Small Business Computer Consulting

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. Respondents reported using service agreements that raised their annual consulting income by up to $100,000.

Many of the respondents in the survey found the sections of the Computer Consulting Kit on service agreements, including the templates, most helpful. When service agreements are designed and presented correctly, your clients understand that service agreements are truly a much better value for them.

"I was able to figure out how to word a service agreement and price accordingly. I spent many hours trying to figure out what I should and should not include and how to price.  The Computer Consulting Kit’s service agreement has saved me countless hours of searching and ultimately frustrating myself not knowing if I’m on the right track. The Computer Consulting Kit allowed me to include things that I would have otherwise forgotten. The service agreement allows me to present a very professional, well thought out package to the client."

John Scott, 24 Tech
Casper, Wyoming

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.

Starting an IT consulting business requires patience and dedication. The hardest part is often getting new clients. In this article, learn some more of the steps you should take before beginning your IT consulting practice.

Step Sixteen: Get Your Networking Contacts into a Follow Up Plan

With every business card you collect, jot down the date that you met them and any relevant notes about them. If you have a follow up request like they said "hey give me a call about that," or "hey call me on Tuesday about setting that up", immediately jump on those.

Follow up on the request tomorrow if not sooner. If you can’t follow up with a personal call, send a handwritten note that says you look forward to seeing them again and if you need any help between now and when we meet again, give me a call. Include your card in the note, and put your contact’s card on a rolodex and put him on a 30, 60-day call back schedule. 

Step Seventeen: Re-Evaluate Your Networking Organization Options

Take another look at the different networking groups you attended as a guest. Which ones did you like? Which ones have the most potential for the most business opportunities?  Start joining and participating.  The purpose is to get known and to raise your profile in the community. 

Pick out at least 4 groups and join them.  Drop off your check personally to the director or office manager.  Be direct and tell him or her that you have this new IT consulting business and that you are looking for small business that you can help out with LANs, etc. Ask them what is the best way to get to know these small business owners that are most likely to need your IT consulting services.

At every 60-90 minute event, you should be talking to eight or ten people. Half of them may be a waste of time, half of them could be potential clients, half could be potential referrals. It’s a matter of staying organized and keeping your name in front of them.

After you go through the first ninety days and you’ve gone to one of these every week, move on to more sustainable networking.

Step Eighteen: Do Your First Direct Mail Campaign

Have your testimonials in place from your earlier clients, and get your networking organizations’ directory on disc. Send out a personal letter and your business card to every member who may fit into the IT consulting sweet spot.

Offer them a free 30-minute needs assessment coupon with an expiration date. Tell them you look forward to seeing them at upcoming event and then you can always follow up with a phone call.

The Bottom Line about IT Consulting
 
In this article, you’ve been introduced to IT consulting.  To learn more about IT 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.

What’s involved in selling a small business owner on the benefits of hiring your computer consulting firm to install and support their network?  At the most basic level, you need to analyze your client’s requirements and propose a cost-effective solution. This is what your initial consultation, IT audit and site survey meetings are for.

IT Sales Calls

For help structuring and profiting from your IT sales calls, initial consultations and IT audits, see Sales Call or Initial Consultation (How to Avoid Giving Away the Store While Prospecting for New Clients), available for immediate download from www.computerconsulting101.com/initial-consultations.htm.

Know Who Makes the Decision When It Comes to IT Sales

You should be aware, however, that the small business owner might not be your primary decision-maker.  The small business owner might hold the ultimate check-signing or veto power, but in many small businesses the primary decision-maker for IT sales is the "internal guru", such as an office manager, a controller, a vice president, or an owner’s spouse.

Don’t miss out on this very subtle, but extremely important nuance. Learning who’s interested in the "bits and bytes" discussion and who’s purely interested in how much it’ll cost, is as crucial as finding out what the small business does and what it needs.

Don’t Get Too Bogged Down With the Details

When proposing the installation of a client/server network, many times the small business decision-makers won’t be interested in the nitty-gritty details of what kind of server suite you’ll be installing.

They’re just looking for concrete features such as centralized file storage and security, printer sharing, universal Web browsing, e-mail, and the ability to send and receive faxes over the network.

The Bottom Line about IT Sales

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

To grow your business, you need help. To find trusted help, look for like-minded people you have built a relationship with. You may just find them in untraditional places.

Read on to see how one of our computer consultants found help for his business.

