Nine "Small Business" Competitive Advantages

Being a small business is not just a temporary stage before becoming a large business -- it is the final, most efficient way of supplying a large number of products and services. Being small is an advantage in many ways and the small business has to identify these advantages and serve those customers who value them.

1. Speed.

The reaction time to customer requests can be a lot faster when you're small. Make sure you capitalize on the fact that when an urgent order comes in, you can get everyone to pitch in and get it shipped without worrying about job descriptions, unions, departmental guidelines and other big corporate stuff.

2. Flexibility.

OK, we haven't done one quite like this before but our engineer says he can customize it if we can get these parts. Try getting GM to build you a special car or try to get a nonstandard version of Windows from Microsoft.

3. Telephone Contact

You can't afford to have some clerical person just answer the phone -- everyone on staff does a lot of things. As a result, whoever is answering the phone will likely know something about the company and the products and will be able to help without putting the customer on hold. Of course, you're too small to have one of those automatic telephone systems with ten levels of "Press 3 for sales" etc.

4. Management Accessibility

Your management (probably you) is there for your customers, your employees and for any complaints. No one has to sort through three levels and five overlapping responsibilities to find out who is in charge.

5. Personal Responsibility

In a small company, it is really hard to play the blame game since there are so few of you. Everyone knows when someone screws up and, given that fact, everyone takes his responsibilities much more seriously.

6. Workplace Equity

Anyone who doesn't pull their weight in a small business won't last long and anyone who does is appreciated, no matter what their personal background. Happy, fairly-treated employees perform much better. Only the boss can screw this up; so watch it.

7. Customer Service

To give quality customer service, you have to have the ability to identify the problem, the qualified personnel to fix it, a feedback path to tell you about any screw-ups and a correction mechanism to improve your service when necessary. This is quite a complicated system to design and implement in a large corporation which is why most don't get it right. In a small company, the service person will probably take the call, fix the problem and the customer will call you if he isn't happy. Simple and effective.

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