Small Business Computer Consulting

What is an elevator speech in IT marketing?  Simply put, it’s a fast introduction to yourself and your company that doesn’t sound too generic and has personality.  You want to get a speech that is somewhere from 10-20 seconds long and use it whenever you meet a prospect at a networking event.  

Your elevator speech needs to discuss what your company does, why you are unique and why a prospect should consider you to help with computer problems.

Your Elevator Speech it Essential to Your IT Marketing Plan

The term “elevator” speech is based on the following concept – You get into an elevator on the 20th floor of a building with someone and by the time you get to the ground floor, both of you should have time to talk about your respective businesses.  Your elevator speech should become like a reflex.

Practice Makes Perfect

As part of your IT marketing plan, write out your elevator speech on an index card and keep it in your pocket.  Look at it when you are at a traffic light or before you go on sales calls.  The more you work at perfecting it, the better it will become.  Rehearse it with those close to you until it is an absolute reflex.  

The idea is to get an IT marketing short elevator speech that will be comfortable to deliver and appropriate for any expos, seminars or other networking events you attend.

Added By:  Joshua Feinberg

If you are like any other IT consulting professional, you may have questions about time management.  How can you focus on finding long-term B2B clients when you already feel maxed out working 60-80 hours per week?  The solution is not easy, but you have some options.

The IT Consulting Time Study

If you examine where you are spending most of your IT consulting time, you can figure out if you can delegate, automate or eliminate some tasks.  For example, if you find yourself building PCs and putting in motherboards and power supplies 10 hours per week, this simple task could probably be delegated.  If you are minding traffic in your store, you should probably delegate that as well.  

How Does Delegating Help?

You should think about which tasks you can delegate based on the staff you have already.  When you delegate, you can often free up a day or a day and a half each week that can be spent finding IT consulting clients.

How Do You Use Extra IT Consulting Time?

To get clients, you can go to networking events, plan marketing campaigns, go out on sales calls and also make follow-up phone calls to cultivate relationships.  

Time Management and IT Consulting

If you are already working a lot of hours per week, you just need to find the time to do what you have to do to find IT consulting clients.

Blogged By:  Joshua Feinberg

If you are trying to be a computer business consultant, you can do quite well when starting by moonlighting.  This also allows you to figure out if you like being a computer business consultant before you decide to do it full time on your own.

Real Billable Hours

When you moonlight as a computer business consultant, you get to know what real billable hours are.  As an example, if you spend 10 hours working, you might only be able to bill for four.  This is just the way it works and something you need to learn for yourself to understand completely.

Why Are Some Hours Non Billable for a Computer Business Consultant?

The other responsibilities of running your own business typically are what make up most of your non-billable hours in computer consulting.  You will spend time on marketing, business development, paperwork, organization, billing and collections and basic accounting duties.

You have to learn what owning your own computer consulting business is all about first-hand, and moonlighting can be a way to do this.  If you don’t find out before you start, you may discover you don’t like it and are not really cut out for the industry and find yourself stuck.  

Moonlighting Has its Benefits

The biggest benefit of moonlighting when you are thinking of being a computer business consultant while you still have a day job is that you take some of the pressure off yourself.  If you end up not liking consulting, you haven’t lost anything.  But you still have a good way to get your foot in the door and learn about the industry without making a big commitment.

Added By:  Computer Consulting Kit

Many consultants decide to be computer resellers.  But is this a smart move?

What Does it Mean to Be Computer Resellers?

Some consulting firms prefer to be pure consulting firms because they don’t think they can make a cent off products and don’t want to deal with the conflicts that reselling demands.  These pure computer consulting firms help clients decide what to buy, specs and also show them where to buy products but to not peddle the products themselves.  

Purchasing Agents

Purchasing agents are a variation on pure computer consulting firms and computer resellers.  If you are a purchasing agent, you do the purchasing for clients and your firm bills clients for a couple hours to perform that task.  Your firm is responsible for getting and looking at quotes, placing and tracking orders and following the purchasing process through until the end.  

Hybrid Consulting Firms

Hybrid consulting firms are those in which consulting businesses become computer resellers for some products but not others.  A lot of computer resellers in this capacity do white box PC reselling, selling PC clones.   Computer resellers that offer this service are offering non-branded desktops, servers and sometimes notebooks (white books).

Should You Be Computer Resellers?

In order to decide whether or not you want to join the ranks of other computer resellers, you have to think about how you want to spend your time.  Do you want to get some additional profit off product sales or have your income mostly come from pure consulting services? No matter what, to put yourself in a strong position you can’t lead off with being computer resellers in your sales pitch.   

