If time is such a precious resource for small business owners, why isn’t more of it spent on high-value, high-impact work?
A survey of small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) shows that SMBs spend a mean of 120 working days per 12 months on administrative tasks (CPA). For perspective, that’s roughly 48% of the working 12 months dedicated to non-core activities.
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Brendan King, CEO of Vendasta, not only thinks this is a significant problem for local businesses—he thinks the situation is becoming even tougher. Taking other aspects into consideration, it’s likely that SMBs today are only spending about “33% of the time practicing their craft,” King says. “The remainder of the time they’re attempting to make the business work.”
So how can SMBs flip the script and redirect their efforts towards meaningful, high-value work? And how can digital marketing providers grow to be the local experts and guides chargeable for getting them there?
The challenge lies in making technology easy, accessible, and inexpensive.
Keep reading to explore King’s insights on democratizing technology for SMBs and what’s next for Vendasta’s vision.
Firsthand experiences as an area business owner
Speak to King for under just a few minutes and his passion for small businesses shines through. In fact, one among the primary statements within the ‘About’ section on his LinkedIn page decries how local businesses “are getting Starbucked, Amazoned, and Walmarted.”
It may come as no surprise that King was once a small business owner himself, in addition to an entrepreneur selling to small businesses.
Early wins, early lessons
“My first business [in the late 80s] was a clothing store I began in class, selling colourful shorts from the factory my dad worked at,” King reminisces. “We sold to all of the university clubs—it was a success!”
And with a reputation like ‘Son of a Beach,’ how could it not be?
Though the shop’s success was short-lived, King credits the experience for teaching him essential business lessons at a young age:
- You’re never too young (or too old) to be an entrepreneur
- Embrace and learn from the inevitability of failure
- Always keep going
From local business owner to SMB champion
And keep going he did.
In the 90s, King founded (and later sold) two computer retail operations, Delron Computers and CompuSmart. But he didn’t just sell tech. He immersed himself within the unique challenges faced by his primary clientele—small and medium-sized local businesses. The stories and struggles he encountered impacted King’s holistic understanding of SMB’s pain points.
Fast-forward to the 2000s and King entered the software space with Point2 Realty Solutions, which he helped grow to a world network of over 165,000 agents and brokers in 85 countries.
Whether it’s vibrant shorts, cutting-edge computers, or dynamic real estate solutions, the through line connecting King’s ventures up to the current because the CEO of Vendasta stays a deep commitment to local businesses.
The core purpose of Vendasta, based on King, is to democratize technology for these businesses by making it:
- Easy
- Accessible
- Affordable
How is the way in which SMBs buy technology broken?
The query, to King, is related to Vendasta’s aforementioned core purpose. In order to level the playing field, technology implementation needs to ascertain these three boxes—easy, accessible, and inexpensive. And it often doesn’t, putting SMBs at an obstacle.
Lacking time, money, and expertise, local businesses are sometimes struggling to search out and implement technology on their very own in an increasingly fragmented tech landscape.
“The big guys can hire entire teams whose sole purpose is implementing technology to make big corporations more efficient. What you’ll be able to do for SMBs is democratize that very same technology by making it easy, accessible, and inexpensive by partnering with a technology provider that streamlines it through one system of record.”
Brendan King, CEO of Vendasta
Other tell-tale signs that the way in which SMBs buy technology is broken?
- Spending inordinate amounts of time attempting to get operations running easily as a substitute of growing business
- Finding it unattainable to maintain up with (nevermind, stay ahead of)
- Most things are still completed manually and are unattainable to scale
- Business owners seek help for his or her tech needs but get stuck coping with several different service providers
This last part is crucial. Vendor clutter results in inefficiencies, miscommunications, and misalignment, often setting SMBs back further.
In King’s mind, when something goes incorrect, an SMB should know exactly who to refer to. When something goes right, they need to know replicate it. Sounds easy, however it’s easier said than done.
“That’s why we’re attempting to construct an ecosystem where a small business can cope with one trusted expert, and that expert works in tandem with vendors,” King continues. “Our system is the system of record for all communications and data, making it easy for small businesses to maintain all the things streamlined.”
With this vision, Vendasta’s goal of democratizing technology for SMBs goes hand in hand with empowering trusted experts (also known as Vendasta’s channel partners) to supply a comprehensive range of technology solutions.
Obstacles that hinder meaningful tech adoption
So if the DIY approach is unattainable to scale, and bringing in outside help often results in confusion and communication overload, why don’t SMBs simply work with one digital expert that works in tandem with vendors to deliver a high-quality solution?
The principal obstacle is the widespread fragmentation of software, services, and trusted experts.
“There are so many options now,” King says. He breaks down the challenge in 3 ways.
- Business owners don’t know where to show.
Trust is paramount, but sometimes word-of-mouth can result in dead ends and wasted time.
A small business’s trusted accountant is not necessarily going to know point them within the direction of a best-in-class digital marketing expert, for instance.
- The market is oversaturated.
With so many options, it’s tough for SMBs to know who to trust or what they really need.
- There’s more fragmentation than ever.
Even if SMBs do manage to search out the assistance they need, that individual is likely to be focused in a specific area of interest or vertical. Whether it’s eCommerce, promoting, or content marketing, once the SMB inevitably has more problems to resolve, it would mean adding a recent provider into the combination.
And starting the entire time-consuming process once again.
Tactics for local experts bridging the technology gap
There is much to be gained by becoming the trusted expert who fixes the broken process for SMBs and unifies it right into a cohesive whole. “Vendors come through you [as the channel partner], white-labeled under your brand, for a straightforward, accessible, inexpensive experience for SMB clients,” King says.
