The preceding articles in this series discussed the big boys and what can be learned from them, both good and bad (HW, 22 January), and the benefits and risks of being mid-sized (HW, 29 January).

One would think that being on the smallest end of this trifurcated competitive landscape would put your organisation — grower, retailer, manufacturer, service provider, customer, supplier or public service organisation — at a keen disadvantage. One would be wrong.

The fact is, small organisations have the ultimate competitive advantage — their size. If you look closely at what all the other guys are doing, no matter what their size, they're trying to be you because you can and do give the customer an experience that cannot be replicated anywhere else — except by the best and the brightest.

Recognising size as your advantage

One of the biggest challenges when you are a small business owner is that you are everything to everybody. Within, you are often chief executive officer, chief finance officer and chief operating officer, besides being chief information officer and chief technology officer.

There isn't an aspect of the business that, at one point or another, you're not touching — from sales calls and visits to production and distribution. You are all things to all people — customers, suppliers, investors and employees. Whether true or not, it often feels as though every problem in the organisation somehow finds its way to your desk for you to resolve.

That's all probably true, but what you don't realise is that it's not bad. In fact, in the early stages of the organisation's development, it is the best possible thing that can happen.

The outcome of your understanding of every aspect of the business is that you have access to an information repository and knowledge base from every source possible. You know what customers think almost before they do. You see what's going on across all aspects of the organisation and how each interacts with the others — or not.

You have both analytical (for which read "individualised") and holistic (for which read "integrated") information that gives you a more coherent picture of how your organisation operates. This is the best internal impact analysis you can possibly informally access.

What this means is that you can see all the ways that you can attract new customers, develop new ways of doing business and find new markets to create or invade. You can also identify the areas that need your attention and where you can delegate more to the management group in your growing enterprise. This means that, depending on what you want to achieve, you can get big and compete on a larger scale.

Or not, because the advantage remains with you. Not financially, granted. You don't have the economies of scale or access to purchasing power that your larger counterparts have. But what you do have from all of that on-the-ground knowledge and experience — and because it all resides within a small, manageable entity — is the ability to shift, change, innovate, create and bring to market at a speed that your larger competitors can only envy.

The challenge is to build an organisation that isn't dependent on you for every decision but maintains the same excitement and sense of possibilities that you bring to the business every day.

Little guys and speed of innovation

Innovation and speed are wholly interdependent. The way that you make and keep your markets is by finding ways to create products and services that customers need but never knew they could have. Little guys do this much better than the big boys.

There are easy ways to accomplish this goal. Add concessions to your garden retail centre that provide products or services you wouldn't normally provide. Charge them for space and negotiate a percentage of their take. That's a slam dunk, not least because you're leaving it to them to find new ways to bring in more customers, which of course leads to increased sales — at least if you've got it right and the foot traffic is designed to wend its way to all the other areas you want it to go to.

If you're a grower, manufacturer or supplier, dedicate a percentage of time and space to new product development. Customers are looking for new, different and better, which means that the more you can bring to your supply chain partners, the more they'll buy from you. Even better, they'll bring their customer trends research results to you to find out whether you can partner even further to fulfil their needs.

By definition, being small makes and keeps you a niche player. You've got your piece of the market and you own it. As a result, you can do anything you want with it at any time because changing direction in a speedboat is a lot easier and faster than in an ocean liner.

That's why one of the biggest wins for everyone in being a customer or supplier to a little guy is that there is no need to work your way through the barriers of organisational bureaucracy — they don't exist. Questions and needs have immediate answers. If you can't provide it, simply send your customer to a trusted resource as a goodwill gesture. When possible, make the introduction so that you know your customer is going to get a level of treatment there that they might not otherwise have experienced.

You are on your customers' side and they know it. There's an immediacy to the relationship that allows for and creates an intimacy to the customer experience.