Will Being Computer Resellers Put You in a Good Position?

In most cases, can being computer resellers really put you ahead and get your foot in the door?  In most cases, honestly the answer is no.  This is because when you label yourself as a reseller you position yourself as a commodities broker.  Customers will most likely not hire a commodities broker to do consulting, because they have you labeled in their minds as a cheap source and not a high-end professional services firm.

If you want to be computer resellers, resell to people that already have consulting relationships with you and make sure you get a decent profit margin for your time, capital, space, staff and overhead.  

Added By:  Computer Consulting 101 Professional Kit

The world’s most successful I.T. business consultants in charge of hedge funds, Renaissance Technologies reported their first annual loss since 1988.  Its Renaissance Institutional Equities Fund experienced a 1% decrease in the past year.  

The U.S.-based I.T. business consultants launched this particular fund in 2005, with a capacity of $100 billion, which is five times larger than any other hedge fund.  The fund lost .95% in the 12 months ending in December according to experts working with the I.T. business consultants.  The fund was hurt by an eight-month long string of losses that totaled 6.27%.  

The I.T. business consultants at Renaissance manage the Medallion fund, a $5 billion fund driven by the technology business that has made on average 34% per year since it was launched in 1988.  The firm bought out the last investor in the Medallion fund in 2005 and since then has not experienced any returns.   

Renaissance was founded by a math professor, Jim Simons who has raised $26 billion for the Renaissance Institutional Equities fund.  This fund is also driven by computers, but has loftier targets than other funds of the same type; according to Reuters investors have asked to redeem $4 billion in capital since this loss by the I.T. business consultants.

For more information on this story about I.T. business consultants and Renaissance visit the attached link.

Added By:  Joshua Feinberg

If you want to establish a unique specialty as a business computer consultant, you need to narrow your industry focus.  

Copy Your Best Clients

You need to find more prospects that are just like your current best clients as a business computer consultant.  Put active clients into a Microsoft Excel worksheet in columns.  In the first column, enter the client names then separately list their revenue for the last 12 months in the next column.  Divide by 12 to figure out the monthly income and determine the value of your clients.  

As a business computer consultant, this exercise helps you figure out who should get the best services, who is worth keeping and who is really paying your bills.  

Put Clients into Categories

Look at your best and most active clients and customers and find out who is in three separate categories:

1.    Micro small businesses with fewer than 10 systems;

2.    Sweet spot small businesses with 10-50 PCs;

3.    Very large companies that may not be serviceable unless you get staff with more advanced technical skills.

This exercise will help you find clients more like the clients that are your best as a business computer consultant.  Look for similarities between your best clients and become a specialist in this area.  Are they doctors?  Are they office managers or controllers or lawyers?  Figure it out and find more of them.   

Narrow Your Focus

If you narrow your focus as a business computer consultant you will stand out as an expert.  No matter what your specialty, you can find a good focus.    

What is Your Professional Background?

Your own industry expertise as a business computer consultant can be a good place to start.  When you present your business to prospects, you will already know about their field of business, which will be a major selling point.

Added By:  Joshua Feinberg

Computer business Lenovo is on the brink of offering more services in the U.S. as it will announce later this month that it will start selling consumer PCs in the U.S. and 13 other countries.  The company bought IBM’s PC business in 2005 and has been expanding steadily.  

Lenovo will initially offer three entertainment-centric notebooks ranging from $800 to $1200 and then introduce a line of desktop PCs.  

This move will mean lower PC prices for consumers working with the computer business and more choices.  This will provide new competition for other market leaders such as Hewlett-Packard and Dell.  Lenovo is currently the third most popular computer maker in the world.

Experts predict computer business Lenovo will provide the biggest threat to Dell because Dell is just starting out in retail after years of operating under a different business model.  A spokesperson from Dell stated that while the company takes its competitors seriously, it is more interested in serving its customers.

While Lenovo is not new to the computer business in China, it is new to the U.S. market.  It has previously avoided entering the competitive consumer market in the U.S. and some other countries.

For more information on this computer business story, visit the attached link.

Blogged By:  Computer Consulting Kit

As a virtual IT specialist, you need to reach your target audience with your marketing materials.  Gathering information about prospects and your niche can help.

Study What Your Virtual IT Clients Do

As an example, if you are trying to get to small medical offices, you need to learn about their specific business issues.  Subscribe to industry publications, newsletters and other publications that will help you get to know medical office managers:  Medical Economics; Financial Management Strategies; Medical Group Management Association publications.

