Small Business Computer Consulting

To be able to pay the bills you incur in your business, you need steady income. Your clients need steady computer support and proactive maintenance. This gives you the perfect opportunity to create a win-win situation with you and your business. 

Read on to find out how service agreements lowered the stress level of one of our computer consultants:

"I created preventive maintenance packages that take proactive care of customer networks. Preventive maintenance packages allow us to increase our monthly recurring revenue and hit our sales targets with less running around and less stress about meeting the bills."

Jason Cohen, Defensive Data
Broward/Dade, Florida

The Bottom Line about Service Agreements

To learn more about service agreements, click here now to get access to free tips and an audio training excerpt on service agreements.

Service agreements are essential to maintain consistent revenue in your computer consulting business. They allow the customer peace of mind that you will be there quickly in the event of an emergency and you can alert them to any potential problems.

Read on to find out how one of our consultants benefited from service agreements:

“I implemented a monthly revenue stream through the use of service agreements. The Computer Consulting Kit provided the tools to quickly and easily implement a service agreement that could be adjusted according to each client’s needs. It also made us look more professional.”

Scott Beck, BeckTek Computer Consultants
Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada

The Bottom Line about Service Agreements

To learn more about service agreements, click here now to get access to free tips and an audio training excerpt on service agreements.

Service agreements are essential to maintain consistent revenue in your computer consulting business. They allow the customer peace of mind that you will be there quickly in the event of an emergency and you can alert them to any potential problems.

Read on to find out how one of our consultants benefited from service agreements:

"I implemented a monthly revenue stream through the use of service agreements. The Computer Consulting Kit provided the tools to quickly and easily implement a service agreement that could be adjusted according to each client’s needs. It also made us look more professional."

Scott Beck, BeckTek Computer Consultants
Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada

The Bottom Line about Service Agreements

To learn more about service agreements, click here now to get access to free tips and an audio training excerpt on service agreements.

As a provider of computer consulting services, you should communicate to your clients that a dedicated server generally can enforce strong user passwords. This means your clients can:

• Force users to change passwords at predetermined intervals
• Prevent recycling of previously-chosen passwords
• Eliminate the use of blank passwords
• Enforce selection of passwords that are a mixture of both letters and numbers, as well as upper and lower case characters

Protection Against "Accidental" Reboots

When a PC is used in a peer-to-peer network as both a server and a workstation, sooner or later the server will get rebooted accidentally – no matter how careful the server’s primary user is.

Let your computer consulting services clients know that whether the peer-to-peer server gets rebooted as a result of installing a new piece of software, or a buggy application with memory leaks causes system crashes, sooner or later their employees will be livid when the server goes down without warning. 

This will likely cause corrupted data files and lost hours of collective work in progress. A dedicated server system is a simple way to prevent this enormous potential problem.

Centralized File Protection

With a peer-to-peer network, servers tend to sprout up throughout your computer consulting services clients’ office as multiple end users set up file and printer shares on their own PCs.

With a client/server network, files are centrally protected from data loss and corruption resulting from hardware faults, accidental deletion, power problems, hacking, sabotage, and virus threats.

Don’t Forget Back Up Solutions

As their computer consulting services provider, communicate to your clients that conversely in a peer-to-peer network environment, with decentralized file storage, they should consider how crucial data files will be backed up.

Will data backup be a manual process? Will an external tape backup drive get passed from user to user (requiring each end user to take initiative)?

The Bottom Line about Computer Consulting Services

When providing computer consulting services, have clients consider how often antivirus definitions will get updated on each server. And don’t forget to think about whether each peer-to-peer server has a UPS (battery backup unit) capable of unattended shutdown if power is lost, when no one is around to manually and safely shutdown the "server".

In this article, you’ve learned about computer consulting services. To learn more about computer consulting services click here now to get access to a free one-hour audio training program on 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Computer Consulting Business.

In the computer consulting business, dead-end solutions can be very expensive mistakes for your prospects or clients. So, start by pointing out how scalable your proposed network will be.

Communicate the Options

Discuss server hardware and OS/NOS selection and detail how, as you add more RAM, faster processors, SCSI or RAID hard drive controllers and multiple processors, performance continues to scale up. Explain how your computer consulting business’ prospects and clients can get a tremendous power boost with relatively low cost, by doing incremental hardware upgrades on servers running the solution you’ve proposed.

