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What Really Motivates a Small Business to Hire? (Infographic) Software company Sage surveyed business owners with fewer than 100 employees to find out what motivates them to make that next hire.

By Catherine Clifford

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

In Washington, it's everybody's favorite game to tell you the secret to getting Main Street employers to grow their ranks. But if you ask small-business owners, there's one factor that drives hiring more than any other: demand for their companies' products and services.

Access to capital, availability of talent, the Affordable Care Act and uncertainty in Washington all affect hiring, but for more than four out of five small-business owners, hiring plans are most closely tied to demand, according to the infographic below, which was compiled by software company Sage based on survey results from almost 1,000 small businesses. The survey defined small business owners as those with fewer than 100 employees.

Check it out.

Click to Enlarge+

What Really Motivates a Small Business to Hire? (Infographic)

Related: Government Shutdown Would Close Pipelines of Credit to Main Street Businesses

Catherine Clifford

Senior Entrepreneurship Writer at CNBC

Catherine Clifford is senior entrepreneurship writer at CNBC. She was formerly a senior writer at Entrepreneur.com, the small business reporter at CNNMoney and an assistant in the New York bureau for CNN. Clifford attended Columbia University where she earned a bachelor's degree. She lives in Brooklyn, N.Y. You can follow her on Twitter at @CatClifford.

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