(While these resources are based in the U.S., there are many other worldwide.)  Start reading publications and get to know what is keeping the business managers in your niche up at night, driving their decisions and making them hurt.  What are their security issues and general IT issues?  

Give Good Virtual IT Solutions to Clients

You need to figure out how small medical offices are using technology to help them be more efficient.  No matter which industry you decide is your focus, you need to know the big trends that are happening currently.  As a virtual IT specialist, that is what is expected of you.  

Virtual IT:  A “Virtual CIO”

When you go to meet prospects armed with knowledge about their industry, you are not just a virtual IT firm that provides products or fixes generic software problems.  You are a virtual CIO capable of analyzing their special business needs and making recommendations, creating long-term plans and making them happen on time and at or under budget.

You Are Not a Commodity

When you act as a good virtual IT expert, you are not just a techie.  You are an IT specialist that understands unique business problems, and your clients will know that you will not need a ton of training to get moving on solving their biggest problems.

Blogged By:  Computer Consulting Kit

VARs and other users that want to figure out the telecommunications and VoIP aspects of MS Office Communications Server were recently given a resource online to give them hands-on lab training.  TECHtionary.com announced its Virtual OCS Labs, which is the next step to its Communications Server Essentials 101 Introduction and 201 courses.

The new labs give VARs remote OCS training so they can work with an online instructor in real time through a Webinar.  An onsite instructor is also available for those that prefer it.

Microsoft launched OCS in October, which created a new chance for the channel to deliver new services to customers and bring them new technologies. Particularly affected was unified communications sector.  Many are predicting that unified communications will be the latest and greatest application.  Many VARs involved with Microsoft have not dealt with telephony before, having handled mostly telephony and Exchange Server, Active Directory or other like components.  OCS will link all these components.

TECHtionary.com offers media tools for VARs to help train them in different technologies.  OCS lab  classes are designed specifically for VARs looking to get very specialized OCS training, including OCS standard and enterprise renditions, Office Communicator 2007, Exchange Server 2007 and Online Address Book, Office Web Access, Active Directory, Office 2007, Internet Information Server, Domain Name Server, etc.  For more information on this story for VARs, visit the attached link.

Added By: Computer Consulting Kit

If you own or manage your own computer consulting company, you may be finding the process of growing your computer consulting company’s profits challenging.  How can you focus your computer consulting firm’s profit and bottom line?  There are 7 profit secrets that can really jump start your business.

Where the Problem Starts

As you focus on your computer consulting profits, you may think the process will be easy.  However, it is a challenging business-focused discipline that escapes a lot of computer consulting firms.  

The problem is that many in the field get caught up in gadgets and great reseller channel programs at the expense of their business profits.  However, your computer consulting company is a BUSINESS, not a hobby or a charity, and you have to run it as such.  The following 7 tips can help you get more out of your business.

Profit Secret 1

You need to be motivated with your small business computer consulting clients and position your services as those in line with what a virtual CIO would do.  Look for ways to bring out the best in your clients’ businesses.  

Profit Secret 2

Dedicate yourself to improving the status quo.  It takes a lot to get great computer consulting clients, so you need to think about the lifetime value of your customers, not just one-shot deals.  Think about long-term planning and vision and persevere with the most complete solutions.  

Profit Secret 3

Get creative with your client relationships.  Small business technology solutions need to be modestly budgeted and work without an in-house IT staff.  Think creatively!

Profit Secret 4

Evaluate your clients’ systems – both the ones on paper and those that are computer based.  Part of your virtual CIO job will be looking at how clients’ systems are meeting or not meeting present and future needs.  This work will mostly be done during IT audits but can set you apart from other computer consulting firms.

Profit Secret 5

Think like your clients think.  What will THEIR clients need from them?  As a computer consulting business owner, you need to have good people skills and empathy for business problems.  But you also need to understand THEIR clients’ business problems to really bring them complete solutions.   

Profit Secret 6

You should keep up with advances and new versions.  When you are a virtual CIO for your computer consulting clients, they will rely on you to tell them which tools can better help your business grow.  Don’t let this training and R&D work take over all your time, but stay a few steps ahead of your clients’ needs all the time.  

Profit Secret 7

Summarize and communicate information to clients.  You need to figure out whether a new platform or tool can add value to your clients’ existing or future installations.  And you need to be able to summarize this information in language your computer consulting clients can understand.

Blogged By:  Joshua Feinberg