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IT Consulting: The Final Three StepsThese are the final three of the 21 steps you need to take to make your transition from part-timer moonlighting into full-time IT consulting.Step 19 Never Stop Meeting New People Attend networking meetings regularly. Keep expanding your IT consulting prospect file even when you’re really, really busy. You're always going to need people in your funnel. Get to know the organization's programming needs, what kind of speakers panels and educational programs they have, etc. Volunteer to speak at an upcoming meeting on an IT-related topic. Speaking is such a powerful way your clients. Speaking at a chamber of commerce event or rotary seminar can get you a huge pool of potential future IT consulting clients and business contacts. Step 20: Plan your first cold direct mail postcard campaign. It’s really important to use some kind of targeting method. Narrow it down to something so you’re picking a list of certain occupation certain industry so you can write advertising copy that can address their needs. Set a deadline for a free analysis. Mail a 1000 card postcard test and measure response. Assuming you get a decent response and you establish a control, mail 1000 or 2000 cards a month. You should look to spend $300 - $700 depending on how much your rented mailing list is. A good modest goal would be a 1 percent response rate so you get 10 to 20 inquiries for you to add to your IT consulting sales funnel. Step 21: Set Up an Effective Follow-Up System. Keep attending networking events, get the contacts that you meet at those networking events into an effective follow-up system, keep going to the meetings on a regular basis, and do targeted mail and keep doing those four things until you have enough leads and billable work. Even when you’re really, really busy, with IT consulting, keep up these activities. Go to a networking event every other week and still try to get some postcards out once a month because. Within ninety days, a good modest goal would be to pick up at least 3 to 5 steady clients so you can be well on your way to full-time IT consulting income. Go to the events so you can understand what’s driving your prospects nuts with their computers and how you can help. Develop a follow-up system so you can stay in front of them until they’re ready to raise their hands and say, "We need you now." Keep going to more of those meetings, get on the radar screen as an expert so you can be on panels and then gradually start to do some targeted direct mail. Copyright MMI-MMVI, Computer Consultants Secrets. All Worldwide Rights Reserved. {Attention Publishers: Live hyperlink in author resource box required for copyright compliance} china business news wholesale african drum manufacture wholesale brochure 11:19 - 2009-Oct-24 - comments {0} - post commentIT Consulting: Providing Services to Large/Small BusinessesIn IT consulting, you can provide your services to many different sized businesses. In this article, you'll learn about how you can fit in with the IT consulting needs of large/small businesses.Pick 2 or 3 of the networking skill sets that you need for the sweet spot. For example, you might pick advanced virus protection, firewall intrusion detection, VPNs and routers. So you are going to focus on security and border access kinds of things and that would be your IT consulting specialty. That's all you'd do. In Large/Small Business IT Consulting, It's All About Specializing You would get extremely deep and specialize by product platform. At that size, these companies bring in a real IT manager and put them on payroll for 40 hours a week. So these companies will want to handle a lot of the bread and butter infrastructure in-house. When Would In-House Staff Turn to You? When companies are paying a lot of outsourcing expenses, they'll often decide to put 40, 50, $60,000 a year person on the payroll. Once that person is on-staff, he will have a lot of pressure to keep their outsourcing expenses down, until they absolutely have to go above and beyond. Then they turn to deep niche specialists - a great opportunity for IT consulting. Copyright MMI-MMVI, Small Biz Tech Talk. All Worldwide Rights Reserved. {Attention Publishers: Live hyperlink in author resource box required for copyright compliance} business process management journal asset management system sell homes 11:00 - 2009-Oct-24 - comments {0} - post commentIT Consulting: Signs of a Sweet Spot ClientThere are no dead giveaways, but there are some signs that will let you know that a business is a good candidate for IT consulting. In this article, you'll learn some of these signs.Is the Company Expanding? When a business opens another office, they need PCs, other servers, and telecommunications lines. That presents you with a great IT consulting opportunity if they don’t already have someone in place. What Communications Technology Do They Have? Does the company have a phone system like a PBX system? You can build relationships with local phone retailers and that can lead to referrals and partnering in IT consulting. Does the company have an email domain? If they are looking at retrieving emails between spam, filtering and firewalls, there is a huge opportunity for IT consulting. Does the company have a dedicated server, and dedicated internet? Do Your Clients Depend on Online Sales? Once they move beyond the micro small business and start to add the real server, then they start to have more sophisticated IT needs that make them a sweet spot IT consulting candidate. Is the company required to do things online with their vendors, with their customers, with their regulators? If their systems are down, they’re