Category Archives: american small business league

What’s Really Effective in Sales?

Next Monday I’ll be doing an interview with Morrrie Shechtman, author of Working Without A Net and Fifth Wave Leadership, about this very subject. We’ll discuss a study of over 6000 salespersons in 100 different industries, and the conclusions it draws about different sales styles and their effectiveness. This show will be available Monday, December 5th at 4 PM Pacific Time at www.smallbusinesshour.com.

If you missed my show last week, you can also catch a great interview I did with Lloyd Chapman from the American Small Business League. He is one of the few true small business champions out there that has no political agenda, other than to see the government stop giving our tax dolars to giant corporations, and instead to do business with actual small businesses. His lawsuits have forced the federal government to release data showing that they have never met small business contracting mandates. We discussed why politicians from both major parties talk a good game about small businesses while actively working to make things harder for the little guy, and what you can do about it.

If you have any topics you’d like to hear me discuss on future shows, please let me know. Thank you, and have a terrific weekend!

Small Business Contracts…or are they Big Business Contracts?

The Small Business Administration has released their contracting data for fiscal year 2008, and the numbers show a shortfall in contracts awarded to small businesses to the tune of $6.5 BILLION. The government reports that while congress mandates that at least 23% of all contracts should go to small businesses, only 21.5% of them were awarded to qualified businesses. These are the best self reported numbers to come out of Washington in years, so they do represent some hope…except they’re probably not accurate.

We spoke with Chris Gunn of the American Small Business League on my small business radio show this afternoon. The ASBL did a study of the top 100 contracts awarded to small businesses in 2008, and found that 65% of them were actually given to large multi-national corporations. These contracts were given to companies such as Xerox, HP, AT&T, Boeing, and General Electric. Do any of those sound like small businesses? According to the ASBL, actual contracts awarded to small businesses is less than 10%, not 21.5%, representing a shortfall of over $100 Billion! You can see a raw copy of their study results here.

One way that we can help to combat this problem is to contact our congressional representatives and urge them to support the Fairness and Transparency in Contracting Act of 2009 (H.R. 2568). We’ll have another visit from the ASBL on the Small Business Hour next month, and will keep on top of this story to let you know the latest.