Small Business

Three years ago, the federal government published a report called “The State of Entrepreneurship in Canada,” and while it showed a surge of people launching small businesses at the time, it also indirectly helped explain why customer relationship management (CRM) has become such a vital contributor to their success and survival in 2015.

There’s no question that Canada is producing a slew of startup success stories. Entrepreneurs here have created innovative products and services to revolutionize analytics, wearable computing and the way businesses use video, among many other examples. Yet there’s also no question that Canadian startups and entrepreneurs need to work to cultivate an environment for long-term growth.

David Priemer is the VP of Sales at Salesforce. He is also a three-time startup guy.

They may now trade on the stock markets as public companies, but it took years for Facebook, Twitter and other former startups to figure out a business model that would generate revenue.

Salesforce knows how important small businesses are as a powerful engine for growth and in driving Canada’s innovation and employment, which is why we’re helping them with our Small Business Contest. The Small Business, Big Impact Contest aims to shine a spotlight on the amazing successes of entrepreneurs, celebrate their big contributions and to inspire other businesses.

As Canadians, we can sometimes be our own worst critics. Yes, we’re smaller in population than other countries and we are right next door to the world’s largest superpower, but recent data suggests those launching a startup here may have made a great choice.

Even on those days when Canadian small and medium-sized business owners feel they aren’t quite getting as much done as they’d like, they should take heart in the fact that, according to the Business Development Bank of Canada, they’re still having a major impact on our national economy.

Entrepreneurs and other business people have come to use the word “traction” a little differently than its literal definition of how a tire grips the road. For startups, traction is when you’ve not only developed a great business idea or product but are gaining momentum in terms of sales, hires and other growth markers. With that in mind, the recent Traction conference, which made its debut in Vancouver last week was aptly named.

True innovators — the kind of people who launch the most successful startups —are not always very satisfied people. In fact, they tend to be restless with things that take too long, or that are more complicated or cumbersome than they should be.

In Silicon Valley it has become a widely-accepted role, and even among Canadian startups there are examples of people who own the title proudly, but among small and medium-sized businesses, the concept of a “growth hacker” may still need some explaining. First coined by a venture capitalist five