For many small businesses, sales are important if not the most critical part in the success of their business. Having sales people eager to learn, and try new venues to increase their sales success, is pivotal to the small business owner. Sales tools, and online selling venues that the sales employee wants to try should be encouraged by the small business owner.
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This Financial Giant Will Challenge Square and OnDeck With Small Business Loans
The credit card giant will debut an online lending service this year.
American Express is expanding into the lending business for small businesses, according to a new report from Bloomberg.
The financial giant will debut a new lending arm, called Working Capital Terms, which will make online loans to small businesses who use American Express credit cards. Loans will range from $1,000 to $750,000, and interest will be tacked on at a rate of 0.5% for a 30-day loan to 1.5% for a 90-day loan, Bloomberg reported.
Online lending is a space that existing financial technology companies where have been attempting to grow, but investors have been skeptical. Square, the San Francisco payments company led by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, has seen growth in Square Capital, its lending arm which provides cash advances to merchants using Square’s point of sale service. Squarerecently announced that it would be expanding into traditional online loans, with fees between 10% to 16% of the amount borrowed.
Strategies: Globalization is a small-business necessity
With the U.K.’s vote to leave the European Unionand a U.S. presidential candidate vowing to build a wall between the USA and America’s third-largest trading partner, globalization is a current buzzword on cable news talk shows. But for American small businesses, it is a double-edged sword.
For decades, some small businesses have been threatened, or shut down, by foreign competitors. At the same time, many American small businesses have been created and grown as a result of global trade.
There was a moment perfectly capturing the clash between globalization and isolation when President Obama took the stage at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES) on June 24 at Stanford University.
In the hall were 700 smart, creative, capable entrepreneurs, from all corners of the globe. These were the types of people — if not the individuals themselves — building the next Apple, Amazon or Genentech. They were prime examples of the possibilities and inevitability of globalization.
Are You Building a Startup or a Small Business?
There are approximately 29 million small businesses in the United States, about 23 million of which are sole proprietorships. This doesn’t include non-profits, nor businesses with over 500 employees. Of the total 29 million, only 418,000 or so are labeled as startups. Clearly there’s a difference between startups and small businesses, but what is it?
Startups are generally described as new, tech-based businesses focused on exponential growth. They’re generally temporary, use mostly outside investment for funding, and are led by entrepreneurs who want to create something far bigger than themselves. In other words, a startup is an explosive innovation whose goal is to transcend its people.
When we think of small businesses, we tend to think of mom-and-pop shops, restaurants, local law and accounting practices, and similar businesses. We think of the Jones’s and their three generations of financial planners in the same little building they’ve been in since ’57. We think of the mechanic and his 10 guys working on cars non-stop. We think of the local coffee shop owner who just sold his business to start some other venture. Maybe we even think of the marketing expert who climbed the corporate ladder and now does consulting. These images hold true in the data as well.
