IT Consulting and an Introduction to the Sweet Spot

If you are going to work in the sweet spot of IT consulting, you need to have more skills than if you decide to work with micro businesses. Sweet spot IT consulting clients will have between 10 and 50 computers and are the ideal spot to focus your efforts and attention.

Sweet spot businesses typically will use Microsoft Windows-based systems and have between 10 and 100 employees. In U.S. Dollars, the annual revenue for these businesses will be from $1 million to $10 million. All sweet spot businesses have at least one dedicated server (instead of P2P networks).

The Sweet Spot and Your Hardware Skills

To work with sweet spot clients, you will need IT consulting skills required for the micro small business world, but also 8-10 other skills. You need to know server hardware such as multi-processor servers. You have to know about RAID, Zero One Five and how multiport communications applications adapters are used to set up remote access servers and serial port sharing. You should also know attached storage systems, network attached storage and some complex back-up solutions.

Additional Sweet Spot Skills

You also need to know about battery back-up solutions, routers, CSU/DSUs that connect you to telecommunications lines and some more sophisticated Y-5 hardware.

IT Consulting Networking Skills

With networking software, you have to know basic desktop software; but you also have to know how to do networking skills required for micro small business. For the sweet spot of IT consulting, you also have to know some popular server operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows Server, Microsoft Small Business Server, Novell NetWare, Novell Small Business Suite and Linux.

The Bottom Line about the Sweet Spot

Keep your skills in check when you are starting to venture into the world of sweet spot IT consulting and make sure you have what it takes to fulfill these small business needs.

Added By: Computer Consulting Kit

Do You Have an IT Consultant Personality?

You certainly need technical skills to be an IT consultant. But you will also have to have a variety of specific personality traits – such as the ability to really work with people regularly – in order to be good at your job.

Be Assertive

In order to succeed as an IT consultant, you need to be assertive without being too pushy. You have to make sure people don’t take advantage of you and you need to be able to really stand up for yourself without being overbearing. Being too assertive, as an IT consultant, can repel prospects and clients.

Do You Focus on Business?

You have to have clear business goals and put them before the idea of everyone thinking of you as a “nice” guy/gal. You need to do what is right for your business as an IT consultant. This means you have to be able to put your business’ financial needs above your desire to work with really cutting-edge technologies and on high-profile projects. You may have to think about what your clients need and want and deliver it before you focus on using new technologies.

Why? As an IT consultant, your clients pay your bills, and paying your bills is a good reason to focus on business.

Added By: Computer Consulting 101 Professional Kit

IT Sales: Stress Benefits to Build Relationships

IT sales take time and effort. You need to show your clients clear benefits attached to working with you and start developing a relationship in order to get more IT sales.

What’s Your Benefit?

If you come across an IT problem you can’t solve during an IT sales call, you should focus on problems you can solve to get their attention and get them thinking about what benefits you can offer.

The IT Sales Pitch

You should be able to talk about projects you’ve done with other customers and the benefits these customers have enjoyed as a result of your solutions if you want to get your IT sales pitch to ring true.

The Relationship Will Take Time

It may take a few weeks or even months to get a solid commitment from a prospect. Patience and persistence, along with e-mails, faxes, postcards and phone calls can lead to IT sales. Just don’t be obnoxious. Call once or twice a month to gauge progress.

Answer Their Questions and Ask Your Own

See if your prospects have any issues or questions you didn’t address in order to keep the conversation going and lines of communication open. If they say, “Not today,” it doesn’t mean, “No.” Ask basic questions to gauge their progress:

1. How important is your project?

2. When do you want to start?

3. Is it urgent?

4. Where are you in the process of deciding?

5. How much research have you done?

6. Is this a good time of year for this project?

7. Do you have the budget for this project?

The Bottom Line about IT Sales

You can ask questions of prospects in many different ways to determine how close you are to IT sales. Just don’t let “later” become “no.”

Blogged By: Joshua Feinberg

How Does Partnering Help Your Computer Consulting Business?

Partnering is a way to help small business computer consulting firms do their best with virtual IT services. Three benefits give partnering a real edge.

Advantage #1: Broadening Your Skills

When you use partnering, you can increase the skills you can offer to prospects and existing clients and offer a much more complete solution than without it. When selling to non-technical small business owners, you need partnering in order to simplify virtual IT. Small businesses don’t want to work with six different firms to get what they need. They want one contact point and one person to be accountable.

When you use partnering, you know you can handle clients’ issues yourself or rely on external resources from non-competing tech providers.

Advantage #2: Increase Your Sales Force

You increase your sales force when you use partnering very quickly and efficiently. If another tech provider recommends you for a job he/she is already on, you are as good as sold. Getting this type of referral is almost better than being referred by an accountant, because you are being referred by someone that is already a trusted tech provider.

When you use partnering, you eliminate the problems about price because you are not dealing with a buyer that is price sensitive. You are coming in highly recommended.

Advantage #3: Partnering Can Give You One-Fifth of Your Income

With partnering, 21 percent of your annual revenue can be taken care of. You have to get serious about partnering if you want to get a real opportunity that can help advance your business.

Blogged By: Joshua Feinberg

Startup Time Management for the IT Consultant

When you are just starting as an independent IT consultant, you need to be able to focus on the most important tasks to get your business up and running. The most important thing to realize is that you will need to stop wasting time on non-lucrative and time consuming pursuits.

What Are Your Priorities?

