Generating Orders and Winning New Business

Abstract

Small businesses deploy specific and transactionally focused approaches to market development and selling that re-define the notion of marketing within this particular organizational context. Indeed, most smaller businesses use alternative terms to marketing to describe these activities. In-depth interviews with small and medium-sized enterprises in the north of England indicated that the most appropriate and meaningful phrases were ‘generating orders’ and ‘developing markets’. The interview transcripts identified specific activities and phases undertaken by small and medium-sized enterprises, as well as their sequence and phasing, generating a shared process framework that was common to the businesses surveyed. Process constraints were analysed, as well as possible means of intervention to enable order generation and winning new business in the small firm.