Small Business Computer Consulting

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

Sweet spot small businesses have very specific needs when it comes to virtual IT support.  Which technical skills do you need to best provide solutions?

Which Virtual IT Tasks Will Clients Require You to Do?

Sweet spot clients will need help with the most popular desktop applications:  Microsoft Office; Intuit QuickBooks; Interact ACT!, etc.  They will also need help with hardware upgrades and setting up shared folder backup software and keeping their antivirus and firewall software working.  They will probably also need help syncing PDAs and DEFINITELY need help with networks (a BIG part of your job as an outsourced virtual IT department!).

What about Micro Small Businesses?

Micro small businesses – those with less than 10 PCs – don’t usually spend a lot of money on people with advanced technical skills.  They are working with P2P networks and will see IT certifications and advanced virtual IT skills as a negative and something that makes you overqualified.  

Real IT Managers Care More about IT Certifications

When you are dealing with real IT managers in larger small businesses (over 50 systems), you will find someone that cares about advanced virtual IT skills.  Certifications will be important, and the company will be looking typically for specialists and deeply-niched experts to fill out their technical staff.  

The Main Idea about Virtual IT and Your Certifications

Sweet spot clients present a different opportunity from other small business clients.  You want to put most of your energy into the 10-50 PC space because they will be big enough to need sophisticated solutions, but not big enough to have to hire a really highly-skilled virtual IT professional.  

Added 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

Leading IT resource management software company Tek-Tools recently announced its new Profile Suite, Profiler for VMWare at Storage Networking World in Orlando.  This virtual IT package is a tool for small businesses and many larger businesses as well that want to get into virtualization.  

Tek-Tools reps intend to be available to discuss results testing customers have achieved with Profiler this week and will discuss how it can help them fully use the virtual IT concept.  This tool has been helping them improve storage capabilities and make better use of space, get rid of unnecessary hardware, track performance and in the case of larger companies avoid hundreds of thousands of dollars of unnecessary technology purchases.  

Tek-Tools Software, Inc. provides resource management solutions and virtual IT tools and has offices in the U.S., the UK and India.  For more information on this story, visit the attached link.

Added By:  Computer Consulting Kit

Technical skills are critical to your computer consulting business.  But you need to be selective when it comes to those you choose to develop so you can focus on your business and all its many complex aspects and stay up to speed with your competitors.

Technical Skills:  Networking Platforms

Your competitors that do well with their sweet spot clients have expertise in the following types of networking platforms:  Microsoft Small Business Server (SBS); Novell Small Business Suite or Novell NetWare; Linux (RedHat, usually); Mac OS.

Some of your larger competitors with more than one employee might gravitate towards the higher end of the market – 25-50 PCs – as a starting point and take on some larger small businesses with up to 100 systems.  They might also go towards mid-size companies that have 100-500 systems, at which point they will cease being real competitors; you don’t need the technical skills required to provide these high-end solutions.  

Technical Skills and Your Larger Competitors

Larger competitors have expertise in the following items:  Network Attached Storage (NAS); Storage Attached Networks (SANs); complex security solutions; CheckPoint firewalls; Citrix Terminal systems; high-end Wi-Fi solutions; managed hardware.  Until you start selling to a real IT manager at a small business, you don’t need these very high-level technical skills.  

Necessary Technical Skills

When you work with sweet spot small businesses that have 10-50 PCs, you should hire people to help you that have one or two entry-level certifications and are working towards an MCSE or equivalent.  

Solve Problems to Satisfy Clients

Your clients will care more about your ability to solve their major computer problems than they will about your high-level technical skills.  Get to know their industry and how you can solve major business problems from a unique IT perspective and you will be valued, even if you don’t have very advanced technical skills.  

Added By:  Joshua Feinberg