What % or # of businesses are small to medium sized?

[tankman1989]

I'm doing some research on the market for IT and am trying to figure out what % of businesses in the US are medium sized or lower. I don't know how to define "medium" exactly either, so that is another issue. Also I don't know how to measure the size of a business. Should a business be measured by # of employees or by revenue or by profit?

Ideally I would like to know the number of businesses who, in size, are big enough to have a full time IT employee and the # of businesses below that size. So basically I'd like to know the total number of businesses from tiny part time businesses up to the businesses who are big enough to employ a full time IT employee. I think these are the types of businesses most of us would be targeting as a one man shop or even a shop with a few employees. Anyone agree with this?

So, I'm trying to figure out where or how to research this if anyone can help me figure this out.

Also, I'd love to know what the revenue is for all of these business are. I have heard the saying "small & medium sized businesses are the backbone of the US" so many times but I have a hard time believing this. While they may make up 90-95% of the total companies, this is much like the wealth distribution in the US. The top 5% control like 99% of the wealth. I'm wondering if business is like this as well?

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

You will not find consistent numbers when it comes to defining SMBs, SMEs, whatever. Depends on what source you're looking at to look up those numbers.

SMB can often mean up to 300 employees...often higher.

I look at it this way:
SOHO typically means Small Office/Home Office and is <10
SMB is >10 but <300

Typically once a business gets >100 employees or even greater than 75 or 80...they're big enough to have their own internal IT staff. And we're not needed. However, my colleague is "big guns" for VMWare and fancy active directory and exchange and fiber SAN setups....so he is still consulted by the larger size of SMBs...that even have their own internal IT staff. He gets calls for the "big complicated jobs" that are above their heads.

I wouldn't look at a companies income as a way of measuring their size. Some specialist consultant could be a 1 man show and bring in 5 million a year. Where a biz of 20 might only bring in 3 million a year. Yet...I could get good business from the business of 20.

So the sweet spot for those of us that provide IT services for SMB? Between 11 to 100 employees. Realistically between 11-80 I guess....but a little larger than that and you can still get good work on big projects.

 

[lsi]

I've also found that a more accurate count as far as we're concerned is the number of computers. I have customers that are landscape contractors or grocery stores and they have a hundred employees - but 3 computers. Unfortunately there is very little data out there on how many computers a company has (infousa has a PC select but the data is very incomplete). It doesn't take long to figure out which industries have a high computer to employee ratio though and those are the companies that are a prime target.