Small Business Computer Consulting

Are you ready to be more than just an IT freelancer and get serious about starting your own computer consulting business?  Being successful at getting enough high-paying, steady clients to get started means getting to know a lot of people and getting them to trust you.  Networking is one of the very best ways to achieve your goal of being a successful IT consultant and be more than just another IT freelancer trying to make ends meet.

While you can’t join every organization under the sun, you can join a few that will work best with your schedule and give you access to the best leads and prospects for your specific business.  Take some time to go to a meeting or two and get to know organizations in your area.

Organizations that Can Help You Be More than an IT Freelancer

1.    General Business Organizations:  These can be your chamber of commerce or Rotary Club or Kiwanis or even a group like Le Tip or BNI or some other lead club.  These clubs are targeted by industry or occupation and will give you access to a lot of other small business owners/managers.

2.    User Groups:  This type of group can be useful if you decide you want to specialize in a specific type of software or other platform.  You can find people with similar interests that are either consultants or IT professionals.

3.    Targeted Business Organizations or Trade Groups:  This is a group that will give you the most direct access to the clients you want for your business.  Choose a group that gives you access to small business owners within your specialty or niche and start to look for upcoming events like expos, etc. as well as a newsletter you can read.

No matter what, you need to get ACTIVE to engage in great networking that will get you beyond being just another IT freelancer and closer to your goal of being an IT consulting business owner, thriving in your field.  To learn more about this topic, visit the attached link!

Submitted By:  Joshua Feinberg

A huge part of your computer consulting business is marketing, and seminars can be an important strategy.  How can you get the most out of these seminars?

Focus on Registration

Your computer consulting seminars should for the most part be free, but in order to make them successful, you need to require registration and advertise limited seating.  When an event is free, not everyone will show up when they say they will.

You can have a check-in at the door, do a survey in exchange for a door prize and to give you a chance to ask some questions and make the seminar more suited to their specific computer consulting needs.  Make sure you actually teach something in your seminar.  When you have an educated prospect, you will have an easier time holding interest than if you have an uneducated one.  Your registration should also capture important contact information for potential computer consulting clients.  

After the Seminar

You should offer a handout with your contact information on it and add a limited-time special offer.  You can put seminar highlights into a short article that you can hand out or mail to computer consulting prospects and customers.  If you can get it published in different places in your local area – a business journal, Chamber of Commerce newsletter or other organization newsletter – this can help you create a place for yourself in the community and also give valuable information to those with an interest in educating their members or clients on computer consulting issues.

You can also take the article you write and turn it into a free report that you can offer with your computer consulting ads.  If you run a newspaper ad, you can elicit demand by offering the free report to respondents.  Capture contact information so you can follow up with marketing efforts.

The seminar and the highlights article and free report can also go with a fixed-price audit package with a special offer discount.  The more of a deadline you provide, the more people will be compelled to respond.

A Travelling Seminar

You can take your seminar on the road and go out to Chamber of Commerce Meetings and Rotary and Kiwanis meetings.  Often these organizations look for great speakers to fill in 15-20 minutes at events.  This gives you a captive audience and eliminates the need to generate demand.  You can also showcase your computer consulting expertise.

Blogged By:  Computer Consulting Kit

Elevator speeches are CRITICAL to your IT marketing campaign.  Basically, these little speeches are short descriptions of your business, and you need them to get the most out of networking opportunities and events.  

As an example, you might go to a Chamber of Commerce luncheon and hear everyone else giving their 30-second spiels about their businesses.  How many people should hear your IT marketing elevator speech?  If there are two or three other computer services companies at the same event, as many as possible.  

IT Marketing:  Stress BENEFITS

With your elevator speech and any other marketing “collateral,” you need to focus on benefits you bring to small businesses.  As an example:  “My Company helps small businesses in the local area use technology more effectively.”  

You Need to Be Sincere

You have to make sure your IT marketing elevator speech is very sincere.  You need to come across as someone that can help and has a real interest in hearing more about prospects.  Let the person you’re talking to do most of the talking and use active listening to present the most sincere IT marketing message.  

Added By:  Joshua Feinberg

What is an elevator speech in IT marketing?  Simply put, it’s a fast introduction to yourself and your company that doesn’t sound too generic and has personality.  You want to get a speech that is somewhere from 10-20 seconds long and use it whenever you meet a prospect at a networking event.  

Your elevator speech needs to discuss what your company does, why you are unique and why a prospect should consider you to help with computer problems.

