* They love us in lean times, will they love us during a recovery?
I don’t know if the SMB market’s 15 minutes of fame is up, or we’re now major and lasting stars in the eyes of tech vendors. For every good thought, I’ve got a bad one.
First of all, SMBs – especially firms with 50, 25 or even 10 employees – remain the engine of domestic recovery. We’re growing, and we’re not exporting jobs overseas. If anything, we’re grabbing every job we can and keeping it in the U.S.
Yet big vendors are still not equipped to sell us services. The direct-sales model Mr. Huge Vendor prefers doesn’t work when the customer is small and geographically dispersed. Direct sales works when there are many high-paying customers in confined areas, such as major industrial areas and Silicon Valley. But a 25-person printing company might be anywhere, including a barn on the farm.
Second, small companies need advanced tools, and they need them now. This excites Mr. Huge Vendor, encouraging him to track down the barn full of printing techs who need prepress hardware and software.
But although we need tools, we are, frankly, cheap. And we know that the $1,000 suit Mr. Huge Vendor wears was bought with money out of our pockets. Unlike a department manager with a budget, if you’re the owner of small business, the money actually does come out of your pocket.
You’d be amazed at how many tech execs never quite “get” that little detail. One that does told me his firm’s research found SMBs’ budget limit for any technical system (no matter how valuable) is $25,000, so they learned to engineer and price products accordingly.
Big companies are learning how to reach small businesses. Some are revitalizing their dealer channels, partnering with vendors you already trust, and offering many products online for easy ordering and delivery.
But we know that order and delivery is only the first step on a long road to a working system. That installation, service, warranties and regular updates will still be a struggle. While big vendors have learned how to ship products, they still must provide a field service team, or train select dealers so their technical products will be properly installed, configured and working.
Yeah, I know the constant promises of easier setup, but I don’t buy it. SMBs half the time can’t get a new PC to work correctly, so why should they trust a big vendor’s complicated router/VPN/firewall to work out of the box? Why should we waste our time on hold to tech-support centers halfway around the world? Why should we schedule our lives around product update downloads?
What do I think will happen in the SMB market this year? Mr. Huge Vendor will get tired of the work required to reach us. He’ll start to ignore us again, telling us how valuable we are while cutting back. But I think before that happens, the SMBs will get tired of overpriced, under-engineered, poorly supported products from Mr. Huge Vendor. We’ll get tired of them before they get tired of us.
When you find products that work, let me and your fellow SMBs know. When you find products that don’t work, ditto.
Fasten your seatbelts. 2005 is going to be a bumpy year.
