Don't Sell Your Product

Before the advent of computers and the Internet you needed a lot of people to find out how to do things and to get things done. Then you needed more people to administer the first group. Finally you needed a large business volume to pay for all these people and you achieved it by hiring a lot of sales people. When you start out like this you benefit from "economies of scale" and huge corporations were very successful.

Today, in many sectors, you can find out how to do things from the Internet or you can use it to reach people who will help you. With computerized processes you no longer need a lot of people to produce things. Administration is computerized and you haven't got a lot of people anyway. This means that small business has an inherent competitive cost advantage until we get to selling. You still need a lot of people to sell your product. If you add large scale advertising you're a small business trying to become a big business and you've lost your advantage.

To capitalize on your small business status, don't sell your product. Selling is a high cost activity designed to reach a lot of people who may or may not need your product and to convince them to buy. If you want to maintain and take advantage of your small business status, this is not an activity that fits. Instead, you're going to perform a public service.

If you've done your homework, you're producing a high quality product which some people need. As a small business you can produce it more cheaply than a big corporation. All you have to do is let the people who need your product know that it's available and they'll call you. You're not selling, you're satisfying a need. You don't need blanket advertising; you need to figure out how to reach only those people who need your product and you'll be helping them solve a problem.

Now you're back to what a small business can do well. You're down to a few people who are very knowledgeable about your product dealing with small groups of people who need your product. That's efficient. It's low cost. It's small business.