If you really want to be an IT consultant, you need to set your priorities and ofcus on time management. During the first six months, even during the first YEAR of your business, you will have to put about 90% of research, development and tech training time on hold in favor of finding clients.

Finding Clients is CRUCIAL

An IT consultant starting out needs to find paying clients. You are not going to find clients by trying to get a lot of certifications, getting your hands on not-for-resale copies of software and playing around with technology.

Once you shift priorities, you will know as you start to meet prospects which training you are going to need to move forward.

Don’t Worry About Technology Skills

Why shouldn’t an IT consultant starting a business worry about technology skills? The answer is because you are probably already six-to-18 months ahead of the technology small business clients will need. Most small businesses don’t rush out to get the newest technologies the second they come out. More likely, they are well behind the curve. You need to put business development needs before being the first to know about the latest and greatest technology if you want to succeed as an IT consultant.

The Main Idea about Being an IT Consultant

In order to be successful as an IT consultant, you have to set priorities and manage time well. Take the time you might have spent keeping up with technology and put it into demand generation, lead qualification, sales calls, follow-ups and other business pursuits.

Blogged By: Joshua Feinberg

Can You Hire Help for Your Small Business Computer Consulting Firm?

If you are a relatively new small business computer consulting company, one of your biggest questions might be, “What type of technical staff should I put on payroll?” Before you even consider putting anyone on staff, you need to be realistic.

The type of people you can put on payroll will depend upon your market. What kind of technical person will you be able to find for your small business computer consulting firm? Will you be able to find someone with good technical skills if your technical salary budget is just $37,500 annually?

You Have to Get Help that is QUALIFIED

Small business computer consulting clients with 10-50 PCs will start to have much more advanced needs. You will not be able to send in a technician with very basic skills. You absolutely need to hire high-level support.

What Can You Offer?

You need to figure out what type of business-to-business salesperson you can find for your small business computer consulting firm if your salary offering can only be about $27,500 per year. The extra $10,000 will have to go towards marketing techniques such as direct mail, organization and network meetings, sponsoring events and seminars.

The Main Idea About Small Business Computer Consulting

If you can only afford very low salaries, you are probably not ready to hire additional staff to your small business computer consulting firm. Wait until the business is built up more to start adding to your firm.

Added By: Computer Consulting Kit

Insist on Excellent Customer Service to Grow Your Business

If you want to achieve excellent customer service goals, you need to be able to predict and prevent major problems before they happen. This means you need to figure out how to sell more monitoring and managed services. Offering solutions that can protect them from business-damaging viruses and other catastrophes is a way to really shine in the customer service department with computer consulting clients.

The Best Idea for Services

What do you need to do to get on the right track with customer service? You should be looking at service tickets and invoices on a regular basis so you can suggest the right virus protection and the right end user or internal guru training. Excellent customer service means knowing computer consulting clients’ needs even before they do.

Being Proactive is the Key to Great Customer Service

As your client relationships evolve, you and your staff will start to be able to anticipate the needs of your clients and spot potential disasters far in advance. Make sure you reward technical staff for finding and communicating opportunities for follow up. You should also appropriately pay your account managers and technical staff based on their ability to deliver customer service. Customer satisfaction ratings will become report cards.

Added By: Computer Consulting Kit

Should Your Computer Consulting Clients Be Micro Small Businesses?

You have to be very careful when providing computer consulting services to micro small businesses. You will most likely end up with some non-billable hours. However, if you have a larger base of computer consulting clients you can handle losses much more easily.

Bigger Clients Make Losses Easier to Swallow

If you have a computer consulting customer billing $2,000 annually, and you have to not get paid for a $500 job, you will have given up 25 percent of your total billing for that customer. However, if you are earning $10,000 from a client and have to do the same job, it’s not devastating. Essentially, the bigger the client, the better off you are when you come across non-billable time.

Are You Getting Sidetracked by Micro Business Computer Consulting Clients?

If computer consulting for micro businesses is taking away from finding better business and sweet spot clients, you have to change your plan. You have to give yourself time to go after high quality sweet spot clients that have at least 10 systems, a real server and the ability to pay for $5,000 - $10,000 annually in steady services.

Keep Your Eye on Larger Computer Consulting Clients

You need to stop depending upon micro small businesses to build your revenue, because it’s never going to be possible. You have to start signing up larger clients to realize the full potential of your computer consulting business.

Blogged By: Computer Consulting Kit

IT Consulting: Why the Sweet Spot?

When you work with the sweet spot in IT consulting, you will be handling all a company’s IT needs. You have to know a little about many different topics. You will need to be able to get answers for clients when you don’t know everything ad work to make multi-vendor platform projects work easily.

The Sweet Spot Helps Get You Started

The sweet spot in IT consulting is a great idea for those starting out in the field. If you don’t have great technical skills, you may want to start an IT consulting business at first based on micro small businesses.

Once you get more comfortable with these peer-to-peer accounts, you will start to evolve with their growth and start giving them small business servers, small business suites and others. Eventually your new clients will get bigger and you will ease your way into the sweet spot.

Create a Balance with the Sweet Spot

Your portfolio in IT consulting should be a mixture of big small businesses and sweet spot businesses.

Technical Skills

When starting to ease into sweet spot IT consulting clients, look through your skill list and make notes about strengths and weaknesses. Ask yourself which skills are important and work on them a little bit at a time. Your technical skills in IT consulting can’t be your main focus at the beginning if you really want to grow and get paying clients. Your technical skills can be honed later.

Blogged By: Computer Consulting 101 Professional Kit