During the start-up phase of your IT consulting business, you should be getting leads and prospects through demand generation, qualifying these prospects and leads and going out and following up on sales meetings. You can’t afford to get strong-armed into joining a channel program or by the latest gadgets that do not serve an immediate purpose with clients.
Stay Away from Channel Programs
During the start-up phase of an IT consulting business, don’t get suckered into joining channel programs that won’t help your business. Focus on finding paying clients above all else.
How Will You Get Paid?
You need to figure out a structured way of ensuring payment with new IT consulting clients. Get payment as you do the work or get credit card authorization, particularly when products are a part of the transaction, such as hardware, software or peripherals.
You will need to get a merchant account if you want to take credit cards. Never give credit and especially not without doing a regular credit application and check.
Ask for Deposits
Always get a deposit check from IT consulting customers and clients, particularly in the case of a product purchase. A big IT consulting project with services, installation, design work, troubleshooting or upgrades needs to have a substantial deposit attached. Your deposits should be about 10 to 25% upfront, minimally, ideally as much as 35%.
The Main Idea About IT Consulting Start-Up
During the start-up phase of your IT consulting business, make sure to bill regularly and put a due-date on invoices to ensure you get paid for your services.
Blogged By: Joshua Feinberg
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