Not Enough Businesses

I hear this a lot: "You don't understand. There aren't that many businesses in my area." Really? Do you have a yellow pages? How about a chamber of commerce? A Rotary club? Then you have plenty of business -- you just aren't prospecting enough (or correctly).

This is originally from the FreedomIQ blog, but it can apply anywhere.

According to the 2010 Census data there are 5.9 million businesses in the USA that have payroll (or paid employees). There are 21 Million businesses that do not have payroll - solopreneurs, network marketers, etc. Pretty amazing stats.

So I decided to focus on San Diego County, home of FreedomVoice. Did you know that the SBA has a district office in San Diego?

Did you know that 30K small businesses sought help from the SBA in San Diego in 2011? That means that there are 30,000 prospects!

Nearly 95 percent of businesses in San Diego County are small businesses. The average number of workers employed by San Diego County small businesses is 7.3, but the range in size is wide. Only one in six are “mom and pop” operations, having just one or two employees. One-third currently have more than 10 workers on the payroll. That is the FreedomIQ Target Market!!!!

The largest category (or business vertical) is the business services group. One out of every five firms is in this segment, which includes engineering, consulting, accounting, research and management firms, according to the San Diego Chamber of Commerce.

Want a National Accounts list? Just look at the SD Chamber Board of Directors! I tell salespeople to have a Prospect Top 20 and stalk those people. Well, between social media and the Chamber it is easy to get to these top prospects.

The headquarters of FreedomVoice is in Encinitas, CA. Encinitas has almost 1800 small business - just 10% of that is still a good business.