Your Elevator Speech it Essential to Your IT Marketing Plan

The term “elevator” speech is based on the following concept – You get into an elevator on the 20th floor of a building with someone and by the time you get to the ground floor, both of you should have time to talk about your respective businesses.  Your elevator speech should become like a reflex.

Practice Makes Perfect

As part of your IT marketing plan, write out your elevator speech on an index card and keep it in your pocket.  Look at it when you are at a traffic light or before you go on sales calls.  The more you work at perfecting it, the better it will become.  Rehearse it with those close to you until it is an absolute reflex.  

The idea is to get an IT marketing short elevator speech that will be comfortable to deliver and appropriate for any expos, seminars or other networking events you attend.

Added By:  Joshua Feinberg

If you want to create a successful IT marketing campaign that speaks to prospects and motivates them, you need to be very effective at copywriting.

Long sales copy can work if your letter is compelling.  Several pages is fine if it includes a lot of engaging endorsements and testimonials. 

However, you want to stay away from jargon and tech-speak.  Make your IT marketing materials business focused, because you are most likely dealing with non-technically-minded small business owners or managers.  You also want to have a satisfaction guarantee.

Personalization with IT marketing materials is also critical.  If you have a common connection with your prospects, you need to enforce that connection early in the letter.

Keep Your IT Marketing Materials Out of the Circular File

A lot of business owners and people in general read mail near the garbage can.  So if your IT marketing piece isn’t immediately eye-catching, it will be gone in a second.  Make sure you give people a way to respond by phone, fax, through a website and also through e-mail.  If you give prospects multiple points of contact, they will be more likely to choose one that appeals to them and follow through.   

Successful IT Marketing is About Urgency

You need to attach a deadline to IT marketing campaigns to give them a sense of urgency.  Even if prospects are interested, without urgency, you get filed into their computer file and forgotten. 

Provide a call to action or specific offer that has a deadline attached.  Give prospects a reason to act immediately and respond to your IT marketing push.

Blogged By: Computer Consulting 101 Professional Kit

Case studies and websites can be very strong IT marketing tools and can help show prospects that you can provide the best solution to their IT problems.  

Case Studies

A case study is an IT marketing tool that is essentially a sophisticated testimonial.  It typically features a client picture, logo, full name, address and contact information.  

A case study is a few short paragraphs talking about the benefits your client received by working with your firm.  This is an endorsement with a signature and your firm’s contact information at the bottom to encourage prospects to call you.  Case studies related to your specialty are incredibly powerful IT marketing tools.  

Websites

With the right content, a website can have a huge impact on prospective clients as IT marketing collateral.  Don’t waste time advertising the cheapest power supply or motherboard; instead focus on your industry specific solutions and solving your niche’s biggest problems.  

Have Each Page on Your Website Address a Niche

If you have three niches you’re targeting with your IT marketing campaign, make a page for each of them.  Each page should talk about an industry-specific trend and how your solutions can help with common problems.

What are your niche’s hot buttons?  Make sure you know the software packages that will entice people and make them believe in your competence.  Also know benefits you are delivering and have them on your website.  

IT Marketing and Your Website:  Service

Most of your website traffic will come from demand you’ve generated somewhere else or competitors looking for information.  Make sure prospects are clear when they view your website that you focus on services and the problems services solve for specific types of small businesses.     

The Main Idea

Use case studies and websites as important IT marketing collateral that address your individual niches and their problems.  

Added By:  Computer Consulting 101 Professional Kit

As an IT specialist, you will have to provide a wide variety of services, including network design, helping clients with procurement, managing relations, dealing with phone companies, Web hosts and Internet access ISPs, deciding what to buy and examining it when it comes in as well as doing the configuration, testing, integration, customization, training and troubleshooting for your clients.   

You’re doing everything, which means in essence you’re an IT generalist.  But do you have to be a generalist for every type of client?  Focus on being an IT specialist to make marketing and sales a lot easier.

Be Selective with Clients

As a professional involved with virtual IT, you will have to be all things to your clients.  But why not be all things to some of the people by providing a complete solution for a specific type of business?  Be a one-stop shop for virtual IT as an IT specialist for a specific kind of clients and not just every type of small business.  

Choose a field as an IT specialist in which you have experience.  Be able to get testimonials and references to prove you’ve worked in the field with other clients so you can come across as a true IT specialist for that industry.  

Specialty Does Not Mean Extensive Experience

Finding a niche as an IT specialist may be as easy as having one or two long-term clients that work in real estate.  Over an extended period of time, you will learn about their businesses and their industry.  Other real estate professionals will be interested because you will have knowledge of their issues, which will set you apart from other computer consultants vying for their business.  

