SME or Enterprise? How to Choose the Right Customer Size for Your B2B Offer

Why "bigger is better" is often wrong

When people build a prospect list, they tend to sort by size and start at the top. Large companies feel safer: they have money, they buy a lot, and a well-known logo is good for references. But for many offers they are the wrong place to start. They buy through procurement processes with security reviews, legal negotiations and several decision-makers; they often have existing suppliers and framework agreements; and a small supplier can wait a year for a decision.

Small companies are the opposite. Decisions are made by one or two people, often within days, but they have less money, little time for implementation and low tolerance for complexity. Neither size is better in general. The right size depends on what you sell.

Four questions that decide the size

1. How much does it cost compared with the customer's size?

A subscription of a few hundred kroner a month is an easy decision for almost any company, but the revenue per customer is small, so you need many customers and a cheap way to win them. A project of several million kroner only makes sense for companies whose revenue and needs justify it. As a rough check, compare your annual price with the customer's revenue in its filed accounts: if your offer would be a large share of what a company earns, it is probably too small a customer.

2. How much effort does it take to start using it?

Products that customers can buy and set up themselves fit small companies, which rarely have IT staff or project managers. Offers that need integrations, data migration, training and change management fit companies with people who can run a project, usually medium-sized and larger.

3. How is it bought?

• One person decides: typical in micro and small companies, and for low-risk purchases in larger ones.
• A department decides, with a budget owner: typical in medium-sized companies.
• A formal process with procurement, IT security and legal: typical in large companies and public bodies. Public bodies in Norway buy through public tenders when contracts exceed the thresholds.

The more people and steps involved, the longer the sales cycle and the more your sales effort costs per customer.

4. Who has the problem you solve?

Some problems only exist at scale (coordinating thousands of employees, complex supply chains, regulatory reporting), while others are universal (bookkeeping, a website, workwear). Some are most painful for small companies that cannot afford specialists.

Typical patterns, not rules

These patterns are a starting point to test, not universal truths:

• Low-priced, self-service software: micro and small companies, often in many industries at once.
• Specialised professional services (accounting, IT support, cleaning): small and medium-sized companies, usually locally or regionally.
• Complex enterprise systems and large projects: medium-sized and large companies and public bodies, often through tenders or partners.
• Industrial equipment: companies with production of a certain scale, which often shows in their accounts better than in their employee count.
• Offers that fit several sizes: different packages and sales approaches per size, for example self-service for small customers and a sales team for large ones.

Company size definitions

The European Union defines company size by employees together with turnover or balance sheet. By employees, micro companies have fewer than 10, small fewer than 50, and medium-sized fewer than 250. Large companies have 250 or more. Norway, as an EEA country, often uses the same definitions in practice.

Filtering by size in Norway: a warning

In Norway's open company register, most small companies show no employee count. In our own analysis of the register on 27 October 2026, only 14.4 percent of active limited companies had an employee count, and no count below five appeared (see Norwegian limited companies by industry and size). A filter such as "at least 10 employees" therefore drops every company without a count, including many active businesses.

Better practice:

• Use revenue from the filed annual accounts as the main size measure where you can. Most limited companies file accounts.
• Use employee counts as a second signal, and treat a missing count as unknown, not as zero.
• Look at the industry: in restaurants and retail most companies show a count; in consultancy and property most do not.

From size to a prospect list

1. Decide your size band from the four questions above, and write down why.
2. Translate it into filters: a revenue range, an employee range where counts exist, and legal forms (for example limited companies only, or including public bodies).
3. Build the list, and check a sample by hand: do the companies at the edges of the band look like customers?
4. After the first conversations, adjust. Your best customers may be a size you did not expect.

Our guide to building a qualified B2B prospect list covers the rest of the process, from ideal customer profile to scoring.

How Propler helps

Propler's free company search filters Norwegian companies by employees, legal form, industry and region, and every company page shows the latest filed accounts. In the AI search, you describe your offer and the AI suggests and assesses relevant companies. Choosing the suitable company size from what you sell, for example from your price and how complex the offer is, is something we are developing; today the AI search applies a size only when you state one.