Small business owners are a unique breed.
They are the ones that through blood, sweat and tears have taken a business dream and made it a reality.
They’ve accomplished their vision because they are Do it Yourselfers, firefighters, results driven, time and budget sensitive and fast decision makers.
Those traits, as I shared in my last blog, are why it can be so difficult, frustrating and yet so rewarding to become their trusted advisor or fractional executive.
So, today I’d like to walk you quickly through five ways to address this mid-market mindset in your marketing and sales conversations.
- Address the Tyranny of the Urgent. Name it. Absolutely affirm that it is there. Affirm that they want to do everything fast. Affirm that they want to get it done as quickly as possible.
And then show your prospects:
- How Tyranny of the urgent has caused their pain.
- How much time and money they’ve lost with frantic behaviors. I call that showing them the dark side.
- How it has created their burnout and stress and inability to get the results they want.
- How it causes them to neglect important priorities until these priorities become their own tyranny of the urgent.
It’s a vicious cycle that you as their fractional hero can pull them out of.
Show them exactly show you are going to work with them effectively, efficiently and as quickly as you can.
At Octain, we offer our clients an engagement schedule that details the time and effort of each step of building one of our blueprints.
- Provide budget transparency by showing your midmarket prospects exactly how you are going to use their budget. You can offer:
- Transparent Budget Breakdown: Provide a detailed breakdown of how their budget will be allocated across different areas of your service or product. This breakdown should clearly show the value they’ll receive for each portion of the budget.
- Case Studies and Success Stories: Share case studies and success stories of similar midmarket businesses that have achieved tangible results by working with you. Highlight how their budget was utilized and emphasize the outcomes that were achieved as a result.
- Benchmark ROI. At Octain we have a set of benchmarks that we use with a client in advance so that we can give them an estimate of the ROI they’re likely to get with each of the different campaigns we might launch with them.
- Gain cooperation with collaboration. Moving from Do it Yourself to Do it with You.
- As deciders and DYIers, this group won’t be happy with you disappearing behind a “black curtain” and magically producing results.
- Find a system and working style that keeps them fully involved in the process but does not become a time sink for their team.
- We call ours the Client Collaboration Model.
- Highlight the lost opportunity cost. For those of you who may or not be familiar with the term: lost opportunity cost is the money lost when a you choose a less profitable approach, usually without considering all the available options.
Say, for example, you have two opportunities for growth. One of them may net you an additional a $100,000 to the bottom line. The other one may net you $250,000 to the bottom line. If you only look at the first opportunity and don’t even consider the second, you’ve potentially lost that $250,000 opportunity.
Showing your midmarket business owner prospects two or three opportunities and the difference in the potential reward is a very powerful story for this group of time and money sensitive buyers.
- Focus on employee retention. Mid-market companies often struggle with retaining their employees and finding the right talent employees that they need.
The midmarket also differs from the larger corporate enterprise market in how they view their employees. Long term employees are considered family. They may have worked with the business for 10 and 20 years. Their families have celebrated together. So, these employees are really part of the business success equation. Showing your prospects how your services will help them engage and retain their employees is a winning formula.
What are your success stories and struggles with midmarket business owner prospects? Please comment and let me know.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/embracing-small-business-owner-mindset-clare-price-zpcwc