Enterprise vs. SMB - What's the Real Difference?

And honestly, there is no standard way or standard definition for how the segments are actually categorized in most of the companies. So you gotta bring it down to basics. And to me, the basics in terms of picking the segment actually comes to your buyer. Who is your buyer? Who is your customer? Who is your buyer? And what is their persona? And how do they make decisions? It really boils down to that. And there are, across all of the companies I've been part of, very clear differentiation between what SMB buyers do versus what enterprise buyers do. So if you take the priorities for small, medium businesses, it's always immediate, it's always time to value, it's always something that needs to happen now, in the next month, in the next quarter. Whereas if you take the priorities for enterprises and larger organizations, they tend to be over, a certain period of time really associated with the strategic goals they have. Most enterprises will have a 2-year, 3-year, 5-year strategic plan. And a lot of the decisions they make in terms of the technology will map to that longer time horizon and the strategic goals. In terms of the buyer's journey, you know, for small medium businesses, it's always unstructured. It's always a quick buying cycle, typically 2 to 90 days. In the case of HubSpot, you know, it is, it's very much in the 2 to 90-day cycle that we see. Versus enterprise where it is a defined process. You will have a process that every enterprise follows and it's clear buying stages that you'll have to like go through and understand what that process actually looks like. From the decision maker perspective as well, clear definitions and clear differentiation between both of these. Typically in small medium businesses, you're dealing with the CEO, the sole proprietor, someone who's actually leading the organization. That person makes the decision 95% of the time. You may have one other person within the process, but in the case of enterprise, you have multiple stakeholders and requires a lot of consensus building and it is very, very different. And finally, in terms of the message content, how can you actually attract these kinds of customers? You know, SMBs tend to go to, you know, forums to be able to like look at information, search information, and then make the decision versus enterprise, they actually have a longer process of consuming the message and really, making sure that they have the decisions well made. So no matter how you are thinking of defining the segment, go down to the basics. And the basics starts with understanding your consumer and customer and understanding each one of these 4 levers so that you can then call it whatever you want. So I definitely say start with kind of the buyers and how they think about going through the journey.