IT Consulting: Which Qualities Define a Sweet Spot Client?

While you can never tell with 100% accuracy which IT consulting prospects will be sweet spot clients, there are some qualities to look for that will help.

Is the Prospect’s Company Expanding?

A business opening an additional office will need PCs, more servers and telecommunications lines. This type of expansion can lead to an IT consulting opportunity, particularly if the company does not already have a professional.

Which Communications Technology Does the Prospect Have?

If the prospect’s company has a PBX phone system or something similar, you can establish relationships with local phone retailers and potentially get referrals and partnering opportunities.

If the prospect’s company has an email domain and is looking to retrieve emails between spam, filtering and firewalls, you will find yourself with a potentially large IT consulting possibility. Also determine whether or not the company has a dedicated server and internet.

Are Online Sales Integral to the Prospect’s Business?

Once a prospect has decided to add a real server, he/she will have much more complicated IT needs that will make IT consulting necessary and prime the prospect to be a possible sweet spot client. Ask yourself if the company needs to do tasks online with vendors, customers or regulators.

If the answer is yes, system downtime will translate to huge financial losses. You want IT consulting clients that have a lot to risk if systems go down. When a company is large enough with a dependency on IT, the attached prospect will know how important your recommendations are and that your IT consulting expertise is absolutely necessary to success.

Which Industries Most Need IT Consulting?

Healthcare, financial services and natural services are just three of the industries that most need IT consulting. Think about other industries that really rely on IT, and you will find yourself with a list of sweet spot candidates.

Prospects with Multiple Locations

If a prospect has a branch office or remote locations, there will be sophisticated IT consulting needs.

Is the Prospect Accustomed to Paying for IT Consulting?

If the company has already used IT services professionals in the past or worked with Bars, solution providers or integrators, they are more likely than not to be willing to pay for your IT consulting services. A company that spends money once will spend it again.

The Bottom Line About Sweet Spot IT Consulting Clients

Look for signs that the prospects you’re targeting might be good IT consulting candidates, and you could build many healthy long-term relationships that will sustain your firm over time.

Added By: Computer Consulting Kit

IT Spending and Handling Your Clients' Hardware Budgets

Perhaps you are working with clients that have had such great financial results recently that they are ready to change their IT spending habits. Perhaps now is the time for you to help them make technology investments, most particularly PC hardware purchases.

Influence Your Clients’ IT Spending Habits

As an outsourced IT department, you should encourage clients to use surplus funds for IT spending or some other technology-related item, such as end user or administrator training that can help them best use PC hardware, software or networking items. Training can help companies improve productivity.

You Can Train Your Clients

Your firm can offer clients’ formal or informal one-on-one training. By taking over training, you are earning easy money and helping your clients remain consistent with what they learn and implement. If you are involved in every step of the process of IT for your clients, you avoid the risk of them using outside resources and opening themselves up to conflicting advice and information or poaching by competing consultants.

Client Connection Speeds

Your clients might also consider using IT spending to upgrade Internet access speeds in order to improve performance. How your clients use their IT spending is a personal decision, but you can encourage them to think about the future and recommend they break tradition in favor of satisfying long-term business goals.

Added By: Computer Consulting Kit

Bundled Hardware and PC Purchases: Two Things That Make Sense Together

You can save clients’ money on PC purchases by getting hardware parts factory-installed. If you make CD-RW drives and network cards part of the initial purchase costs, while you might seem to be initially taking away service revenue from your firm, you are actually planning for the future.

Think Bigger and Better

Computer consultants thinking ahead to the changing marketplace should always be thinking about their next opportunity as solution providers. If you are truly thinking ahead, PC purchases that include a $49 component will not be a big deal, because you should be looking ahead to bigger projects like $10,000 network upgrades or $25,000 projects.

PC vendors will make very little additionally on hardware components that are part of PC purchases. Bundled hardware items make more sense for clients’ tight budgets and makes you available to think about offering sophisticated computer consulting services.

Personal Service for Clients

Giving up revenue by suggesting bundled hardware sends an important message to clients – you are willing to do what is right for them even if you miss out on some billable hours. Clients will trust you and remain loyal if they think you have their best interest in mind with all the solutions you provide.

Because clients are thinking, intelligent small business owners just like you, they will appreciate and reward integrity when you suggest bundled PC purchases, which will in turn give great advertising for your company.

Blogged By: Computer Consulting Kit

Finding the Ideal Computer Consulting Clients

If you hope to make a good living as an owner of your own computer consulting business, you need to truly find a niche and get a good intuition about which clients are ideal and which you should simply pass by. You have to become great at spotting your best small business computer consulting prospects.

There Are a Lot of Small Businesses

There are literally millions of small businesses in the U.S. and abroad. You will probably find tens of thousands of small businesses in your local area as well. If you get involved with the wrong computer consulting clients, your business will never grow.

Seek Out the Best Accounts

You have to know where to locate the best computer consulting accounts for your company. You need to know when and how to just say, “No.” You should be well-versed in determining when a small business will make a gratifying client.

When you seek out the best computer consulting clients, you will feel career satisfaction consistent with the reason you decided to open your own computer consulting business instead of staying with your traditional IT career.

Think About Your Finances

Your computer consulting business must make money in order to survive. You want to get a stable source of recurring revenue. Not all small businesses are the same, and you can’t afford to be charitable with PC support.