losing a heck of a lot of money. You want clients like that - clients that are in the position where if their systems are down for a day they stand to lose tens of thousands of dollars. When they are big enough and have that kind of critical importance on IT, they're going to recognize the importance of what you do and follow what you recommend. In companies like that, IT is as critical a need as an accountant on April 14th. What Industries are Good Matches for IT Consulting? Healthcare, financial services and natural services are very dependent on IT consulting. That doesn’t mean you should exclude other industries. But that can tip the scale in terms of making them a stronger sweet spot candidate for IT consulting. Do They Have More than One Location? Do they have a branch office or any remote locations? The more offices and the more people they have working remotely, the more sophisticated setups they need like VPNs or remote access. That's where your IT consulting practice will come in Is the Company Used to Paying for IT? Has the company used technology providers or professional consulting firms in the past? Have they worked with Bars, solution providers, or integrators that shows they were willing to pay money for IT services? If so, that's good. If they spent money once, they are probably willing to spend money again. Copyright MMI-MMVI, Computer Consultants Secrets. All Worldwide Rights Reserved. {Attention Publishers: Live hyperlink in author resource box required for copyright compliance} estate planning trusts Michigan Yellow Pages Columbus Yellow Pages 11:00 - 2009-Oct-24 - comments {0} - post commentIT Consulting: Moving from Micro Businesses to the Sweet SpotIn IT consulting you have many different options in who you choose as your clients. Larger than the sweet spot businesses are the large small businesses, which provides a different IT consulting opportunity. Large/Small Businesses Defined Large/Small Businesses have 5-100 seats, 50-100 computers, anywhere from 50-200 employees and US annual revenue somewhere in the ballpark of 5 million up to 20 million. At that size, you are going to start running into a lot more publicly run corporations. They are generally going to have at least 2 or more dedicated servers. At that size, beyond the sweet spot you start to see something very different about the dynamics of working with that account. You start to see an in-house IT manager, in most cases that is hired to handle a lot of the generalist work. These Companies Have An On-Staff Professional These large/small businesses won’t just have a technician, coordinator, or guru. They will actually have a person whose skills on probably on par with yours. They may be vendor certified they may know a couple of different operating systems, a couple of different database platforms, or a software developer. Whatever it is, but they definitely have the skills to qualify them as a full-fledged IT pro. And they are brought in a lot of times to handle the generalist work. If you want to be able to provide IT consulting to these businesses, you’re going to need to deeply specialize. Copyright MMI-MMVI, Small Biz Tech Talk. All Worldwide Rights Reserved. {Attention Publishers: Live hyperlink in author resource box required for copyright compliance} emergency preparedness food payroll software system kitchen remodeling contractors 11:00 - 2009-Oct-24 - comments {0} - post commentIT Consulting: Medium Sized Businesses and Government ContractsAs you grow, should you go after government, city, state, municipality contracts like school district contracts? Maybe. They are an entirely different business model. When you are talking about selling to medium sized businesses, again go back and assess your tech skills.Assess what kind of skills you are bringing to the table and see how close you are to being able to being that deep into a few skills, because that is what these medium sized businesses are looking for. They are not looking for an outsourced version of a central IT manager. Going after government, city, state, municipality, public school districts, etc. involves bids, bid packets, bid surety bonds, long sales cycles, and a lot of politics. This stage of the game is a very different business model, very different than selling to the sweet spot of small businesses or even small businesses in general. Only go after these kinds of things after you have completely exhausted and completely saturated your sweet spot marketing roll out. In other words, don't persue them until most of the sweet spot small businesses within a 50 mile radius know who you are, they are in your prospect funnel, and you have grown them to the point that you have absolutely maximized them out and you still don't have enough business. This is pretty unlikely unless you are in the absolute middle of nowhere. You should consider supplementing your business base with some high-end micros- and some medium sized businesses before going after government work. This is because of the level of aggravation with the bids, then the politics and the waiting to get paid. It's not a very good place for people to be - especially in their start up stage. Copyright MMI-MMVI, Small Biz Tech Talk. All Worldwide Rights Reserved. {Attention Publishers: Live hyperlink in author resource box required for copyright compliance} tribal dance wear manufacturer office space movie 11:00 - 2009-Oct-24 - comments {0} - post commentIT Consulting: Considering the Hidden Costs of a Start-UpIn IT consulting, what does a $75 an hour consulting business equate to in the long run? What happens if your rate structure extends beyond that?If you keep carrying something like a $75 or $85 level beyond the