Then talk up available options for your prospects or clients down the road. Small business owners, as entrepreneurs, are a pretty optimistic group. So they’ll want to make sure their IT investments are in sync with their visions of future company growth.

The Growth Path

Highlight how your computer consulting business’ proposed network solution provides a very well defined growth path to more application-rich platforms. Then, reiterate how a Microsoft Windows 9x/Me/XP "server", on the other hand, severely limits your networking options.

A Microsoft Windows 9x/Me/XP "server" may be adequate for some very limited file and printer sharing, but it’s definitely not a great platform for adding high-performance relational database or messaging applications.

As company IT needs evolve, the amount of files can really spiral out of control if the networking solution can’t keep up. So always highlight how the proposed networking solution and centralizing data helps to protect IT investments by maintaining version control.

A Networking Solution Can Reduce Confusion

With a decentralized peer-to-peer network, there may be multiple, conflicting versions of Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel data files for example. Whether these files are passed around on disk or distributed on different users’ "servers", a well-designed client/server network, with consistent naming conventions and a coherent share and folder structure goes a long way toward preventing confusion. 

The Bottom Line about the Computer Consulting Business

In this article, you’ve learned about the computer consulting business. To learn more about the computer consulting business, click here now to get access to a free one-hour audio training program on 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Computer Consulting Business.

The key to overcoming client cost concerns is to focus on value and return on investment (ROI), rather than expenses.  While every one of your computer consulting business prospects and clients will have a different way of defining "expensive" and "affordable", it’s crucial that you show how your proposed networking solution is anything but expensive.

Learn from Example

For example, a local insurance agency, with 11 employees and PCs, runs a combination of Microsoft Windows 98, Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 4.0, Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional and Microsoft Windows XP Professional desktop and notebook PCs.  The agency is about to "hire" three new independent agents (pseudo or virtual employees).

Each agent currently gets their own analog modem line, modem, and ISP dial-up account once he or she has been with the company for at least 90 days.  In the U.S., this means each agent will incur about $25/month for an analog line — plus message units. 

Illustrate Costs to the Client

So with 40 hours/week of Internet access, this ratchets the cost of the analog line up to about $60/month.  Then add around $20/month for a dial-up ISP account. So for these 14 agents and employees, your computer consulting business’ prospect spends upwards of $1,100/month for analog lines and dial-up ISP accounts.

If your computer consulting business prospect uses no other feature in your proposed networking solution besides centrally managed, shared, secure high-speed Internet access, the prospect’s networking investment would pay for itself within a matter of months.

Illustrate the Benefits to the Client

In addition, the prospect gains the benefits of a central point of control, administration, and monitoring over Internet usage.

So in reality, the prospect really can already "afford" your computer consulting business’ proposed networking solution as you’ve shown how consolidated Internet access will bring about a return on investment in a matter of months.

The Bottom Line about the Computer Consulting Business

In this article, you’ve learned about the computer consulting business. To learn more about the computer consulting business click here now to get access to a free one-hour audio training program on 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Computer Consulting Business.

The most profitable and stable way to be successful in your computer consulting business is to put your clients on service agreements. Service agreements can help keep your cash flow steady and keep your business profitable for the long haul. Occasionally, though, you may get objections from clients.

Read on to find out how one of our consultants benefited from service agreements while putting his clients at ease:

"We began offering slightly discounted prepaid hours in addition to contracts. A lot of customers want prepaid hours instead of contracts, at least initially. I believe it is the fear of signing ‘contracts’ that keeps them from selecting this lower cost alternative early in the relationship. We are converting a number of prepaid to contract customers (lower cost but 3 or 6 month notification if they want to stop service). Your service agreement was helpful in forming our final agreement."

Bill Fleming, Austin IT Solutions 
Austin, Texas

The Bottom Line about Service Agreements

To learn more about service agreements, click here now to get access to free tips and an audio training excerpt on service agreements.

Since the vast majority of small business prospects and clients that you encounter will likely be running some version of Microsoft Windows, it is a good idea to educate small business managers on the differences between the "current" versions of Microsoft Windows.

