Small Business Gets Big
It’s no secret that when it comes to IT, small businesses mean big business for vendors. It’s a huge market opportunity and we're very focused on the needs of this vital customer segment.
For some, seizing upon the short term market opportunity gets in the way of truly understanding and meeting the needs of the SMB market. It's my job to ensure we don’t fall into that trap of short term business results versus delighting and keeping our customers over the long term. We’ve been selling to and supporting small and medium businesses for a long time and we’ve gathered a lot of expertise to help our customers to not only survive, but succeed. But it’s an ever-changing market we live in and to be sure we’re still hitting the mark, we’re doing something I’m really excited about.
It’s a focus group, if you will. Next week, at our Partner Summit in Orlando, we’ll be bringing together a sampling of small business consultants/experts and entrepreneurs to just talk ... exchange ideas and help us to be certain that we are on the right course. We’ll chat about what SMB priorities are today, about how they buy, choose and use technology, about how we can communicate better with them, and much more. We’re going to podcast the conversation here on the blog and I hope it will inspire you to join the conversation—the focus group doesn’t have to stay in the room in Orlando, I welcome your thoughts and feedback anytime. Stay tuned for more ... and I'll stay tuned for your feedback!
Paul Gleason
Vice President, Small and Medium Business
Xerox
Comments
It’s not about the bike!
As Lance Armstrong put it: it’s all about how he rides. You know, sometimes we at Xerox get so stuck on “speeds and feeds”, so stuck on how cool we think the device is, that we spend too little time understanding what people want to do with their printers and multi-function devices – today and in the future. After all, one of our key company goals is to provide great customer experiences.
So what is a great customer experience for small to medium size companies? I hope to get closer to answering this at the event next week.
I work in Business Strategy. I deal with many sets of data. But nothing is more real than speaking with folks who deal with SMB issues on daily basis. Since marketing is essentially conversation, we need to be listening and contributing to what our current and potential customers are saying – this is an opportunity to show up and listen rather than showing up and telling.
Looking forward to next week!
Paul Herman
Business Strategy, North American Resellers
Xerox
Posted by: Paul Herman | February 8, 2007 02:32 PM