This week Salesforce is holding its massive developer and partner conference Dreamforce in San Francisco. In conjunction with the event, the company has released a survey (reg. required) of 490 small and medium size business owners (SMBs). It explores technology adoption and other issues.
The surveyed SMBs range in headcount from 2 to 199. Many of the findings are segmented into small vs. medium businesses. The man operational and marketing “pain points” identified in the report include:
- Time pressure/not enough time
- Hiring, retention and training
- Technology adoption/use of automation
- Lead identification/acquisition
- Marketing: figuring out channel effectiveness
- Meeting/fulfilling customer expectations
To some degree these are universal business problems. However they’re more acute in most ways for SMBs. Overall the top perceived obstacles to growth, in order, were: hiring, time, access to capital, managing employees and technology.
