SMEs tell us how they survived the recession
CFIB will hear many accounts from its members as to what they had to do to survive the recession. Now, for the first time ever, we have a report titled Survival of the Smallest that has responses from over 6000 SMEs, giving us a very clear picture of the tools used by SMEs during the past economic downturn and what governments can do to best to support SMEs during future economic downturns. Our members gave us fantastic feedback, including almost 300 pages of comments to questions in four different categories:
- Owner behavior
- Staffing and employment
- Sales and Marketing (i.e. new products/services as well as marketing)
- New and existing markets
There is no doubt that this was a painful time for many small businesses. We in fact found that SME owners tried to bear as much pain, if not more, during the recession than their employees. Also, though many SME owners were very careful and cut back on expenses, still others saw opportunities in their respective markets. So many fell into the latter category that we created a subgroup based on those more "positive" answers and called this group Growth-Oriented Enterprises, or GOEs.
We looked at all the GOE responses and found that many of the things that they ask for - lower small business taxes, premium freezes, etc. - were the same things the rest of our members were requesting. It also shows that tax and premium increases from all three levels of government at the same time have been harmful for our members.