"This year I took a technical refresher class at my local community college as a means to further develop my subcontracting contact database. More than the class content, I have made connections with other IT pros in a setting that lends itself to developing more trust (over a three month period) than a short business meeting at local Chambers of Commerce or even user groups."

Sean Atkinson, Immediate Tech Support, Inc.
Hollywood, Florida

The Bottom Line about Partnering

To learn more about partnering, click here now to get access to a free one-hour audio training program on 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Computer Consulting Business.

By engaging small business decision makers in discussions about their IT networking needs, you can highlight how automating services like faxing will save your prospect’s or client’s company on manual labor, which indirectly translates into substantial salary savings over the course of the year.

At the very least, network-based faxing will free up staff to focus on higher-level activities, rather than "babysitting" an archaic fax machine.

Listen for Other IT Networking Opportunities

As you get to know more about the prospect’s or client’s business, keep your antenna up for additional solution opportunity areas, such as centrally-managed Internet access for each desktop.

Besides faxing and Internet access, a client/server network makes sharing, protecting and securing information much easier. Through permissions and auditing, small business owners can ensure that only those authorized have access to sensitive information.

By centralizing the storage of data, small businesses can also more easily protect data with a tape backup drive, antivirus software, firewall software and an uninterruptible power supply (UPS).

Who Are You Promoting IT Networking To?

Tailoring your message for different audiences and interests is also key. If you’re discussing IT networking with the president or owner of the company, the hot buttons might include costs, the value of proactive technology investments, industry trends, competitive factors and lower labor costs through more automation.

The Bottom Line about IT Networking

If you’re discussing IT networking with middle management or employees in the trenches, make sure to shift gears. Staff and the internal guru will likely want to talk about ease of use and administration, how the network will make their job easier and the amount of training required to become proficient.

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

Before starting your IT consulting business, take the steps that will lead to your success. In this article, learn about three steps you should take before beginning your IT consulting practice.

Step Seven: Arrange Your Telecom Services

Get a business telephone number or a mobile phone or something that you can answer with your IT consulting business name so you sound professional. Don’t go too cheap and use your home phone number and a cheesey answering machine or it will really destroy your professional image.

Make sure you convey a professional image all the way.  The $40 or $50 a month you spend will be well worth it.

You should also get a domain name registered. Ideally, you should pick out your domain name and IT consulting company name at the same time so you make sure you get your first choice of a dot com.

Get your email and Webster-hosting ready to go.  Decide what physical address you are going to use.  Watch out for any home office zoning laws if you are going to be operating your IT consulting business out of your home.

Step Eight: Order Your Business Cards

Go either with 2 color or 4 color at this stage of the game. If your budget for business cards is 60 to $80 for a thousand cards, you should be fine.  Don’t go overboard on printing a ton of them.

If you do, your bound to decide to change your logo or address and you’ll be stuck with cards you can’t use. Get the minimum quantity. You can always get a reprint later. 

Step Nine: Set Up Your Sales Tax

If you are reselling products, you will need to get a sale tax certificate or sales tax collection receipt from the province or state you are located in.  It is one type of regulatory agency there.

You may want to open up some distributor accounts especially with the big two Ingram Micro and Tech Data.  Ingrammicro.com and techdata.com.   The big two distributors are XENIX, which just went public, and D&H.  You should also have a merchant account. You want to be able to get a credit card authorization for any sales.

The Bottom Line about IT Consulting
 
In this article, you’ve been introduced to IT consulting.  To learn more about IT 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.

There’s only one you. If you haven’t already, you’ll soon find yourself with no more time left to work. Then what?

To grow your business, you’ll need to find others to help you.

Read on to see how one of our computer consultants grew his business by employing this strategy:

"I have successfully employed two junior staff to handle some of the workload. I learned from the Computer Consulting Kit that I need to grow my company. If I am spending all my time running the company, it will never grow."

Alister Cole, EES Computing and Engineering Services
Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa

The Bottom Line about Partnering

To learn more about partnering and subcontracting, click here now to get access to a free one-hour audio training program on 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Computer Consulting Business.

It is very important to educate your small business prospects and clients on key small business networking terms and buzzwords.  After all, in order to "win them over", you need to be speaking the same language. In fact, you may even want to prepare a "cheat sheet", based on the below definitions, to help you in your prospect and client pre-sales activities.

