Author Archives: Bredin

About Bredin

Bredin was founded in 1991 by America's foremost small business expert, author and syndicated columnist Alice Bredin. From its beginning, Bredin was designed to be a breed apart: 50% research consultancy, 50% creative agency, 100% focused on SMB. Based in Somerville, Mass., Bredin helps Fortune 500 companies understand, reach and retain SMB customers through timely, targeted research and award-winning marketing programs.

Bredin Report: Optimizing Pricing for Your SMB Sales

SMBs carefully consider price at all stages of the sales cycle, so optimizing pricing is essential to success with SMBs. Recent Bredin research into tech purchases reveals that more than 50% of SMBs cite cost as an important factor at the research stage, and 45% of SMBs using or planning to adopt a cloud product

Bredin Report: How to Close an SMB Payment Solution Sale

What offer works best to get an SMB to buy a payment solution? It depends on the size of the SMB. Very small businesses (VSBs, with fewer than 20 employees) and small businesses (SBs, with 20 to 99 employees) are most swayed by a free trial, followed by a price reduction. Midsized businesses (MBs, with

Bredin Report: How SMBs Learn About Payment Solutions

The top information sources for SMBs to first learn about and then research payment solutions are search, peers and technology solution providers. Variations exist by size of SMB and these differences are important to your marketing and sales planning. This insight comes from our most recent SMB Pulse survey of 500 U.S.-based principals. Very small businesses (VSBs,

Fastcast: Engaging SMBs via a Resource Center

Content marketing to SMBs is a challenge. What topics are they most interested in? What formats do they prefer? What mix of advice and product information do they want? How often should you update content to keep them coming back to your blog or resource center? In this new research, Engaging SMBs via a Resource Center,

Bredin Report: The SMB Outlook

Roughly two in three SMBs (66%) expect to grow this year versus 2022, and roughly half (48%) expect revenue increase of more than 10%. This new research, from Bredin’s SMB Pulse survey of 500 U.S. principals, reveals interesting variations when we look at businesses by company size, tenure and owner generation. Very small businesses (VSBs, with fewer

Bredin Report: What Keeps SMBs Up at Night

Recently we’ve run a series on what SMBs want in a payments solution. This week, we’ll shift our focus to the most pressing business challenges SMBs face right now, using data from our SMB Pulse survey of 500 U.S.-based principals. Very small businesses (VSBs, with fewer than 20 employees) rate customer retention as their most important business challenge. Customer

Bredin Report: SMB Purchase Considerations for Payment Solutions

When SMBs are ready to buy a payment solution, they look for 24/7 availability, data security protection, ease of use, and good service. These preferences emerged from Bredin’s recent SMB Pulse survey of 500 U.S.-based principals. When it’s time to make a purchase, very small businesses (VSBs, with fewer than 20 employees) are most concerned with how

Bredin Report: What SMBs Want in New Payment Solutions

In the last Bredin Report, we continued our series on what small and midsized businesses (SMBs) want in the tools they use to accept payments from their customers. Today, we are using the data from our most recent SMB Pulse survey of 500 U.S.-based principals to assess the reasons SMBs begin to look for new payment solutions –

Fastcast: What SMBs Want in a Payments Solution

The world of payments is changing rapidly. What do these changes mean for SMBs, and how can your company best position and promote its payment solutions? In this new research, What SMBs Want in a Payments Solution, you’ll learn: What SMBs accept for payments today – and how payment acceptance is changing Which payment platforms SMBs are using – and which they intend to use going forward The concerns SMBs have with the

Bredin Report: SMB Payment Solution Spending Outlook

Last report, we looked at the concerns small and midsized businesses (SMBs) have with payment solutions. This week, our series on what SMBs want in the tools that allow them to collect payments from their customers continues with a look at the high growth potential that payment solutions have in the SMB segment this year,