SME Business Management Tips: What Small Businesses do better than Big Businesses

Often we talk about how small busineses become big businesses by using big business tools. However, small businesses often have a big advantage over big businesses. Here's what you can take advantage of.

Customer Service

How often do you here complaints from customers about the large businesses and retail giants where the customer service is terrible or non existant? We see it all too regularly. The main causes of this include poor staff training and inadequate attention to staff welfare by these big companies. They cut costs by reducing staff headcount, staff training and wages resulting in poor staff attitude and performance.

How many people do you know go back and buy from a shop again and again because they get great customer service?  How pleasant is it to be served by someone who actually cares, shows good manners and treats you like a real person rather than just another number?

Unlike large businesses, where policies and procedures can take a long time to change, smaller businesses have the ability to beat these problems quickly and easily. Train your staff, get them involved and get them enthusiastic about your business and your products. Perhaps incentivise them to improve customer service and sales. A lot of businesses pay lip service to customer service but it has been proven that if you take the right approach it will pay dividends.

Flexibility

Another disadvantage big businesses have is lack of flexibility. Quite often big businesses implement and maintain strict policies and procedures that can sometimes prevent sales from being made or even worse can strain or break customer relationships. How many times have you asked for a discount from a big company and been refused due to "standard company policy"? Smaller businesses have the ability to change or alter things such as terms of trade, product pricing or even delivery that can make the difference "on the spot" between getting and not getting the sale. Small businesses should always be open, within reason, to flexibility in dealing with customers. You never know what that new customer might end up spending every month from then on!

Adapability

One of the biggest problems I saw during my time in the large corporate world was the frustration with various parts of the businesses such as Research and Development with getting a new product to market. Quite often the corporate world requires every single little box to be ticked on the "to do" list before releasing a new product or implementing a change to the way they do business. Again a simple but very powerful advantage smaller businesses have is the ability to adapt, change and improve almost instantaneously. Listen to your staff they might have some great suggestions that might not only win more business but also may save you money.

Avegna assists business identifying and improving issues such as these. For any further information on the issues covered in this article please contact us. We offer a free, no obligation initial consultation.
 

Scott Lyall
CEO of Avegna