The Main Idea About Specialization

You don’t have to have huge amounts of experience to be an IT specialist within a specific industry, but the decision to specialize will vastly improve your marketing results.

Blogged By:  Computer Consulting Kit

Regardless of your niche, part of your IT marketing strategy needs to be a sales letter that stresses benefits.  While in the past you may have been advised to keep IT marketing-type letters short and sweet, they don’t necessarily have to be.  They simply have to address major points and grab attention.  

IT Marketing:  Use Long Sales Letters

Long sales letters are an appropriate part of an IT marketing campaign when you want to build urgency, stir things up and get people to act.  The following reasons for long sales letters also apply,

1.    When you want to take prospects through what it would be like if they did not keep up with security.

2.    When you want to show them how great things can be when their staff is productive.

3.    When you want to explain the benefits of growing a company 150% to 200% without adding more staff.

IT Marketing:  Sales Letters Should Address Painful Points

If you don’t have a great deal of experience writing sales letters, you can hire a copywriter or marketing ad advertising consultant to do the task.  Make sure you know your prospects’ hot buttons and communicate them to the person writing the letter.  You also have to know the main problem areas for your niche.  

IT Marketing:  Free Stuff

Generating demand as part of IT marketing may mean just a letter with your business card, but it will probably mean you need to offer something of value for free to gain prospects’ attention.  You can offer a free one-hour needs assessment or other type of bribe with a limited time attached so prospects are encouraged to act quickly.

If you want to be considered an IT expert for your niche, your IT marketing letters have to be welcomed.  Your knowledge should be communicated well in the headline and should be relevant to the professionals you are contacting.  Tell them what you’ve done for firms just like theirs and your IT marketing campaign will be a lot more likely to get through and spark their interest.

Added By:  Computer Consulting 101

In IT marketing, your job is to tell prospective customers about their problems and how you can fix them.  If you want to sell prospects a solution, you have to show them there is a problem.  Once you have established that, you need to tell them how your solution is pain-free, smooth, affordable and can give them a return on their investment.  

Holding seminars and providing valuable white papers can help you with IT marketing.  

Seminar Marketing and IT Marketing:  How Does it Work?

Seminar marketing is a great type of IT marketing because it is an easy and efficient way to build awareness.  Your salespeople don’t have to go out on many sales calls and spend valuable time with individual prospects.  Instead, you get a room full of prospects.  

Seminar marketing puts less pressure on your prospects.  If you provide good registration, follow-up processes and qualifications, along with a good invitation policy and calls, you can do a lot of business by holding seminars on important technology topics.  (Joshua Feinberg provides more  information about holding seminars in his Sweet Spot Clients Teleseminar Series).

White Papers and IT Marketing

A white paper or an e-zine can also help you with lead capture and follow-up procedures.  If you are running a direct mail campaign, for example, you can offer a white paper that you know targets will see as very valuable in order to get more responses.  You can create the white paper yourself or hire a copywriter to help you create it.  You can also just craft something out of literature from one of the reseller programs to which you belong.  White papers created from seminar information are also great for your IT marketing campaign.

IT Marketing:  Inform People

Advertise your white paper when you are doing display ads or direct mail pieces to give people a reason to call you or go online and ask you for something from your website.  Once you have a request, you have an excuse to get their information to help with your IT marketing strategy.

Blogged By:  Computer Consulting 101 Professional Kit

A good elevator speech is a necessity for any thorough IT marketing plan.  An elevator speech is a short description of your business that you can deliver on the fly when encountering prospective clients.

A chamber of commerce luncheon or any other IT marketing event provides an opportunity to deliver a 30-second elevator speech.  If you have more than one other IT service companies at a particular event, you need to make sure your elevator speech is as memorable as possible to improve your IT marketing campaign.

IT Marketing:  Stress Benefits with Elevator Speeches

Your elevator speech needs to concentrate on the benefits you can give to prospects.  It needs to quickly and specifically address the needs of the particular type of clients you serve.

For example, if your IT services business serves small businesses, you might say, “My company helps small businesses in the local area use technology more effectively.”  You can also replace “use technology more effectively” with “use technology to grow their businesses,” “use technology to drive down costs” or “use technology to increase productivity.”

IT Marketing:  Sincerity is Key with Your Elevator Speech

You need to make sure you present yourself sincerely when delivering an elevator speech at any function.  Part of the way to do this is to show how you can help people by expressing an interest in what they have to say.  When networking as part of IT marketing, let the person you’re talking to do the talking and actively listen to what they have to say.

Added By:  Computer Consulting 101 Professional