Slicing And Dicing

This is especially true of the mysterious and seductive small-business market, a segment that all too often gets lumped in with midsize companies. I have grown to despise the SMB acronym, even though we're forced to use it every week in CRN's print pages and online articles.

HEATHER CLANCY

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Can be reached via e-mail at [email protected].

The good news is that the vendor with arguably the biggest installed base in small businesses, Microsoft, is charging its executives to think differently about segmentation for this and other customer groupings. For one thing, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer points out that some small businesses may have a very real need for two to five servers, which really changes the discussion points that would be used in a prospecting session.

"The real difference in these businesses isn't the number of employees they have, it's the complexity they have in running their businesses," said Ballmer during a question-and-answer session last week at Microsoft's annual partner conference. For Microsoft, this epiphany could mean more products akin to Small Business Server and the small-business edition of Office, this time tailored for slightly larger customer prospects. (For more of Ballmer's thoughts, see our Microsoft conference coverage both in this week's news section and on crn.com.)

Another channel-forward company, Cisco Systems, is also taking the plunge into more explicit customer segmentation, the theme central to this week's cover story by Senior Editor Jennifer Hagendorf Follett. Cisco President and CEO John Chambers said he was humbled when his son told him that Cisco-branded wireless offerings were too complex and too expensive, an assertion that has been a common mantra of many Cisco partners. That education is the foundation for a dizzying array of small-business-specific products that Cisco intends to introduce this year. As with Microsoft, Cisco's channel team is studying the scenarios that drive small businesses' day-to-day existence rather than relying solely on employee head count as the means for slicing and dicing potential customers.

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How do you slice and dice small business? HEATHER CLANCY, Editor at CRN, appreciates your comments and feedback at [email protected].