Actual aspects of small and middle business management in Ukraine

The article singles out features of SMEs, differences in the behavior of small and medium-sized businesses compared with large enterprises, and, consequently, the main features of the modern management of small and medium businesses. The characteristic features of modern management are: gradual abandonment of managerial rationality of classical schools of management, situational approach to management, the use of strategic management of business entities that combines strategic approach to setting goals and program - targeted to their realization, recognition of dominant importance for the development of innovative management firms, managing organizational culture of the company. The main factors are management flexibility, adaptation to the constant changes in the external environment. There is analyzed the classical management "grid" specified by R. Blake and J. Mouton to select the optimal management style that is appropriate for the specific situation in modern business.

"Blind" areas in the management of small and medium business are investigated. Among the typical problem areas there are singled out: the lack of management diagnostics, business key performance indicators, lack of vision of the final result of the firm, poor quality work with the client base, lack of pre-test phase of goods and services, consumers workload, manager solution routine, operational tasks, imperfect mechanism of doing business.

One tool that helps keep administrative account is funnel sale. It structures the data for all customers from the moment of the first call to the close of the deal. Funnel means reducing the number of potential customers in the transition to the next stage of interaction.

The sequence analysis of the expectations from the goods or services of the company through strategic design canvas with the influence of consumers and competitors is made. For this purpose,  the following steps are singled out: 1) defining the criteria that are important to potential customers when choosing goods (services) of the company; 2) evaluating goods (services) of the main competitors by certain criteria, designing their strategic canvas; 3) evaluating goods (services) offered by a particular company, and designing their own strategic canvas on the same schedule. If curves are basically the same, meaning that a particular firm offers are differentiated enough, this leads to price competition and lower profits of the company.