Versions of Microsoft Windows

Are your clients using the "right" version of Microsoft Windows?  Below is some lists of different versions of Microsoft Windows your clients may be using in their small business network.

Consumer products (Home User)

• Microsoft Windows 95
• Microsoft Windows 98
• Microsoft Windows 98, Second Edition
• Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition (Me)
• Microsoft Windows XP Home

Business Products: Desktop:

• Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 4
• Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
• Microsoft Windows XP Professional

Business Products: Server:

• Microsoft Windows NT Server 4
• Microsoft Windows 2000 Server
• Microsoft Server 2003

Eight 32-bit Microsoft Windows products have been used by small businesses since the mid-’90s — and that’s just on the desktop side of the typical small business network.

Managing Expectations

It can be very helpful to understand some of the main differences between peer-to-peer and client/server small business networks.

If you want to close the sale and gain a profitable, long-term client, it’s very important to educate your prospects and clients on key terminology while you work to manage their expectations from the very first conversation.

The Bottom Line about Small Business Networks

In this article, you’ve learned about small business networks. To learn more about small business networks click here now to get access to a free one-hour audio training program on 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Computer Consulting Business.

When starting an IT consulting business, should you already have partnerships established with other companies to provide services that you don’t? The whole problem with running an IT consulting business is that you need to be able to satisfy a lot of needs. However, don’t let that hold you back from getting started.

Know Where Your Expertise Lies

It’s really not that critical to have partnerships in place when you’re getting your IT consulting business started. However, if you feel that you have substantial weaknesses and you’re going to encounter a lot of prospects needing services your IT consulting business can’t provide, you may want some good contractors lined up. 

Plan Ahead and Bring on Partners Slowly

In the IT consulting business, you should generally wait until you’re more established to form solid partnerships. Once you get your business up and running, try to meet up with one person every other month that could be a potential business partner or contractor.

You’ll meet prospective partners or contractors at chamber events and networking groups and other people will refer you to them. The best potential partners for your IT consulting business will be at your mutual clients’ place of business.

The Bottom Line about the IT Consulting Business

Once again, don’t let your lack of expertise in certain areas prevent you from getting your IT consulting business started. You’ll have plenty of time to build up the partnerships later. There’s no reason to go overboard unless you feel you really need to have those skills backing your IT consulting business.

In this article, you’ve learned about the IT consulting business. To learn more about the IT consulting business click here now to get access to a free one-hour audio training program on 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Computer Consulting Business.

When working in small business consulting, your clients may ask, "Why do I need something as big and powerful as the network you’re recommending? We’re just a seven person company and our network works great, at least most of the time."

"Sell" Fear

In this situation, to overcome denial, you often have to "sell" fear.  Be ready to talk about a small business consulting client that trusted their PC-savvy bookkeeper so much, that the bookkeeper was covering her trails daily and able to embezzle $50K before getting caught during an annual audit by their CPA.

Only naïve clients believe in trusting every employee and for that matter every non-employee who has physical access to the building.

Get Clients Thinking about Security

In reality though, small business owners rarely think about IT security until it’s too late. Make sure you get your small business consulting prospects and clients thinking about how much access should be granted.

Get your prospects and clients thinking about sensitive files such as credit card numbers, social security numbers (in the U.S.), trade secrets, payroll data or annual employee reviews.

Determine Client Needs

When small business clients say they think your proposed client/server network is overkill, they might not be thinking of the big picture. That’s all the more reason to take the small business consulting client through a comprehensive initial consultation, needs analysis, IT audit and site survey. 

Many times a small business owner might ask just for file sharing or e-mail. If you press further, however, you’ll discover they also really need a contact management system, group scheduling, network faxing, a company Intranet and secure, high-speed Web browsing from each desktop.

The Bottom Line about Small Business Consulting

If small business consulting clients insist they have no need for data security, you probably haven’t probed deeply enough.  Find out where the client stores its client lists, proprietary pricing models, payroll forecasts, bonus calculations, credit card data and social security numbers.

In this article, you’ve learned about small business consulting. To learn more about small business consulting click here now to get access to a free one-hour audio training program on 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Computer Consulting Business.