The Fast & The Furious

Maybe it's the neighborhood's thriving entertainment industry and bevy of small businesses housed in posh digs at nearby Century City.

Or it could be the robust CRM system it has developed over the past few years. Or the 24-hour call center it opened in the Philippines.

Taken separately, there is nothing truly unique about any of those initiatives. Nor is Micro League's business strategy a major revelation: The company strives to groom a loyal base of repeat SMB customers by providing highly responsive customer care, one-stop shopping and a full plate of technical services.

• Groupware: A Startling Comeback • Paragon: Mining Colorado Gold • NueVista: Why Slow Down? • Micro League: Plan For Growth Pays Off • Integration Systems: Winning Customer Hearts And Mining • Sword & Shield: Compliance Plus Security Equal Sales • MTM: The Road Less Traveled • EBS: Manna In The "M" Of SMB • ACS: A Simple Services Formula • Network Innovations: Go VoIP, Young Man

But the company's growth was not accidental. Yousefzadeh says his company has been laying the groundwork over the past four years. "This was a long-term plan—a lot of meetings, trips to Asia—and we're ready at this point to go after a bigger piece of the market," he says.

The company's technical services have been a part of the plan—from network integration to telephony to network integration and security. Service revenue has climbed from 30 percent of revenue to 35 percent, Yousefzadeh says.

But while its service business is growing faster and is more lucrative than its product sales, the company still views hardware as important. "We don't want the customer to go somewhere else," he says. "Even though hardware might not be profitable, we still gladly sell the product and gladly service it."

Indeed, the company still builds custom systems and is known locally for its printer sales and services sales. But those legacy businesses, while growing organically, are not something the company is aggressively driving, says Leo Shafranovich, who manages the company's sales. "Our strategic initiative is to deliver the best service to our customers we can and provide the best advice we can," he says. In the end, it all seems to come back to the simple mantra of meeting customer needs.