If you’d like to order a license to reproduce these networking terms for client sales literature, please contact questions@ComputerConsulting101.com and put "Licensing Your LAN Buzzwords" in the subject line.

• NIC (Network Interface Card) – a printed circuit board, adapter card or the underlying supporting chipset that snaps into the motherboard of a desktop PC, notebook or server and transmits and receives packets on a network; used to connect to networks including a local area network (LAN), wide area network
• (WAN), or a broadband network for high-speed cable modem or DSL-based Internet access or other dedicated Internet access service; most common NIC used by small businesses is the 10/100Mbps Ethernet adapter.
• NOS (Network Operating System) – an OS designed for communications between networked computer systems; popular NOS’s include Apple Mac OS, Linux, Microsoft Windows NT/2000 and Novell NetWare.
• Peer-to-Peer Network – an inexpensive alternative to a client/server network in which a PC doubles as both a workstation (used by an end user) and a server (from which resources are shared); although virtually any OS can be configured for peer-to-peer networking, peer-to-peer networks are often assembled from Microsoft’s least expensive consumer OS’s, such as Microsoft Windows 98, Microsoft Windows Me and Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition.
• RAID (redundant array of independent disks) is technology generally used to increase a server’s reliability — by simultaneously writing data to multiple hard drives. While many people also use RAID to improve server performance, RAID eliminates a single point of hard drive failure. Years ago, you could only get the benefits of RAID through SCSI-based hard drives. Today, IDE hard drives can also enjoy entry-level RAID fault tolerance benefits.
•  SCSI (small computer systems interface) is a high-end interface for connecting both internal and external computer peripheral devices. Years ago, only SCSI-based storage devices were used in most servers.
• Server – any computing device or peripheral on a network designed to provide shared services and resources to network users; primarily characterized by multi-user usage, as compared to a desktop or notebook PC; common servers include the file, printer, e-mail messaging and collaboration, Web, proxy and database server.
• Wireless Ethernet – set of standards and in-progress standards that allow Ethernet networks to run without physical cabling and utilize radio waves for transmission.

The Bottom Line about Networking Terms

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

Scheduling properly and tracking all of your time can help you increase your billable hours. With many IT professionals, learning this is a long and tedious process of trial and error. Read how one of our computer consultants was able to turn a profit in his first quarter as an IT professional.

"I achieved a net profit of over $11,000 in my first quarter; and that was after everything was paid (bills, salary etc.) The Computer Consulting Kit was fundamental in my ability to market my skills and bill for them. Without the Computer Consulting Kit, I would have spent months trying different techniques to obtain more billable hours, with the failures that would have inevitably followed those attempts. The Computer Consulting Kit immediately made me look like a seasoned business owner in the I.T. consulting market."

Mike Sims, Simtech Data Services
Hesperia, California

The Bottom Line about Project Management

To learn more about technology assessments, click here now to get access to a free one-hour audio training program on 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Computer Consulting Business.

How do you move from micro small businesses to the sweet spot IT consulting?  What you need to do is look over the checklist of what technology they are looking for and start spending some time beefing up your skills.

How Much Time Do You Spend to Improve Your Skills?

Balance your time.  If you have the skills to work with micro, but don’t quite have the skills to work with sweet spot, spend about 75% of your time over the next couple of months on IT consulting business development and about 25% of your time on increasing your technical skills.

What Skills Do You Need to Focus On?

Get a not for resale copy of Microsoft Small Business Server 2003.  Load it up on a spare system and start learning that.  That is, by far, the most common thing that is going to get you into IT consulting for the sweet spot clients.  Second would probably be Novell Small Business Suite.

Start With the Simpler Sweet Spot Clients

You are going to be able to qualify your sweet spot clients before going on sales calls, and generating proposals. Then, you can figure out if your skills are strong enough.  There are all kinds of different IT consulting sweet spot clients out there.

The smaller sweet spot clients the 10, 15, 20 seats are going to have less sophisticated needs than those on the upper end of that range where they start to get into 2 or 3 servers and multiple locations.

Transition to the Sweet Spot

Start working with some micro small businesses in IT consulting.  Get the confidence and start building your business up.  Get your references going, so you can transition. 

Some of your larger micro businesses are probably going to start needing the skills that you are going to need to brush up against the sweet spot anyway, like when they outgrow peer to peer. 

The Bottom Line about IT Consulting
 
In this article, you’ve been introduced to IT consulting.  To learn more about IT 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.