Small Business Quick Quiz
Question #8
The main advantage BIG business has over small business is...
- a. more money
c. more people
Use these handy anchor links to go to any question
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The answers to the questions are listed here in short form. For more complete discussion of the issues raised, visit the linked resources. Better still, subscribe to Small Business Pro. newsletter.
8a. Yes, it has that advantage. So it can afford to be fat and lazy and inefficient. But it’s not the real advantage. Money is just another resource (see the next answer).
See the Resource Information on Big Business versus Small Business.
8b. This is the ONLY true advantage Big business should ever have over small business. But it’s not. There’s an even bigger advantage that, incredibly, small business hands on a platter to Big business. But it’s no big deal to fix it when you know what you’re doing in small business! Put it this way — which would you rather have? Some golden eggs? Or the goose that lays them? Big business has the eggs. It can NEVER have the goose. Only small business has the goose.
See the Resource Information on Big Business versus Small Business.
8c. People — especially employees — are a resource. But the primary concern of employees is their pay packets and their job security, not the profitability of the business. See the answer to question 8b above.
See the Resource Information on Big Business versus Small Business.
8d. Only because small business doesn’t know the unbeatable advantage it has over Big business when it comes to market research.
See the Resource Information on The Seven Hole System of Market Research.
8e. Big business only enjoys a competitive advantage when small business allows it to. Once again, when small business knows what it’s doing, BIG business can only keep up by resorting to its more abundant resources. Few small businesses understand their true competitive advantage. They look in all the wrong places for all the wrong reasons.
See the Resource Information on Key Competitive Edge for helpful insights.
(Note: Key Competitive Edge is the marketer’s perspective on Sustainable Competitive Advantage — a jaw-breaking, semantically null term invented by unimaginative accountants or academics, we suspect. And yet another misleading concept that has people doing the wrong things for the wrong reasons)
8f. This is the biggie — the HUGE advantage that small business hands to BIG business on a silver platter. You may have noticed by now that we keep saying “when small business knows what it’s doing, BIG business simply can’t compete with it.” The problem is the first part of the statement... “when small business knows what it’s doing”. Small business owners rarely know what they’re doing because they’re usually so busy working IN the business. Working ON the business comes a very poor last. In BIG business, the most astute strategists and able negotiators do little else but work ON the business. We have to change our approach. We have to understand leverage better and use it better.
See the Resource Information on The Principle of Leverage and Why Other People Are Essential to Our Success.
8g. Hmmm.... Who’s kidding whom here? Read the answer to question 6f, then see the Resource Information on Big Business versus Small Business.