Small Business Computer Consulting

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

You need to be prepared to invest a lot of time into starting your own computer consulting business.  How can you be realistic about choosing the type of business that is right for you?

Franchises Are Not Guarantees

You might think that if you choose a computer consulting business that is a franchise, a lot of the work will be done for you.  While this is true with parts of the process, you still are going to have a lot of work to do.  For one, the franchiser is not giving you a pre-established client list.  If you want that, you will have to buy a current business, which can cost a lot of money.  Even if you buy a very small but thriving computer consulting firm, you can spend $300,000-$3 million dollars (or about that amount).  The amount will be a multiple of the annual sales.

What Are the Computer Consulting Start-Up Costs?

If you start your own computer consulting firm, you can do it for as little as a few thousand dollars.  You’ll basically need a business phone number and voicemail, a cell phone, business cards and legal licensing registrations.  And you’ll want to figure in the cost of meeting with an accountant and an attorney.  You will also need insurance.  A lot of times you can work out of your home office, which means less money.

Attention Control Freaks:  Steer Clear of Computer Consulting Franchises

When you buy a franchise, you give up some control.  You have to do things a certain way according to pre-set rules and regulations.  There is very little room for deviation.  Your company will be paying the franchiser a percentage of your revenue from now until … forever.  And you won’t get the same level of flexibility when it comes to taking your business in different directions as you would if you opened your own business.  

The Main Idea

Computer consulting has some start-up options:  starting an independent business; buying a franchise; buying an established business.  Ask yourself if you want to start from the ground, up or be handed a client list.  Just keep in mind that any start-from-scratch computer consulting business is more about time and sweat equity than money.

Added By:  Computer Consulting Kit

There are two ways of thinking about being a reseller as consulting firms.

What Is a Pure Consulting Firm?

Some consulting firms choose to be pure consulting companies.  They think they will never make any money off products and that there are some major conflicts when you get into becoming a reseller.  As consultants, these companies help clients decide what to buy, what the specs should be and they show them where they can buy recommended products.

What is a Purchasing Agent?

Another type of pure consulting firm is a purchasing agent.  When you do this, your firm does the purchasing for clients and bills them a couple hours for it.  Your firm gets reviews and quotes, places and tracks orders and handles the whole purchase.  These are more pure consulting functions than reselling functions.

What Are Hybrid Consulting Firms?

When you follow a hybrid consulting model, you do white box PC reselling (reselling PC clones).  A computer reseller that does this is selling generic desktops, servers and sometimes notebooks (called white books).   

Do You Resell or Not?

When consulting firms are deciding whether or not to resell, they need to think about how they want to spend the majority of their time.  If you are facing this decision, ask yourself if you want to pick up some additional profit from product sales or if you want most of your income to come from pure consulting money.  No matter what, you don’t want to lead off with product sales when selling yourself to prospects.

Can Product Sales Get Consulting Firms in the Door?

Many new computer consulting owners ask themselves, “Should I resell inexpensive PCs, cheap software and cheap peripherals to try to get into consulting?”  The answer is typically “No.”  

All of a sudden you will have shown customers that you want to be a commodity broker.  And most will not hire this type of person for consulting.   

If you want to be a reseller, relationships have to come first.  Consulting firms looking for great longevity should focus on relationships.  

Added By:  Joshua Feinberg

Thursday, March 20, 2008
9:00pm Eastern to 10:30pm Eastern

5 Proven Best Practices for Getting More Steady, High-Paying Clients

Free Preview Webinar, sponsored by Computer Consulting Kit™ Home Study Course

• Learn how you can generate more consulting business and attract more of the right kinds of repeat clients.
• Find out quick, right-to-the-point best practices for surviving and thriving in this challenging IT spending environment.
• Discover simple, inexpensive, fast strategies for generating better leads and closing more deals.
• Find out how you can get more long-term clients onto your client roster, so you can have that critical business predictability and recurring revenue each and every month.
• And much, much more!

IT specialists can work with non-profit organizations.  However, there are many more financially-rewarding arenas to occupy.  

The Pros of Non-Profits

1.    You can reach non-profits easily because they are part of trade groups and you can find public directories.  

2.    Working with non-profits as IT specialists is emotionally satisfying and gratifying because you are helping a cause.

The Cons of Non-Profits

1.    Thin profit margins.

2.    Possible bidding wars.  

Bidding Wars Explained

When you get into bidding wars for contracts, your firm becomes a commodity.  And when you bid against someone else’s specs as IT specialists, you can guess that your competitors could be falsely lowering the bid price and keeping you from making a real quote.  

Non-Profits and Government Bids

IT specialists will find that selling to private sector small businesses will be simpler than attempting to work with non-profit and government bids.  A lot of times, non-profit organizations and government entities have to take the quoted price.  

More Cons about Bidding Wars

When you are bidding on projects with non-profits as IT specialists, you don’t have trust, personality and credibility helping you very much.  The main factor is who can post the bond, follow the rules and be on time with the bid.  

