Small Business Computer Consulting

Business partnerships are intriguing to most new IT consultants.  We get a lot of questions about business partnerships and one of the most common is, "When is the best time to start looking for a business partnership?"

Essentially, new computer consultants want to know whether they should start looking for business partnerships even before their business is established.  

The general consensus is that you should be looking for business partnerships all the time.  Certainly you will have a lot more to offer potential business partners as your business grows and evolves, but you should always keep your ears open.  

You should always be receptive to business partnership opportunities and be up front with niche technology providers that you meet.  Tell them you are just starting your computer consulting company and that you anticipate having a big need for their services.  

Obviously, you can’t make any promises, but you can ask for their card so you can find out more about what they do and then analyze the potential for a business partnership in detail. Always remember to view this as a networking opportunity for yourself as well.  

End the conversation exploring a potential business partnership with, "If any of your clients have a need for what I do, I’d be happy to talk with them as well."

A lot of these business partnership relationships will come about because clients make a request for a particular product or service.  Your job is to go out and fill the need.  In the course of doing so, a business partnerships evolves.   

Bottom Line on Business Partnerships
Start looking at business partnerships right away.  There is no need to put it on hold but you also don’t need to work at it fervently.  When you start your company, your focus is on networking.  Simply use your networking opportunities to introduce the idea of a business partnership.

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

Business partnerships are entered into for two main reasons.  Both of these motivations for starting a business partnership are equally important.  

Sometimes you’ll want a business partnership so you can fill a skills gap.  These are the specialty business partners.

Other times you’ll want a business partnership for marketing reasons so you can get access to their clients. This type of business partnership is usually mutually beneficial.  The more you view your business partnership as a two-way street, the better.

Regardless of the reason why you are choosing to start a partnership, you need to analyze your business and figure out what the business partnership will accomplish. This is done in four stages:

Categorize the Types of Business Partnerships

• Accounting software experts (QuickBooks, Great Plains, Mass 90 )
• Apple Macintosh specialists
• CRM specialists
• Document imaging
• Legacy host systems
• Industry-specific software experts (healthcare, hospitality, property/casualty, legal, manufacturing)
• Security experts (biometrics, smart cards, intrusion detection)
• Software developers
• System building
• Wholesalers and distributors

Identify Specialty Skills

• List out what virtual IT products you need a business partnership for – identify the skills gap you think each business partner will fill in
• Identify the specialty skills that a business partner must have according to what a client would need

Explore Marketing Value

• List the kind of clients each potential business partnership would have
• Describe the value you would get from the business partnership from gaining access to their clients
• Identify how many of these potential business partnerships would have sweet spot clients

Locating Business Partnerships

• List the types of organizations and groups a potential business partner would join
• What conferences do they tend to go to?
• What news groups do they hang out at?  

Bottom Line on Business Partnerships
Business Partnerships should benefit both parties.  When you are determining who to form a business partnership with, you need to determine the best partnership for you based on the partnership firm’s skills and their access to sweet spot clients.  After that you figure out how to meet up with the decision makers and explore the possibility of a business partnership.

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

Subcontracting must be done profitably for it to make sense.  Your main concern as a virtual IT provider is the profitability of your business.  Before subcontracting work you need to analyze the costs and build in enough of a margin that you are still making money.

To deliver virtual IT profitably to your clients, you need to give yourself enough wiggle room on service agreements to allow for profitable subcontracting of specialty services.  Most of the contractors that you work with are going to have entirely different rate structures than you.  

Before subcontracting, you need to estimate their services on a per project basis with clients:

• You identify the need for subcontracting
• You figure out what needs to get done
• You get an estimate from your subcontractor

Then you pass along the costs on a price-fixed basis to your client.  

In this process you must also give yourself the ability to work with a speciality contractor who charges more than you charge the client.  If you don’t you’ll lose money which you can’t afford to do.

With subcontracting, you need to have a markup to recoup your costs related to:

• recruitment
• project management
• scheduling and billing
• risk management

What’s a good markup?  25% to 35% is reasonable.  If you pay subcontracting fees of $400 to have some customer reports developed for accounting software, then you would bill the client $500 to $550.  

