Small Businesses Shouldn’t Be Afraid To Say ‘No’
May 8th, 2007 by 
Chris Pangburn
Many small businesses would think you’re crazy if you asked them whether they turned down business. In the first few years of trading, most small business owners chase or say yes to any business they can find - irrespective of whether they have to vary their operations to accommodate it. It is important to have a ‘core focus’ identified in a business, which encompasses all of your strategy, intended mode of operation and the process you use to get where you want to.
There will always be certain customers and potential orders that you know would be more demanding, and take up more resources of your business, or would lead you away from your core focus. As an entrepreneurial business owner you need to recognise that these customers can detract from your overall strategy, and may even deteriorate your performance on tasks within your core focus. Rather than putting your business under greater strain and accepting the work provided by these customers, you should consider saying ‘no’ (or perhaps even outsourcing the work or recommending it to other suitable providers).
The CEO of the executive recruitment firm The Carmon Group, Chris Carmon, said that it is also important for small business owners to assess not only the immediate revenue that a client can bring in now, but must also consider their future impact on the company, in terms of profitability and time.
In summary small businesses should try and see the ‘big picture’, looking at the all-round impact that a tricky customer may cause. If you consider that the interests of the customer doesn’t mesh with your business’ core focus and would take too many resources for the size of the project then don’t be afraid to turn down the business.
Quote Source: Miami Herald: www.miamiherald.com/103/story/97454.html
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May 10th, 2007 at 1:40 am
Great article. I worked for a small business where the philosophy was to sell something to everyone who called (even if it was fairly far outside of their core product lines) because they might return to buy a core product later. The salespeople wasted hours sourcing and delivering small items to non-core customers.
On one hand, they developed profitable lines of business they would not have found without this philosophy.
On the other hand, when the company got larger it was exceptionally difficult to drive this culture out of salespeople - and they spent hundreds/thousands of hours selling products to customers outside of their target market.
The owners of that company might feel differently but I still maintain they would be more successful today (larger in their specific market) if the salespeople said, “No.” to the random orders and went back to finding great buyers for their core products.
May 10th, 2007 at 8:48 am
Hi Chris,
Thanks for the story about your experience. That’s an interesting one, especially that they are operating on a bit of a different theme, aiming to sell the core products by offering ‘fringe’ ones. Like you say, this strategy sounds good at ‘testing the water’ to investigate which product lines would be most effective. If they strike gold, so to speak, then they could incorporate a product line into their mainstream offerings.
As the article mentions, small businesses shouldn’t be afraid to say no to customers every now and then - perhaps a small business with a reasonable-sized workforce could limit these non-core sales to a few dedicated members of the sales team. That way the culture of offering non-core products would be limited to those specific salespeople, and whilst they would be able to test the success of non-core product lines, the culture of saying ‘yes’ to everything wouldn’t have diffused throughout the rest of the organisation.
Anyway, just an idea, thanks for your detailed comment.
Thanks, Chris.
November 5th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
It is very difficult to turn any business away for a small company, particularly in the early years and also in times of economic downturn.
But I have to agree that it is also often bery time consuming and ultimately not worth the effort. However it can open different opportunities and in my experience led to a move away from my companies core products into a new more profitable area. I have to agree that this is an unusual case however and on the whole agree with everything that you have said in this post.