You have to do a lot of non-billable work up front that in the private sector can go on a bill.  You will be doing a lot of researching, developing configurations and organizing.  And the contract might be a real long shot.  

Bid Smartly

IT specialists need to bid on non-profit jobs very wisely.  If you want to be competitive, you can’t bet your entire company on it.  Don’t spend more than 20% of your business development time and energy on chasing the bid.  Unless you are devoted entirely to non-profit organizations or government organizations, you are typically better positioned to focus on private sector small businesses.  

When you find a government organization that is looking for outsourced services specifically from IT specialists, you are going to have a better opportunity than if you encounter  someone just looking for hardware or a one-shot installation deal.  

The Main Idea

Non-profit organizations and government entities are better niche options for IT specialists than simply doing retail, but you have to be careful and weigh the pros and cons before getting involved.  

Blogged By:  Computer Consulting 101 Professional Kit

Computer consultants that want to test prospects to see if they are really potential long-term clients can use proving ground projects before signing any long-term agreements.  

What Are Proving Ground Projects?

For computer consultants, proving ground projects are the first projects they will complete with new customers that are not yet clients or steady clients.  Computer consultants can use this time to prove they know what they are doing and are dependable, easy to work with and offer great value.

The customers also use these projects to prove to computer consultants that their expectations are appropriate, they are compatible personality-wise and that the customer will pay for professional IT services.

Proving Ground Projects:  Be Observant

If computer consultants have a positive proving ground project experience, they are on the way to having a steady client.  Many times, computer consultants are not observant enough while doing the proving ground project and end up starting a relationship with a client that is a real problem.  They can’t let themselves get too excited about getting a new client and must look for the following signs:

1.    Does the prospect change his/her mind all the time?

2.    Is the prospect late for meetings?

3.    Is the prospect verbally abusive towards employees?

4.    Does the prospect believe that regular rules are non-applicable?

Computer consultants can’t rush into relationships until they appropriately qualify every prospect with proving ground projects.

Blogged By:  Joshua Feinberg

On Monday a major partner of IBM, MSI Systems Integrators said it added Hewlett-Packard to its vendor partner roster.  The announcement was made at HP’s America’s Conference in Las Vegas.  Jim Simpson, president of MSI Systems Integrators of Omaha, Nebraska conducted a question and answer session with representatives from HP to make the announcement.

MSI Systems Integrators’ president Simpson earned a position on CRN’s Top 25 most innovative industry executives.  He said the addition of HP was necessary in order to expand his own business and best serve his over 3,000 customers.   

Simpson acknowledged his company’s partnership with IBM and has no plans of discontinuing the relationship or its scope in the future.  His plan is to not have separate HP and IBM divisions, but to base his business around his clients, which is a good plan for systems integrators focusing on services.  HP representative Michael Hurd also likened the concept of multiple partners to the idea of a computer business having multiple product lines.  

MSI Systems Integrators entered into the partnership a great deal because of Hurd and HP’s enthusiasm for serving the channel.  Simpson reiterated that at no time did the company hide plans from IBM.  He also stated that he would consider acquiring an HP solution provider as part of his systems integrators team to help start his HP business if the opportunity presented itself.

Blogged By:  Computer Consulting Kit

CRN recently posted an article revealing 10 computer business predictions for 2008.  With everything from technological innovation to surprising news about large companies, this list of predictions provides some interesting insights.  These first five will get you started learning about some developments in the industry.  

1.    An unprofitable year for computer business giant AMD:  The California-based Advanced Micro Devices struggled in 2007 and lost hundreds of millions of dollars each of the three quarters it reported earnings.  AMD CEO Hector Ruiz is predicting there will not be profitability for the company until quarter 3 of 2008.  This is leaving many to wonder if the company will survive long term.

2.     On-going developments in the anti-trust case with Intel:  Computer business Intel continues to struggle with anti-trust lawsuits.  Many experts believe that Intel is being unfairly prodded and could see some real penalties in the coming year.  Still, these lawsuits have not changed the market very significantly, though if AMD goes out of business, many might look more closely at Intel.  

3.     Consolidation of computer business player Nvdia:  Many believe that this California-based company will use a CPU presence to change its relationship with CPU makers.  Many have speculated it will forge new partnerships in the coming year and perhaps merge with another company.  Regardless, the company could change the landscape of the computer business.  

4.    Increased use of virtualization technologies:  Many IT consultants and professionals are starting to think seriously about reducing energy use in regards to servers, and virtualization is quickly becoming an obvious solution.  Patrick Moorhead, vice president of advanced marketing at AMD states that 2006 was the year when virtualization proved its worth and 2007 was a time for testing and initial integration into businesses.  He and many others predict that in 2008 virtualization will become a widespread reality in the computer business.

5.    Increased use of graphics across the entire tech industry:  High-def digital media and gaming along with graphics and video processing have become more integral to PCs.  Computers with high-end graphics and GPU processing are going to become more affordable and accessible to more people.  There will be a large volume of software focused on better graphics and more interactive features as well.

For more of these 10 predictions for the computer business in 2008, visit the attached link.  

Blogged By:  Computer Consulting Kit