Do you need to disclose this markup for subcontracting to the client?  Absolutely not. You don’t need to tell them what your contractor markup is, or even that there is a markup when subcontracting.

Bottom Line on Subcontracting
Subcontracting is often the way you get IT work done for you clients.  When you are engaged in subcontracting you need to be paid for the time and energy you are investing in seeking and managing the subcontracting relationship.  Using a standard markup and making sure your service agreement allows for subcontracting fees are essential to the process of subcontracting.

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

Project proposals are a common method for generating business.  Project proposals are typically prepared for two scenarios – getting a completely new client or doing more involved work for an existing customer.

Preferably you are doing a project proposal after you have done a small project for the company already.  This way you have gone through your proving ground.   Whether you did an IT audit or fixed a PC, you have a foundation there.  The customer knows you, likes you, and trusts you.  

Selling a project proposal from this position is much easier.  This doesn’t mean you can’t sell a project proposal without having done any previous work, it’s just a bit harder. You’ll end up spending much more time in the follow-up stage.

Either way, follow-up is an important aspect of securing work from a project proposal.  At the absolute minimum you should use a four to six week follow up cycle.  In between your follow up calls is when you look to see if anything has changed or if they need some help on something small right now before they move ahead with the project.  

You want to keep staying in front of them.  Even if it’s something that’s just a couple hundred dollars, your name needs to remain in their minds.  What you don’t want is for some other company to come in and take care of a small issue.  

When you have a project proposal under review, you need to be the company of choice for anything IT related.  There’s always a little bit of "being in the right place at the right time" going on.  

Bottom Line on Project Proposals
Urgency is the driver behind any project proposal moving to the sales phase.  If there’s no urgency, then it’s a waiting game and they may not do the project for a long time.  You need to stay in touch with the customer on a regular basis and be prepared to do a couple of small things in the interim to get things going.  

In this article, you’ve been introduced to Project Proposals. To learn more about how you can improve your knowledge about Project Proposals, just click here now to get access to a free one-hour audio training program on 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Computer Consulting Business. 

Computer service contracts that sell blocks of time must be supported by a solid tracking system.  Once you sell a time-block computer service contract it is up to you to manage the contract and make sure the time is being used up on a consistent basis.

The tracking system you use for this type of computer service contract can be in QuickBooks, Excel, or another similar type of program.  The essential factor is that you have a tickler file so you can see where the client is in terms of the usage of the time.    

When the client is getting near the end of their prepaid time block, the system should be set up to advise you that you need to send a renewal notice. Tracking your computer service contracts like this does not need to be complicated, it just needs to be efficient.  

When it is renewal time, this is when you have the opportunity to turn a one-shot customer into a client.  Don’t underestimate the salesmanship needed for the first time-blocked computer service contract renewal.  They are not truly a client until they have renewed at least once.

To increase your chances of a computer service contract renewal:

• Make sure the customer uses up the time block in the original computer service contract
• Make sure you deliver on every aspect of your agreement

When you go to the renewal meeting:

• Make sure you have your time-block computer service contract ready to go again  
• Always have a rate card on hand and any marketing collateral you have prepared including testimonials
• Always think of the benefits of renewing the computer service contract from the clients’ point of view
• Point out the benefits of a year long contract to those clients that use up significant amounts of time per month

Bottom Line on Time-Block Computer Service Contracts
Your computer service contracts for pre-paid time are important to your business.  You need to be very diligent in your methods for tracking the usage of them and for renewing them.  The renewal phase is very important as this is where you move a customer into a client.  Don’t let any of these computer service contracts fall by the wayside – keep on top of them until you are sure you have a long term client.

In this article, you’ve been introduced to Computer Service Contracts. To learn more about how you can improve your knowledge about Computer Service Contracts, just click here now to get access to a free one-hour audio training program on 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Computer Consulting Business. 

Computer service contracts are what will sustain your company long-term.  They are also what will allow you to transition to a full time business with less risk.  You want to have quite a few computer service contracts signed, sealed, and delivered and in progress.  This way you know there’s a certain amount of guaranteed, or virtually guaranteed, income every month from clients that have stepped up to the plate and said, "I want you to be my virtual IT department."

