Global financial service platform Kabbage announced on Tuesday its latest data, which polled more than 600 U.S. small business owners, revealed the majority of small businesses believe their revenue growth underperforms their peers. Specifically, 60% of respondents ranked their revenue growth below the 50th percentile of similarly sized small businesses. It was then observed:
“When comparing the respondents’ true cash-flow and revenue data with the analysis drawn from 200,000 companies in the Kabbage Small Business Revenue Index, the data reveals the vast majority of respondents have healthy revenue performance. In fact, 74% of respondents in the survey met or exceeded the overall Index revenue growth of small businesses over the three month period prior to conducting the survey.”
The research also revealed that small businesses generally have “difficulty accurately” comparing their businesses to others and less than 11% of small businesses were able to correctly estimate the decile ranking of their revenue performance among other respondents.
“Together, the findings suggest small business owners may carry unwarranted self-doubt about the financial health of their businesses, and a lack of proper insights into their market or industry may influence why small businesses skew toward underconfidence.”
Speaking about the data, Kabbage Chief Revenue Officer, Laura Goldberg, went on to add:
”There is no question that technology advancements will empower small businesses with smarter systems to better analyze and understand their business performance. What’s most exciting is the potential for technology to fuel greater confidence in entrepreneurs and their businesses and to provide the encouragement to keep growing.”