Part of project management in IT consulting is figuring out how to price IT audits.  Pricing IT audits should be based on your rate, but you will have to also be prepared to offer a discount to get to the next step in IT sales.  

Your Hourly Rate is Your Guide

When dealing with project management and pricing IT audits, you should take your hourly billing rate and figure out that you will be spending about three hours on site.  You will also spend another hour in the shop writing up reports for IT audits and providing an estimate.  Think about your average hourly billing rate and add it up.  

You can guess that, when all is said and done, you will probably spend about five hours on an IT audit.  Figure this into your idea of project management for this and do the math.  Make sure you round down to figure out the discount.   

Don’t Bill the Full Amount

Your goal when thinking about pricing IT audits and project management with this task is to get to the next step in the sales process.  You are not billing at the full amount or by the hour.  You want to let prospects and customers know that they can afford your services and you are not just there to run up a bill.  Your goal is to find out what your prospects’ problems are, help them organize and help them figure out what needs to be addressed.  

Expect to spend a couple hours coming up with recommendations on what to do first, what it will cost them and when you can schedule it.  Don’t give away expertise for free, but also don’t look to get a typical hourly billing rate when figuring out the project management for IT audits.  

You Should Discount

You want prospects to open up their wallets and show they will spend money on your services.  Even if you don’t get 50 or 75 percent of your normal hourly billing rate with IT audits, you can consider the process a sales cost.

Think about charging anywhere from $250 to $350.  If you want to get aggressive, don’t go lower than $199 or $200.  Make it a fixed price to help with good project management and find out if the prospect will be able to spend money.

Blogged By:  Computer Consulting 101 Professional Kit