Benefits Of Computer Service Contracts 

• Computer service contracts give you a lot more confidence to grow your business as you reach the next hurdle six months to a year down the road.
• Computer service contracts also help you prioritize who really deserves your attention and who deserves your most premium, first class service and response time.
• Computer service contracts give you important reference accounts.
• Computer service contracts provide tremendous lifetime value in terms of predictability.
• Computer service contracts only prescribe a minimum payment.

This last benefit is an important one.  For the most part, people that are willing to commit to $1,000 a month minimum are typically going to do much more work than that every month. How much they spend over and above the computer service contract depends on what types of projects are in their pipeline.  This is why keeping their project wish list and their project plans current is so helpful   The $1,000 per month service contract increases very quickly with projects such as:

• Upgrading PCs and notebooks
• Upgrading an industry-specific package
• Helping with web site updates
• Internet and extranet issues
• DBI
• Setting up remote workers
• Setting up new offices

Bottom Line on Computer Service Contracts
Computer service contracts are just the beginning in terms of work for your client companies.  There are so many things that will come up in the course of being their virtual IT department.  By being proactive and maintaining the project plan, helping them organize   what they want, and scheduling the phases, you increase the lifetime value of the computer service contract significantly.  Long term client acquisition is your goal if you want to maintain a profitable and stable business.

In this article, you’ve been introduced to Computer Service Contracts. To learn more about how you can improve your knowledge about Computer Service Contracts, just click here now to get access to a free one-hour audio training program on 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Computer Consulting Business. 

Computer service contracts are what you want all of your customers to be on.  It can be hard though, to convert your transaction-oriented customers to computer service contracts.  This is where you need to decide what is better – keeping the clients and trying to convert them or finding new clients all together.

If you’re in the mode now where most of the customers you have are not on computer service contracts, then you need to focus on getting some.  AS you get more and more clients who are on computer service contracts you can afford to be less dependant on the ones that aren’t.

Your time is going to be taken up by people that need you and are counting on you on regular basis.  You’ll have steady, guaranteed predictability to your business by signing up clients on a computer service contract.  And, you’re not going to have very much time left for the people that aren’t willing to raise their hand and commit to a contract.

This makes it less difficult to drop these clients or convert them.  If you have computer service contracts, they take priority.  This means your transaction-based clients have to wait in line. How you go about converting them, is to go back to them and explain the situation.

You tell them that you are moving to a computer service contract model.  Because they are an existing client you are offering them a small discount as an incentive to join up. They will get the same great service and they won’t have to be slotted in – they will enjoy regular, priority service.

If they don’t take the offer all you need to say is that you will have to charge extra to come in after hours to accommodate them and that you can’t guarantee response time. If the client is serious about your services, they will sign up for a computer service contract – if they aren’t, then the decision is easy and you drop them.

Bottom Line on Computer Service Contracts
Computer service contracts give you leverage.  When you have lots of clients on computer service contracts you can start to phase out your transaction-based clients.  This is good for your time and your profitability.  If you don’t have lots of computer service contracts right now, concentrate on getting some and make that the priority sale when talking to new leads.

In this article, you’ve been introduced to Computer Service Contracts. To learn more about how you can improve your knowledge about Computer Service Contracts, just click here now to get access to a free one-hour audio training program on 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Computer Consulting Business. 

Overcoming objections to performing an IT audit is sometimes tricky.  When you are overcoming objections that deal with price, one of the best things you can do is let your past clients speak for you. Testimonials and references are two excellent ways for overcoming objections and we some more ideas for you as well.

Testimonials and Overcoming Objections
One of the best things you can do to overcome price objection is to share testimonials from well-known businesses in the local area.  If the testimonials talk about the value of the IT audit, even better.  For example, solicit a case study from a client that talks about how he/she used your recommendations over a period of a couple of months to cut their payroll costs, increase their sales without adding staff, close out their monthly accounting cycle faster each month.  

Regardless of the example, if you can tie some concrete benefits that other businesses have enjoyed to the  results of things you uncovered in an audit, that can be a phenomenal method for overcoming objections.

Other techniques for overcoming objections include: 

• Encourage your prospects to spend a few minutes and call some of your reference accounts.  Your current accounts can be some of your best salespeople. 

