IT Consultant: Does Your Personality Pass the Test?

There are specific personality traits you need to have as an IT consultant. You can’t just have technical knowledge, or you will not be able to work well with clients, employers and vendors.

Do You Have Candor?

As an IT consultant, you have to be able to be truthful with people, even if the truth hurts. You need to be very confident in your solutions or people will not trust you. When you go out on sales calls and service calls or engage in networking events, you need to be fearless or people will take advantage of you.

Can You Deal with the Unknown and with Uncertainty?

As an IT consultant, you will have to be able to handle uncertainty. When you go into business for yourself, you are taking a risk, and you need to be able to deal with that fact.

Can You Make a Decision?

You need to pick and choose your battles when you are an IT consultant. You will have a lot of things to deal with when working with clients – particularly with long-term clients – and many will really grate on your nerves. You need to be able to step back and let things slide sometimes.

You will also have to know which prospects are wasting your time and which clients have become bad clients. Are you an IT consultant with time-sucking, energy-sucking prospects and clients? You shouldn’t be. Similarly, you need to be able to decide which employees and contractors you should hire to help you.

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.

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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