grand opening special to get your first couple of clients, your business will become more of a hobby or non profit-type organization. Consider Overhead and Expenses You say, "How can that be? Why doesn’t $75 an hour equate to $150,000 a year?" Wrong, $75 an hour in running your own IT consulting business doesn’t come out to $150,000 a year because you can’t bill 2,000 hours a year. New consultants often fail to consider all the overhead and expenses that usually come up as an IT consulting business matures. The uninformed person just starting out usually believes that $75 an hour times 40 hours a week times 50 weeks a year is $150,000 a year in IT consulting revenue because they think they’re going to bill 40 hours a week every week. Know There Will Be Inconsistencies It’s not going to happen unless you’re working 100 hours a week, and it’s probably still not going to happen every week consistently, for many reasons. Starting an IT consulting business sounds great on the surface. You’re thinking, "I’m going to work from home. I’m going to keep my overhead as low as possible." Consider Your Utilization Rate You need to consider what’s called your utilization rate. It’s the reality of only being able to bill out, on average, about 75% of the 40 given hours in a week. It still can take you six months to a year to even get to that level consistently. The Bottom Line about IT Consulting Finally, one of the most important things new IT consulting businesses overlook is the question of what happens as your business grows and you want to scale up? In setting your rates, you need to consider these factors. Copyright MMI-MMVI, Small Biz Tech Talk. All Worldwide Rights Reserved. {Attention Publishers: Live hyperlink in author resource box required for copyright compliance} Wholesale Guitar, Voilin wholesale Canada Watches china exporters 11:00 - 2009-Oct-24 - comments {0} - post commentIT Consulting: Avoid Freebie Mooching SessionsIn starting an IT consulting business, make sure you avoid extended "freebie mooching sessions" disguised as sales calls. Make sure you’re not there for endless hours of brain-picking that’s leading nowhere.You need to know exactly which kinds of prospects to focus on at all times. This will drive your qualification process toward the larger sweet spot small business clients. Who to Talk to For your IT consulting business, you need to know what kind of prospects you should be talking to at networking events. You should be sizing up people within the first 30 or 60 seconds of the conversation. Find out what they do, what their company is like, do they have and use computers, and how many computers they have. These are three or four key questions that will determine, very quickly, whether you’re talking to someone who’s got a future or whether you’re completely wasting your time. Get an Accountant Do not try to become an expert on tax code. Get a good accountant early on. That can also be a really great referral source, not only for their business, but for your IT consulting business. The Client Acquisition Business Remember that, when forming a new IT consulting business, you are not in the technology business; at least not for the early stages of your business. You are in the client acquisition business. As your IT consulting business grows, your focus is going to be more on providing technology services to those clients, but in the early stages, don’t worry about keeping up with the latest and greatest IT stuff. The Bottom Line about IT Consulting The most important thing for your start-up IT consulting business is finding good, solid, long-term, high-paying, steady small business clients in that sweet spot. Copyright MMI-MMVI, PC Support Tips .com. All Worldwide Rights Reserved. {Attention Publishers: Live hyperlink in author resource box required for copyright compliance} the lean manufacturing Apparel Industry Network Wholesale Watches Cheap 11:00 - 2009-Oct-24 - comments {0} - post commentIT Consultants: Recommend Clients Buy Video Monitors Along with PCsAlthough there are really no major compatibility issues to consider between PCs and monitors, most PC vendors offer good deals on monitors purchased at the same time as desktop PCs. In this article, we'll assume you are IT consultants who recommend brand name PC products to your clients.IT Consultants: What Are You or Your Clients Actually Paying? For due diligence, IT consultants should always price the PC with and without the monitor, to see what you or your clients are actually paying. Then look to see whether that monitor price is in line with purchasing a comparable monitor separate from the PC. However, besides the purchase price, there are some even greater soft cost considerations. When purchasing the monitor along with a desktop PC, the monitor warranty generally is incorporated into any on-site warranty coverage with the PC. That means, if a client’s monitor needs replacement during the on-site warranty period, the PC vendor usually will arrange to cross-ship a replacement monitor. IT Consultants: Know The Benefits of Warranties This provides a few very compelling benefits. • No need to store and retain packing materials. Your clients don’t have to worry that they’ve thrown away the box and packing materials for the monitor. There’s no need to purchase return shipping supplies as they’ll be able to return the broken monitor in the same box their replacement comes in. • Save time with freight logistics. Your clients doesn’t have to locate a shipping outlet. In most cases, the PC vendor in-cludes return shipping labels (call tags) for a specific freight carrier - generally the same freight carrier used for shipping the replacement to them. • Save money on