• Sell the IT audit on a fixed-price basis, certainly not by the hour.  Using this method for overcoming objections you lessen the company’s price risk because they are not concerned that the meter is running every minute.  

• Offer to apply the cost of the audit to any subsequent work that you do for them.  That work can be an installation , upgrade, or some kind of project or service agreement.  Make sure your offer is time limited.

The Bottom Line on Overcoming Objection
Overcoming objections that surround price are best handled by letting past clients make the sale for you.  When a  new contact hears the success other businesses have had with your IT audits, there is much less resistance.  Use these and the other ideas the next time you are faced with overcoming objection.

In this article, you’ve been introduced to overcoming objection. To learn more about how you can improve your knowledge about overcoming objection, just 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 audits are a source of revenue for your systems integration business.  They are sometimes perceived as a tough sell but there are two distinct situations where selling an IT audit works very well.

The first really important time to offer an IT audit is when a prospect is looking for a new vendor. Often this happens if they want to replace their incumbent technology provider or replace a vacancy.  You can get in to do an IT audit very effectively in these circumstances because the company may have had a falling out with someone or someone left them high and dry. 

At this stage of the game, your prospect has no idea what he/she has or what he/she needs.  An IT audit will accomplish both goals.  Because they have had a provider taking care of their IT needs, they are likely clueless about what they even own, let alone what they need. 

You offer an IT audit in order to start fresh and figure out the best approach to take in order to accomplish their IT goals.  You know they are willing to pay for IT service, so suggesting an IT audit is a natural extension of the services you offer. 

The second time you’re in a really good position to sell the IT audit, is when you just finished handling an emergency crisis.  Essentially you put a band-aid on the problem and saved the day.  Your new customer thinks you’re wonderful and they have proven their interest in professional IT service as well as their ability/willingness to pay.  

In order for you to figure out a long-term solution, and avoid future band aids, you suggest doing a complete IT audit.  The suggestions make perfect sense and the client will be in a great position to want to do anything proactive – regardless of cost.  An IT audit is just the proactive tool you need to offer.

The Bottom Line on IT Audits
IT audits are an easy sell when you suggest them in the right context.  When people are looking to replace a provider or when they have just emerged from an emergency they are in a place where they are indicating their willingness to pay for an IT audit. This is the time to sell the IT audit and establish yourself as their systems expert because now you know what it is they want and need.

In this article, you’ve been introduced to IT audits. To learn more about how you can improve your knowledge of IT audits, just 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 audits are a must-do in your network consulting business.  If you don’t make IT audits part of your paid services, clients will have you spend your precious time analyzing their system for free.  

Typically a client will want you to tell them up front, specifically what you plan to do for them before you get their business.  In other words, before any money has changed hands, you’ll have had to learn about their unique IT environment.  

This is what an IT audit is meant to do.  Rather than give it away for free you need to learn how to get clients to pay for it.  The sorts of tasks included in an IT audit include:

• writing proposals
• site survey work
• taking inventory
• analyzing existing configurations
• looking for inconsistencies
• identifying major security gaps
• looking for potential land mines and configuration mistakes
• prioritizing what needs to be done first, second, third. etc…  

The easiest way to sell IT audits is to come to the relationship with a position of power. This means having prospects contact you rather than you soliciting them.  It’s hard to sell a client on an IT audit if you sent them a direct mail postcard asking for their business.  

You need to keep this in mind as you move your business forward.  If you want to get paid for the time you spend doing an IT audit, then you need to focus on referrals and networking.  Getting your name known and having clients recommend your services makes it much easier for you tell a client that they must pay you for the IT audit part of the process.

The Bottom Line on IT Audits
IT audits are time consuming.  You don’t want to have to give them away as part of your client solicitation process.  The best way to avoid having to give away free IT audits is to concentrate on getting great word-of-mouth referrals.  When potential clients come to you, it is much easier to tell them that a paid audit is the first step.  Once you know what they want and need then you can proceed.  

In this article, you’ve been introduced to IT audits. To learn more about how you can improve your knowledge of IT audits, just click here now to get access to a free one-hour audio training program on 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Computer Consulting Business.