Yet shifting an area business’s perspective could be tricky. How do you deepen relationships and get clients to rely on their tech providers as trusted experts moderately than salespeople or vendors?
1.“Fall in love together with your clients’ problems
King suggests that constructing a robust relationship with clients involves empathy, real care, and above all, curiosity about their problems. In other words, a people-first approach—whilst a technology provider.
“You have to fall in love together with your clients’ problems initially,” King says. “Then be curious, agile, and driven about solving them.”
Channel partners that focus on solving customer problems moderately than simply pushing their very own solutions will avoid the common pitfall of over-emphasizing the technology and losing sight of the larger picture.
“It’s like attempting to tighten a screw by utilizing a hammer,” King continues. “A technology-first approach can actually hinder progress moderately than speed up it.”
- Develop a deep understanding and empathy on your clients’ challenges
- Embrace a people-first approach when providing tech solutions
- Focus on problem-solving over product-selling
- Be agile in addressing client issues
2.“The customer’s not all the time right”
Here’s one other analogy. If you’re changing a light-weight bulb, you don’t necessarily need a tool—just a transparent understanding of what must be done.
From King’s experience, clients aren’t all the time right about what they need (and that’s okay!). “Your role as their guide is to listen, assess, and diagnose situations to uncover the true root of their problems,” King says.
If you don’t, you risk making the situation worse.
“When I had my retail computer store and was selling to small businesses, customers would are available in and say, ‘I would like an accounting package,’” King recounts. But by asking follow-up questions to higher understand the client’s problem, he’d discover that the true issue was that that they had no processes in place to implement the accounting software.
Simply adding more technology on top of a separate underlying problem will only make things worse. It’s the recipe for a fast win and immediate sale that may cut the client relationship short in the long term.
- Be curious and informed to get to the foundation explanation for customer problems
- Don’t simply apply more technology to underlying issues
- Build trust and grow client relationships
- Become the go-to expert
- Solve more problems
3.“How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time”
SMBs could be everywhere in the charts in relation to how comfortable they’re with technology. So how can local experts serve businesses with various degrees of tech savviness? King has the elephant idiom on the ready. “Trying to implement 10 recent tech solutions suddenly can be overwhelming for many,” no matter their savviness, he adds.
Prioritization is also essential. “To return to ‘one bite at a time,’” King says, “I might start small and solve the largest problem first, then earn the trust of the client.”
- Avoid overwhelming SMBs with too many tech solutions without delay
- Focus on solving the largest problem first for probably the most impact
- Slow and regular builds trust
- Demonstrate value
4.“Democratizing technology with AI”
AI is greater than a technological buzzword—it’s an undercurrent shaping the long run of labor. But it’s not some recent phenomenon. “Though it’s been around a protracted time, we’re experiencing a paradigm shift [with AI],” King explains. Why now?
Because AI has been made easy, accessible, and inexpensive.
This newfound accessibility could be traced back to initiatives like those from OpenAI, which released their large language model, ChatGPT, without cost testing to most people. No longer the domain of information scientists and machine learning engineers, AI has been thrust into the mainstream, becoming an accessible tool to speed up business outputs.
And in relation to business, AI is already helping reduce the cognitive load in tasks like research, draft creation, and image selection. “Something that took six hours, now takes a fraction of the time. AI can do the research, summarize the info, and native experts might help businesses put it into motion,” King says.
But this is just the tip of the iceberg.
By analyzing large volumes of information, AI can provide personalized insights and suggestions, enhancing overall business operations. This means local experts can offer clients previously unimaginable services, driving higher results and deeper understanding.
In particular, King points to Vendasta’s Jasper AI tool as a beacon for the long run—a tool already streamlining content creation with its seamless integration of AI.
With this forward-thinking approach, King paints a compelling picture of how AI will empower local experts to craft simpler strategies and deliver transformative solutions.
- AI will enable simpler strategies and transformative solutions
- Personalized insights from AI will revolutionize client interactions
- AI already reduces cognitive load and streamlines tasks
- Leveraging AI can expand your service offering
Bringing Vendasta’s vision to life
When asked concerning the future, King’s trajectory for Vendasta is clear: expand horizons, delve into recent domains, and create a holistic solution for small businesses.
“At Vendasta, we will not be confined to the MarTech and AdTech space,” King says. “We’ve been broadening our horizons to encompass more of what a small business needs. Our ultimate goal is to supply all the things that an SMB requires to run its operations effectively.”
This expansive approach involves moving downstream to cater to more nuanced needs. From constructing out Vendasta’s CRM with the acquisition of Yesware to integrating Broadly’s consumer engagement tools, the King is determined to cover every aspect of an SMB’s operation.
Thinking outside the box with business-in-a-box
The future vision for Vendasta is an all-inclusive ‘business-in-a-box’ platform. But what does that basically mean?
“A spot where an SMB can log in and completely run their business,” King says. But it’s not nearly equipping businesses with tools; it’s about establishing a strong channel network that aids in providing these services.
“Small businesses won’t be comfortable buying accounting software from a media company, but they could trust their website agency,” King explains. “We’re seeing a convergence where agencies initially focused on marketing at the moment are offering managed services like web and website hosting and even e-commerce.”
Vendasta’s mission is to be the primary name that involves mind when local experts take into consideration implementing technology and providing services for SMB clients. There’s a vital bridge that should be built to assist SMBs cross the chasm between their needs and the technology solutions that fulfill them. And King is captivated with fixing that bridge.
As a giant believer in Conway’s Law—that a corporation inevitably designs systems that mirror its own structure—King ensures his day-to-day activities and the meetings he attends echo the corporate’s structure.
It’s not nearly envisioning the long run but about living it, each day.
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