Strategy, Growth and Mistakes - The Small Company Blog

Strategy, Growth, and Mistakes

4 Pricing Strategies That Work for Small Companies

As many of you know, this article is Part 2 in a two-part series on product and service pricing. And I am happy to say that so far, Part 1 (4 Pricing Mistakes You Need to Stop Making) has generated a surprising number of comments and spurred some interesting debates among Marketing people. One of the more heated Twitter conversations ...

4 Pricing Mistakes You Need to Stop Making

Of all the things I was asked to do early in my career as a marketer, one of the most intimidating was determining the price of my company’s products and services. To this day I still remember the first time I was asked to come up with a go-to-market pricing strategy, and will never forget the stress I felt and ...

6 Critical Mistakes All Small Company Managers Must Avoid

Before I get too far into this article, I need to point something out. Like hundreds of people before me, I could have used the 1,000 words that follow to declare that running a successful small company is about things like taking risks, accepting failure, multi-tasking, finding creative solutions to problems, and never accepting ‘no’ for an answer. But anyone ...

The Most Alarming Trend in Small Business

As regular visitors to my blog know, I typically don’t give lectures or tell small company owners what to do. Most of my articles are written under the assumption that a) good or bad, adults can make their own decisions, and b) small business people will almost always do what is best for their organizations. But as of late, I ...

5 Ways to Immediately Improve Your Small Company Operation

Regardless of why it was initially founded, the goal of any small company is to generate more money. But once our businesses are off and running, most of us become too preoccupied with running them to make the constant improvements necessary for increased efficiency, increased sales, and ultimately more money in our pockets. But there are some operational ways we ...

15 Signs You Might Lose Your Small Company Job

Over the course of my 18-year career, I have spent a great deal of time on both sides of some messy employment situations. In addition to terminations, corporate reorganizations, company mergers and hostile acquisitions, I have been part of several multi-round company-wide layoffs . . . one of which resulted in me exiting the building with my personal belongings in ...

33 Changes for the Small Company Manager

Looking back on this past year as a manager in a small company, I see a mix of both good and bad. Sure, my company was one of the few in its industry to NOT lose ground over the last 12 months (as my buddy Mike says, ”Flat is the new hypergrowth—right?”), but my performance, my decision-making and my execution were definitely far from perfect. In ...

Why Customer Input Doesn’t Always Matter

Over the years I have worked for several small companies that were firm believers in customer surveys. In the eyes of these particular businesses, there was nothing a company could not ask a customer. Whether it was an idea for a new product, an improvement to an existing product, a search for marketing advice or a simple customer satisfaction exercise, ...

The Five Hidden Ways Small Companies Waste Money

At some point in our lives we have all heard the saying “if you count the pennies, the dollars will take care of themselves.” Although this advice might have helped your grandparents survive The Great Depression, this kind of small-minded thinking carries no weight when it comes to running and attempting to grow a business. This is not to say ...

3 Traps to Avoid When Starting Your Own Small Business

At some point, we’ve all been there. Over the last few years each of us—at least one time—has become fed up enough with our jobs to consider starting a small business. The process always starts the same way: we do some research on the Internet, make a few phone calls, and run a set of rough financial projections. Then, when ...

4 Reasons Your New Business Will Thrive in a Bad Economy

Over the past six months or so, all of us have spoken to at least one friend or relative who is considering starting a business. Some have been laid off, others have experienced cutbacks or pay cuts, and the rest are simply unhappy with their current situations. But regardless of the circumstances, the person looking to start a business always ends the ...

The REAL Reason Banks Won’t Lend Any Money

If you were looking for a sure-fire way into an argument, your most likely adversary these days would not be a neighbor, or an in-law, or even a customer service person at your local mega-retail establishment. More likely, your difference of opinion would lie with a banker. Utter the words “banks aren’t lending any money” around someone who works for a financial institution, and the next ...

The 4 Critical Differences Between Large and Small Companies

Over the last three years writing about small companies, many of my friends, colleagues and fellow bloggers have questioned my decision to draw such a hard distinction between small companies and their larger counterparts. I regularly receive emails like “Is working for a small company really that different?” and “Aren’t good management techniques the same for all companies?” but have not bothered to prepare a response. Until today. ...

Small Company Survey: 5 Signs of a Healthy Organization

Whether you are an employee, manager, or owner of a small company, the question ”How is my company REALLY doing?” is often asked, but rarely answered. Sure, there are basic metrics like Total Revenue, Profit Margin and Employee Turnover which can paint at least part of the picture. However, all of these measures have one inherent flaw: they measure things which have already happened. So is there a way to ...

Dirty Negotiating: Yet Another Walmart Corporate Standard

Over my 17 years working for small companies, I have had the opportunity to negotiate and eventually do business with the corporate offices of dozens of members of the Fortune 100. As much as I dislike the way these large firms are run as a whole, I must admit companies like Ford, AT&T, Verizon, Home Depot, Target, Cisco, 3M and Washington Mutual have always treated my companies ...

Competitive ‘Intelligence:’ When Social Networking Backfires

Today, I would like to take a minute and tell a story. A story about an actual, real-life situation in which a high-profile player in an extremely competitive industry makes a huge mistake the rest of us can learn from. At the small company I currently work for, we have a competitor I will call Randy. Randy is Founder and CEO of the ...

Tips for a Tough Economy: Marketing on a Small(er) Budget

When the economy worsens and the term “401″ more accurately describes my account balance than the retirement vehicle itself, marketing services firms across the nation try to get their finger on the “our method is most cost-effective” scale. If you read their self-promoting white papers and newsletters, you will find that nearly every sector of the marketing services world is claiming their method is tailor-made for tough economies. But which marketing ...

The Key to Catching (and Passing) a Market Leader

As small company owners and managers, very few of us have ever had the luxury of working for a market leader. More often than not there is at least one other company in the industry with higher annual revenue, better quality, more name recognition, or a significantly longer list of customers. Small companies spend their entire existences playing catch-up, and most are ...

Metrics for Growth: Do You Need a Second Espresso Machine?

A few days ago I was sitting in a recently opened, neighborhood coffee shop with a friend who makes a living evaluating businesses and business units. During our conversation he and I began discussing how much money a coffee shop might cost to operate. After running some calculations relating to things like overhead, average transaction size and profit margin, we eventually concluded that this particular store would need ...

Why Do I Work for a Small Company?

For those of you who are regular visitors to this blog, you no doubt have noticed two points I often go out of my way to make: 1) that the keys to success in a small company are markedly different than in a large one; and 2) that working at a small company is more fun, more challenging, and ultimately more ...