Small Business Survival Conversations
Small Business Survival Conversations is the weekly podcast designed to empower entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, and small business owners who are fighting every day to build, grow, and sustain their businesses in a noisy and unpredictable world.
Hosted by Anna Steinfest, business strategist, entrepreneur, and founder with decades of experience helping small businesses thrive, this show delivers practical wisdom, mindset fuel, and real-world strategies that small business owners can actually use.
What to Expect Every Week
Monday Morning Motivation
Kickstart your week with a powerful story—drawn from timeless fables, real business lessons, or classic wisdom—paired with three actionable steps you can apply immediately. Each episode is crafted to help you regain focus, protect your momentum, and make better decisions as a small business owner.
These episodes are short, energizing, and packed with practical insight. Think of it as your weekly dose of clarity, courage, and direction.
Occasional Expert Interviews
Throughout the season, Anna welcomes entrepreneurs, industry experts, and community leaders who share their experiences, failures, wins, and lessons learned. Whether you’re looking to scale, pivot, or simply survive another day of running a business, these conversations offer the guidance and encouragement you need.
Who This Podcast Is For
This show is built for:
• Small business owners
• Solopreneurs
• Startup founders
• Women-owned businesses
• Community-based and service-based entrepreneurs
• Anyone navigating growth with limited time, resources, and support
If you’re building a business from the ground up—and learning as you go—you’re in the right place.
Why Listeners Love This Podcast
• Practical, real-world strategies (no fluff)
• Story-driven insights that stick
• Weekly motivation designed specifically for small business owners
• Action steps in every episode
• Honest conversations about what it really takes to survive and grow
• Encouragement without sugarcoating
Running a small business is not easy — but you don’t have to do it alone.
Subscribe now and start your week with inspiration, direction, and the tools to keep moving forward.
Small Business Survival Conversations
Your journey. Your grit. Your growth.
Small Business Survival Conversations
S2E19: Solutions-Focused Customer Relationships
Solutions-Focused Customer Relationships
as a Means to Earning Business Opportunities
With the consumer of today being much more aware, more knowing, and much wiser to sales tactics, there is a better way to approach a prospective customer/client.
It is to think of it as collaboration around solving the other person’s problem or helping them to complete a job that is important to them.
It is creating a value proposition of support for the other person – sharing ideas and knowledge and working together in a common effort. It shifts the focus from selling a product or a service (and the features they represent) to creating value by collaborating together to solve the person’s or company’s problem or job.
It is especially appropriate to situations where the solution or tool has a degree of sophistication in its function and value or when the cost of acquisition is significant to the potential buyer.
To begin, put your mind and the conversation into a collaborative perspective – how can we solve the problem together or complete the job in a better way together? How can this be a focus on the buyer rather than the seller (questions that drive a discussion versus statements to drive a sale)?
1. Diagnose and frame the problem together;
2. Generate solutions together, including what you are able to provide;
3. Cultivate a peer-to-peer relationship in the process of working together;
4. Identify achievable objectives/outcomes that can be realized;
Keep in mind throughout the process that you are creating value together.
Notice that this is not a pressure sales approach or a search for their pain, but a very natural process of working together, creating value and shared success for both parties, and building a relationship for the long term.
Adapted from “Is Your Sales Team Struggling to Sell Solutions” by Scott Edinger, HBR Online Blog, January 04, 2022