freight costs -- If the PC vendor supplies return shipping labels, your client won’t have to pay for return freight. Depending on the monitor size, origination and destination shipping points, this easily can save your client $25 or more. While the third bullet point affects your clients’ direct out-of-pocket costs, the first two items can be labor-intensive chores for you or your clients’ internal computer administrators ("internal gurus"). So, buying a monitor along with a PC, and getting both purchases folded into on-site warranty coverage, easily can save a half-hour to an hour (or more) every time a monitor needs replacement. Copyright MMI-MMVI, Computer Consulting 101 Blog. All Worldwide Rights Reserved. {Attention Publishers: Live hyperlink in author resource box required for copyright compliance} source inventory management Little Rock Arkansas Yellow Pages alberta occupational safety 10:59 - 2009-Oct-24 - comments {0} - post commentIT Consultants: Provide Hardware Selection Services To Your ClientsOver the years, as IT consultants, you’ve probably supported thousands of PC hardware configurations. During this time period, you likely have formulated a strong opinion of what PC hardware specs make for a solid purchase recommendation.However, in order to properly position your professional expertise, it’s important to be able to convey this hardware selection benefit effectively to clients. After all, "everyone" is an expert at buying PCs, right?!? Not! IT Consultants Can Help Clients Choose Right the First Time Choosing the right PC specs can save your clients big money on unpredictable installation and support costs. In a perfect world, all software and hardware vendors claiming compatibility, under a particular operating system or PC environment, would have products that work well together. But, this isn’t a perfect world. IT Consultants Can Save Their Clients Time and Frustration You can save your clients considerable time and potential aggravation, and pick up substantial service revenue, by getting actively involved in the selection of various hardware components and software programs that come preinstalled with the purchase of a new PC. IT Consultants Can Save Their Clients Money with Hardware and Software Solutions In much the same way that you’ll often find greater overall value by getting more menu items bundled into a complete dinner at a restaurant, rather than a la carte, you'll find the same thing with computer purchasing. It often makes small business sense for your clients to purchase various hardware components and upgrades with the purchase of the PC -- as opposed to shopping for these hardware components and upgrades a la carte at a later date. IT Consultants Can Help Determine the Value of The Components The challenge however is knowing which components and upgrades are "worth" it, which are a waste of money and which are a potential land mine of tech support troubles. That’s where your firm steps in to save the day! Copyright MMI-MMVI, Computer Consulting Blog. All Worldwide Rights Reserved. {Attention Publishers: Live hyperlink in author resource box required for copyright compliance} annual industrial marketing trends survey business security system digital asset management for photographers 10:59 - 2009-Oct-24 - comments {0} - post commentIT Consultants: Guide Your Clients Toward Small Business PC HardwareAs IT consultants, you may recall that in the early to mid-‘90s, leading PC vendors began segmenting their product lines into two or three distinct tiers to meet the demands of the different needs of consumers.IT Consultants Have Different Component Levels to Choose From As the domestic and global market demand for desktop PCs, notebooks and servers began to soar, top PC vendors such as Compaq (now Hewlett Packard), Dell, Gateway, Hewlett Packard and IBM wanted to have PC products that would be highly relevant and compelling for various needs and budgets. The Different Options Enterprise customers, such as Fortune 1000 network man-agers, would pay premium prices but require incredible amounts of scalability, reliability and availability, stable and mature hardware configurations, as well as ease of manage-ability. Home users would need rock-bottom prices to entice first-time buyers, as well as bleeding edge hardware components for gaming, digital photography, video capture and other Internet-era hobbies. Small business users would need something in between -- not too stripped down, not too loaded up, but a very good mid-range value. IT Consultants Can Compare Specs Fortunately, the PC vendors also have made identifying appropriate products easier for both you and your clients. When researching PC configurations online for your clients, PC vendors’ Web sites almost always will have separate Web pages and sections for each of these three market segments. This helps to make sure IT consultatns inadvertently don’t recommend a PC with the wrong set of features. IT Consultants Can Profit From White Box Computer Sales A big percentage of small businesses Worldwide purchase white-box or clone PCs from local computer resellers, integrators and IT consultants. Visit the major PC vendors’ Web sites periodically to see how your firm’s recommended small business PC configurations and price points compare to what the major PC vendors offer. Copyright MMI-MMVI, Small Business Computer Consulting .com. All Worldwide Rights Reserved. {Attention Publishers: Live hyperlink in author resource box required for copyright compliance} life coaching business corporate branding agency customer relationship management systems 10:57 - 2009-Oct-24 - comments {0} - post comment |
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