What Large Corporations Can Learn From Small Businesses

Read any business magazine or newspaper and what you will see are stories about large corporations and their executives. What you will not see, except in a few specialized journals, are stories about small businesses. There are many things that large corporations can learn from small businesses.

Sales

Everyone is in sales. Most large corporations have sales organizations with sales managers and executives. They also have extensive sales processes and infrastructure. The key for a small business is that it is up to everyone to sell. All the time and regardless of role.

Customers

Customers are the beginning and the end and everything in between for small businesses. Somehow large corporations lose sight of that fact. They create special, complex and inflexible points for touching new and existing customers. In a small business, everything is about the customer. Part of that includes making things as easy for the customer as possible.

Planning

Large corporations are not the only businesses that do planning. I have yet to meet a small business owner who does not have a business plan on their desk on in their brief case. The difference is that in a large corporation they are organizations that handle business planning. And there are designated people in each organization who do the business planning. In a small business, business planning is above and beyond the “day job” of the business. And all the key people are directly involved in creating the business plan.

Costs and Expenses

Large corporations are famous for saving on nickels and dimes and spending millions. They often squeeze the workers and spend money on lavish perks for executives and sales conferences. Small businesses look at every single expenditure. They view the expenses like it was each employee's own checking account. Each expense is reviewed to insure it is absolutely essential and to determine what revenue benefit it will bring to the business. Small business is not trying to keep up with the joneses but rather be as profitable and successful in their market space as they can be.

Ideas and Innovation

Large corporations have two streams for ideas. One is dubbed “research and development”. The ideas people. The scientists and professional innovators. The other is the executives. They are up their and make a lot of money. They must be smart and have great new ideas. In small businesses, the ideas of everyone count. This includes all the employees, customers, suppliers and basically anyone who touches the business. No one person, role or function has a monopoly on new and innovative ideas for growing the business and making it more successful.

Executives

In most large corporations today, the executives are well educated and have worked for many other corporations of a number of years. Some are sales people, some are financial people and some are from a professional background such as law. Most are long removed from dealing with entry level workers and their interaction with customers is at a level equal to their rank and status. The leaders of small businesses often have had other small businesses. Some have succeeded. Often others have had businesses fail. Most love building businesses and creating something from nothing. They love dealing with customers directly. And they love creating value whether it is a product or a service for the marketplace. Most small business leaders value rank and its trappings less than the satisfaction of creating jobs, satisfying customers and generating wealth. When they tire of this they sell it and create something new rather than move from the pinnacle of one enterprise to the pinnacle of another.

Large corporations do many things right. But large corporations would be well served to step back and evaluate what makes small businesses successful. Many of these traits and practices could make large corporations even more effective and less self-serving.