The Main Idea About Your Computer Consulting Business

You want to be empathetic to your prospects and clients and do a truly great job. But you have to be mindful of your own needs and make sure your computer consulting business will last long term.

Added By: Computer Consulting Kit

Outsourcing IT Services is Useful -- You Don't Know Everything!

When your prospects ask you for products and services beyond your expertise, you are going to have to engage in IT services outsourcing. You can’t fear the fact that you will not be able to offer every possible solution and service to prospects and clients yourself, because you cannot possibly know everything and be successful.

One of the best features of the IT services industry is that there are a lot of people available for outsourcing. During start-up, you have to focus on getting business, networking and relationship marketing and not on knowing everything about every imaginable technical component. You should rely on IT services outsourcing to fill in the gaps of your own expertise and create trusting relationships with and comprehensive solutions for prospects and clients.

You want to offer prospects a comprehensive range of services, and particularly the IT services they need. There are two methods by which to accomplish full service for prospects: set up referral relationships with other niche technology providers in your local area; set up partnerships and relationships with subcontractors.

The fastest and simplest method by which to set up outsourcing for IT services is to establish partnerships and relationships with subcontractors. However, if you keep getting a lot of requests for the same IT services, you will want to think about offering them in-house. When there is a need for specific IT services, you don’t want to risk investing extraordinary amounts of time and money finding and keeping subcontractors.

The Main Point About Outsourcing and IT Services

You can’t possible know everything about everything. Prospects will inevitably eventually ask for IT services you can’t provide by yourself. Rather than lose the relationship, you should use IT services outsourcing to fill in the gaps of your service and build relationships that will help make your company a success.

Added By: Computer Consulting Kit

For the Best IT Support, Wear Multiple Hats

When you first start your IT support business, you will be wearing all the hats, including the sales hats, technical hats and the administrative hats. You will be doing all the work until you have established your company enough so you can delegate some responsibilities to salespeople or technical people.

Why is Wearing So Many Hats Important During Start-Up?

If you are neither skilled at sales techniques, nor skilled at technical aspects of IT support, you are already behind. Your competitors will all be wearing all these hats, most particularly during startup.

Your IT support firm will typically be competing for sweet spot clients against one-person consultants working from home with little or no overhead. These people are typically great technically, but are also highly skilled at sales.

When Should You Pass Out Hats?

You could have a good technical person during startup and keep that person very busy, along with a good a good full-time salesperson. However, usually your IT support business will take time to develop. As the owner, you will start as the salesperson AND the technical person. As your company grows, your firm will start subcontracting overflow ad specialty work, which will allow you more time for sales calls.

When you reach the point where you have a few subcontractors and consistent work, you will realize the money you are spending on subcontractors could fund someone new on payroll.

The Main Point About IT Support

You need to realize that some competitors will be great at both sale and technical tasks right away. Think about this fact as you start to grow your IT support business.

Blogged By: Joshua Feinberg

As IT Consultants, Stress the Importance of Small Business PC Hardware

IT consultants know that the early- to mid-90’s saw PC vendors creating two or three different product levels in order to cater to the different needs of customers.

IT Consultants Can Choose Different Component Levels

Top PC vendors, including HP, Dell, Gateway and IBM started making PC products more relevant to the different needs of IT consultants and their clients as desktop PCs became more popular.

Hardware Options

Enterprise customers, including Fortune 1000 network managers and others previously had to pay high prices for products that were reliable and easy-to-use along with sophisticated enough to handle diverse business needs.

On the flip side, IT consultants noted that home users could only be tempted by low prices and products that would give them great gaming, digital photography options and other Internet hobbies.

On the other hand, small business users needed an in-between option that was not too bare but also not too loaded and would fall into the mid-price range.

IT Consultants Compare Product Features

PC vendors have made figuring out products easier for IT consultants and their clients. PC vendor websites now have separate Web pages for each of their products to make sure no mistakes are made when choosing the model that’s best for customers.

IT Consultants and White Box Computer Sales

Many small businesses globally are purchasing white box and clone PCs from computer resellers, integrators and others. As IT consultants, you should visit major PC vendor websites frequently to see how you can best fulfill the needs of clients with the latest products.

Added By: Joshua Feinberg

Computer Consultant Skills and Your Ability to Be Your Own Boss

If you are in the start-up phase of a business, there are some things you need to know about computer consultant skills and how you can be your own boss. You basically need to have basic business skills and the motivation to be a computer consultant.

The Importance of Motivation

Part of becoming a computer consultant is really, really wanting to do it. Doing anything that requires work, perseverance and time takes a lot of determination and motivation. You can expect tough weeks and tough days, but you can also expect that if you really want it, becoming a computer consultant will be worth the work you put into it.

Create a Detailed Plan

You need to know the steps you will need to complete week-by-week as you get through the first few months as a computer consultant. You will need a plan for what you need for your office, your car and how to set up credit policies. You will also have to know how to gauge your competition, how to network and who you need to talk to as an aspiring computer consultant in order to get ahead.

You will have to figure out expenses, what to bill out, how to organize, what to buy and what not to buy. You need to work more efficiently and get paid for your time appropriately. All these business skills are teachable, so you need not worry if you are not totally secure about them.

Become a Computer Consultant

If you can successfully master software applications and network operating systems and hardware devices, why can’t you wrap your head around important business skills you need to be a successful computer consultant?

Added By: Computer Consulting Kit