Growing with your customers is a popular and successful strategy among many resellers.
Correct Solutions' Small said it began with listening to customer requirements.
"The key thing you need to understand about the SMB space is that every business is different, and you won't understand your customers' requirements unless you start by really listening to their needs," Small said. "It's the resellers that go out there with the idea of selling the customer something that end up making all the mistakes."
According to Small, time spent in the initial phase of a customer relationship, listening to their requirements and discussing different technological responses, is the best way to build a long-term base of customers.
"You need to know where their business is going and suggest the way technology can solve their problems, because a lot of the time the technology they have in mind is entirely wrong for what they really need," Small said.
In a similar vein, business development manager with IT reseller and integrator, Evolve IT, Clayton Moulynox, said the key to selling into SMB was to remember not to be a sales person, but to listen and offer advice.
"The term that's often used is 'trusted advisor' and that's what we attempt to become for our clients," Moulynox said. "Some even invite us along to their board meetings so that we keep a clear idea of where the company is headed."
Having spent a significant period working in a corporate environment, director of CRM software integrator Applied Marketing Technologies, Phil Haddock, said the major difference between large companies and small is the level of personal interest the small business owner has in every single business decision.
"In many ways a small business is similar to the division of a large company, except that the business owner has a strong personal interest in how and where money is being spent," Haddock said.
"Their sense of value is based on the fact that they are personally spending their budget and need to see a clear relationship between investment and value to the company before they will adopt a new technology."
IT Next Generation's Hupseld agreed and suggested this heightened sense of return on investment leads to a focus on technologies which are easy to use, and provide a clear benefit to the bottom line.
"Small businesses rarely have in-house IT skills, so they need to rely on a combination of fast, responsive service, which won't break the budget," Hupseld said. "And they don't like to feel that they are being sold to. They really need to see how the technology will benefit their company before they will trust you enough to buy from you."
