Small and Medium Sized Businesses:
America's Backbone

Understand America’s Backbone—Then Earn Their Trust

Small businesses generate nearly half of U.S. GDP. Winning them isn’t about a clever offer—it’s about earning their Trust by understanding their aspirations, operating guidelines, pressures, time horizons, and dreams. Preference Analytics turns that understanding into action-ready Trust guidance for marketing, product, CX, and sales teams.

Why It Matters

When owners trust a partner, renewal and referral rates soar while acquisition costs drop. Our research shows that vendors are 3x more likely to be retained after one year and 2x more likely to be recommended to peers, and grow market share.

How We Uncover the Owner's Point of View

Primary qualitative research

In-depth interviews that surface hidden pain points and jobs-to-be-done
Moderated focus group sessions for instant peer reaction
In-person observation inside shops, studios, and cafes to capture context that no survey can see

Primary quantitative research

Large-scale surveys for unshakable benchmarks
MaxDiff to rank the product features and messages owners value most
Choice-based conjoint to pinpoint the offer and price that maximizes adoption and margin

The SMB Truths™ Framework—your Trust Engine

We’ve distilled years of research into a proprietary set of “Truth” dimensions that predict whether owners will grant (or withhold) trust.

What you receive:

Pain-Point Map – which operational or emotional frictions light up each Trust dimension for your category.
Action Grid – recommended product tweaks, service cues, pricing nudges, and message angles tied to each Trust dimension.
Trust KPI Dashboard – baseline scores + re-measurement plan so you can prove ROI over time.

SMB Segmentation —A Practical Approach That's At Least 50 %+ Done

We don’t start from scratch. Based on decades of research for Fortune 500 companies, we already know how to segment the SMB market in a way that can align your product, messaging, pricing, and experience to what really matters.

We segment based on proven dimensions:

Size of revenue
Number of employees
Who the SMB primarily sells to
Business tenure (e.g., relative newcomer vs. seasoned operator)

For each segment, we already understand:

How purchase decisions are made
Macro needs and triggers that drive action
The number of SMBs that fall into each segment gives you a clear sense of market opportunity

Customized to Fit Your Industry

We work with your team to refine the segmentation to your category or vertical. This includes:

Bringing our existing insights and experience
Reviewing your internal knowledge and data
Conducting targeted primary research when there are gaps to fill

Rich, Shareable Segment Personas

Once segments are finalized, we bring each one to life:

Personas write-ups that capture motivations, behaviors, and buying logic
Audio stories and video vignettes to make segments easy to understand and remember
White papers and slide decks that teams can use immediately

Insights That Travel Across Teams

We also create a custom chatbot that makes segment knowledge accessible to everyone—sales, marketing, product, customer success.
Podcasts and videos make it easy to share learnings across your organization without having to re-explain.

Small and Medium Sized Businesses: America's Backbone