business customer, because they haven’t walked a mile in their shoes…

After 7 years working in banking and finance with a Big 4 bank, I became a corporate-escapee to pursue my dream of starting my own business. 6.5 years and many battle scars later, I sold my business, Heart of Chocolate, to spend more time with my family.

Reflecting on my entrepreneurial journey, I realised just how much I underestimated the hard work, talent and resilience of small business owners, prior to becoming one myself.

93% of Australian businesses are small businesses*. They make up 33% of GDP and are a powerful customer group for any organisation to sell to. 

I’ve come up with 7 tips to help corporates such as banks, telecommunications, government services “get into the mind” of small business owners to build trust and relationship.

1.      Acknowledge hard work

Imagine this scenario. When you start out as a small business owner, you are literally on your own, together with any co-founders who may have started with you. No-one pays your wage, there is no “boss” to report to but also no team available to support you.

Whatever your life stage, regardless of your health or family’s needs, small business owners are often thinking about their business 24/7. They work on their business constantly, losing track of the hours spent. It’s been likened to having a baby, because your “business baby” is never far from your mind.

Acknowledgement of the work it takes to build a small business is a powerful tool in building relationships.

Once at tax time, my accountant asked how things were going in my business. Rather than rush to the next topic, he listened intently, looked me in the eye and said, “It’s not easy”. I still remember and appreciate his empathy.

2.      Recognise personal courage

To start a small business, the founder must believe that having a business is worth more to them than the security of conventional employment.

Either the money they hope to gain, the difference they hope to make or the lifestyle that they hope to create, or a combination of all three, is considered worth the risk of possible failure

and investment of copious amounts of blood, sweat and tears.

Being a small business owner takes guts. It takes dedication and commitment to build something from nothing, and courage to go out and sell it. Often, as was the case with my own business experience, many have bootstrapped the business from their own life savings. This puts them in a very vulnerable position – both financially and in terms of any alternate career they’ve put on hold to become an entrepreneur.

Acknowledging the risks that they have taken to start and run a business creates an atmosphere of mutual respect. 

3.      Value substance over form  

In business, being able to lead a team, understand cash flow and communicate strategy and vision far exceeds the importance of being able to add, subtract or spell.

As a young university graduate employed by the bank, I would receive emails from small business owners and immediately notice spelling or punctuation mistakes or privately question why their management reports were not more professionally presented. In some ways, I looked down on the small business customers I was meant to support.

On the flip side, when owning my own business,

it was a privilege to work with business coaches who gave me insights into how to make my business more profitable, while misspelling the word “PROFIT” on the whiteboard.

The speaker in a podcast I listened to called his father’s wise sayings “an acronym or whatever” but recently sold the business he started in his garage for $50 million. No way would I discount his wisdom because of the words he used!

Formal qualifications or other professional niceties are not a prerequisite for business success. It’s vital that corporations who deal with small business owners show that they seek, and value, substance over form. 

4.      Buy them a muffin

For a small business owner, the highs are higher, and the lows are lower.

Each success or failure impacts them personally in a way that it wouldn’t if they were working for someone else’s business.

Small business ownership is lonely.

When working in corporate, I was always part of a team. The day I started my own business, immediately became top of the tree. As owner, there was no-one to pass the buck to, no manager to escalate a problem to. Business owners quickly learn to be self-reliant, but miss having a larger team to bounce ideas off, or leaders to learn from.

In my first banking job, I remember my manager would often swing by one of his customers on his way to work and take the owner out for a coffee or a muffin. He told me that they appreciated the chance to talk about what was on their minds.

He saw it as a way of supporting his customers and building long-term relationships, and it brought him outstanding financial returns.

5.      Value their time

Small business owners wear many hats. Whatever they cannot afford to pay another person to do, they must do themselves.

They juggle competing priorities and can be extremely time poor. Every business owner knows that any minute saved on mundane tasks, can be better spent in generating income or improving their business. 

Small business owners have little patience for long sales pitches, long wait times or poor customer service. Because the success of their own business depends giving their customers what they want, businesses owners can be quickly turned off when as customers of your organisation, their needs are not properly met.

I remember walking into a bank to set up our overdraft facility. I had a sinking feeling that I would be kept waiting for a long time. Yet I was pleasantly surprised to see use of seamless retail technology leading to an efficient and pleasant experience. It has led me to recommend this bank to other businesses.

6.      Wear your customer-tinted glasses

I remember when SMS security for internet banking was first introduced. Users needed to receive a text message to their mobile phone and enter a code before their payments could be processed. I was working in business lending at the time, and our front line staff and customers absolutely hated the change. To them, it was introduced at short notice and disrupted critical payment processes their businesses had in place, such as payroll, which they relied on their bank to fulfill.

Tread carefully when changing things that could materially impact the customer’s way of doing business.

Paint a compelling, customer-centric picture of why change is needed well before the change is introduced. More than internal deadlines or meeting corporate performance measures, think of the customer impact of pushing through changes to your key products or service.

7.      Genuinely praise their “business baby”

No-one ever made friends with a new mum by saying their baby was ugly. For many small business owners, their business IS their “baby”. The reality is it takes up more time than their family and sometimes more headspace than their spouse, partner or kids.

Business owners have sacrificed immensely to get where they are. They are on a continual journey of self-improvement and self-awareness in its rawest form.

Their business is a direct reflection of their ability to lead a team and manage all the associated moving parts and something they are rightfully proud of. Finding something to genuinely praise about a business and you will leave a lasting impression on its owner.

As a small business owner, when someone compliments my business, they compliment me.

* Small businesses are defined as businesses with less than $2million annual turnover or less than 20 staff. There 2,065,523 small businesses in Australia as of 2016, according to the “Small Business Counts” report by the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman

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Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed this article! If you did, I’d love if you could share it with your friends/colleagues/network.

Do you have your own thoughts on what else corporates should know about small business? What other challenges do corporates face in selling to small business?

Please leave a comment below, I’d love to hear your thoughts.