Big boys don't do this — it's as good as against company policy. Even if it isn't, it would be a rare employee who would risk sending a customer to the competition — even if it would create a higher level of customer loyalty to the originator because they were looking out for their customers. But it doesn't happen at the big boys or, usually, the mid-sized guys. Not because it can't, but because the perceived risk level is too high.

You, as a little guy, can wow your customers — or your customers' customers — by providing something no-one thought possible — product or service — because when you're little, everything is possible. It has to be, otherwise you're as good as rolling over and putting yourself out of business.

Acting big, staying small

There is another advantage to being small. You can provide as much — and often times more— than your big boy competitors. They know this and they are hoping that you don't figure it out.

In this market, customisation is all — the ability to provide everything from products to services that are designed to suit the customers' needs. To create the feeling among your customers that they are not experiencing a cookie-cutter approach, but that they are being identified, recognized and assisted as individuals with specific, individual needs.

Why do you think that the highest priced hotels worldwide keep databases of what their guests requested? As useful as that is for trending, which it is, it is even more useful for that moment when the guest returns and not only is greeted by name but their room already has the kinds of pillows and blankets that the guest prefers and the amenity fruit, cheese and wines that reflect the orders the guest made in the hotel's restaurant on the last visit.

That is what creates return visits and revenues — including at other hotels in these small, exclusive chains.

For little guys, it's all about keeping track of what your customers bought before and, when they walk in your metaphorical door — which includes getting onto your website, ordering system or calling your order department — they are gently nudged to buy something that they wouldn't have otherwise ordered by having it tied to what they bought before.

Because you made those connections for them, you solved their problem by making their lives easier or increasing their revenues by being able to use or sell even more of what you provide. You recognised them and their individual needs.

And there's more. When little guys create alliances with other little guys, as a group you are able to provide end-to-end, custom-designed solutions so that your customers can go to any one of you and get more attention, notice and higher-quality service than if they went to the so-called one-stop shop of your big boy competitors.

On the ornamentals side, from growers to retailers to landscapers to turf specialists to arboriculturists, you're all looking for more ways to get your products and services out into the marketplace. Alliances are the way.

On the edibles side, it is creating those same alliances across products that give you the leverage you need as you negotiate your contracts with the big boy distributors and supermarkets. Solve their problems for them and they'll be more willing to pay your prices — especially if, by establishing those alliances, it makes it more expensive for them to buy outside of your group.

Being small is all about finding new and different ways to create opportunities that slip just under the radar of the big boys. That way, you win at your and their games at the same time.

Acting as though you are small

Big or small, in this competitive marketplace you have to be nimble. You have to operate as though you're a small business that has local knowledge, great relationships and a personalised view of customer care. Whether your customers are or can be known by name or not, you need to create an environment that makes them feel as though you're on a first name basis and that you're there to help. You need to create the intimacy of a small business environment.

Within your organisation, you also need to operate as though you were a small business, no matter what your size. Your employees are your organisation's face to the public. They represent who you are and what you do. They also give your customers and suppliers unintended messages about how good it is to do business with you — or not.

When you're small, it's easy to access information from your employees — to find out how things can be improved, what's keeping them from succeeding at their jobs, what the customers are complaining about and the concerns that they're hearing about.

All of that is in the context of how things can be improved. When you're small, it's easy to talk with one another about ideas and suggestions as well as new innovations and getting obstacles out of the way — fixing things, making them better and making your customers' experience better.

That intimacy translates to your customers and suppliers. When you are or operate like a little guy, there is a sense of community that builds between your people and everyone with whom they interact. So for you little guys, contrary to how you may feel, you're in a winning position. You need to see your advantages for what they are and then consciously and consistently build on them.

You may have grand visions of more land, more product, more everything — and that's fine. But whether you choose to stay small or grow into that midand then large-sized entity, don't ever forget your roots and what got you there.

The more you keep your focus on how to be the best — staying nimble and executing on what needs to be done fast, cheap and smart — the greater your success and the more your competitors will envy and seek to emulate you.