The study examined the effect of survival strategies on performance of small medium enterprise in South-East Nigeria. Specifically, the study sought to: examine the effect of product quality strategy on competitive advantage of small medium enterprise in South-East Nigeria and identify the effect of Service delivery strategy on large market-share of small medium enterprise in South-East Nigeria. Research design was descriptive survey research method. Study Area was South East, Nigeria. The sample size 388 respondent was drawn from population that comprises of 645 registered SMEs in South-East Nigeria with 13,455 total numbers of staff. The study used structured questionnaire to obtain data. Research questions were answered using mean score and standard deviation. The hypotheses stated were tested using simple regression techniques. The empirical results show that product quality strategy has significant effect competitive advantage of small medium enterprise in South-East Nigeria (t-statistic; 6.445; P-value; 0.000 < Sig-value; 0.05) and service delivery strategy has significant effect performance of small medium enterprise in South-East Nigeria (t-statistic; 11.226; P-value; 0.000 < Sig-value; 0.05). The study recommended that SMEs operators in South East Nigeria should further device effective marketing strategies such as branding strategy and creative personal selling which will sustain and further enhance smooth and profitable business operations. This will in the long-run increase their employment creation of SMEs in South East Nigeria.