Pockets of growth

George Osborne's budget has announced boosts for small businesses but what does it actually mean for resellers?

A new initiative called Start-up Britain and various changes to tax rates are all part of the government's ambition to make the UK the best place in Europe to start, finance and grow a business. This means we should see an increase in the number of new businesses and existing companies taking steps to grow.

For resellers, this should create sales opportunities as new business owners look to invest in hardware and existing customers look to upgrade their equipment. However, with drastic cuts across other sectors, we know this is still going to be a tough start to the new financial year and resellers can't afford to be complacent.

Dealers should see the market changes as a real opportunity to hunt out the pockets of growth and take an intelligence-led approach to sales.

That means taking the time to find areas of solvent demand in their targeted sectors. These are private sector businesses which are not affected by public sector cuts and which continue to grow despite the downturn.

Success for resellers will be achieved by careful planning of not only who they're targeting, but where they can make their greatest impact - whether through the types of equipment in their portfolio, or by finding the businesses with the greatest propensity to buy.

Phil Jones (pictured) is sales and marketing director at Brother UK