Clients Wearing Lots of Hats

Small business owners tend to focus on what they do best. Whether it’s selling houses, running restaurants, manufacturing specialty chemicals, practicing law, or preparing tax audits, small business owners generally devote nearly all their attention to their core business objectives and rarely leave time or energy to think about how technology fits into the competitive landscape. Many small business owners still perceive technology spending as expenses as opposed to investments.

Because small business owners are usually more resource-constrained than Fortune 1000 CEOs, small businesses look to get immediate return on investment (ROI) on their technology projects. So when implementing small business IT solutions, you need to provide some tangible, instant gratification. For many small businesses, this means e-mail, Web browsing, and network-based faxing.

When the small business owner does have first hand experience with computer or networking issues, the owner tends to only see a very small piece of the whole puzzle. For example, the small business owner may be familiar with how to use a checkbook management program such as Microsoft Money. Installation of this kind of program is very simple: just run the set-up program and you’re recording transactions 15 minutes later. Because that might be the full extent of the owner’s experience with computers and networks, the small business owner often overlooks such hidden, soft costs such as total cost of ownership (TCO). This includes testing, training, deployment, downtime, knowledge transfer, and ongoing support.

The small business owner also often tries to equate hourly billing rates from technology providers with those of his own internal staff. Part of your challenge is to educate the small business owner on why continual investments in training and retraining are such a critical component of making the best use of small business networks. Ultimately, it’s this training and the scarcity of those with similar skills that drives the levels of hourly billing rates for technology providers. Keeping current also is a big part of building a successful computer consulting practice.

Most small businesses generally don’t have the resources or the need to hire a full-time staff person dedicated to installing, upgrading, and maintaining their office PCs or network. Also bear in mind that clients generally don’t tell you the whole story. It’s your job to ask open-ended questions about the state of the technology used by the small business. Before you call on a small business prospect, it’s important to understand some of the key players in small business technology—the people you’ll likely run into providing day-to-day computer support. Generally these technology support functions are taken care of in one of three ways.

• The Volunteer: The owner or manager has a spouse, relative, or friend, who may be a teenager, plumber, actuary, or teacher (or any other conceivable profession for that matter), who dabbles in computers as a hobby, and who volunteers to help with occasional computer support needs after-hours.
• The Moonlighter: The owner or manager hires a moonlighter who has a day job in a related field with a larger organization. This person may be a SQL database administrator for a large brokerage house or a help desk manager for a hospital. Although the main difference between the volunteer and the moonlighter is compensation, moonlighters will often charge hourly rates substantially below market rates because they perceive the income to be supplemental. In addition, the lower hourly rate often offsets the small business’ inconvenience of having access to the moonlighter only after-hours, just like the volunteer. Small businesses generally only hire moonlighters when they can’t find a qualified volunteer who can step up to the plate for their support needs.
• The Internal Guru: Someone on staff knows just enough to handle many of the basic daily computer support needs. Usually this owner, manager, accountant, sales rep, or other staff member feels comfortable with routine tasks like updating antivirus software definitions, recovering lost Office toolbars, or creating user logon accounts. This same person, however, often lacks formal or on-the-job training on intermediate to advanced level topics and generally shies away from more complicated tasks like configuring DHCP scopes or Exchange Server public folders.

Sizing Up the Client’s Internal Guru

Regardless of the specific small business accounts that you’re servicing, the person who is currently providing network or computer support to these businesses probably doesn’t make his or her living servicing small business networks. This is where your firm comes into the picture. You’re the expert-in-training when it comes to installing, customizing, and supporting small business networks.

Although you may be the undisputed expert when it comes to TCP/IP, database-driven Web sites, or virtual private networks (VPN), it’s important to tread lightly when first beginning your engagement with the small business. Although your new client’s internal guru may have limited or in some cases totally inaccurate or inadequate knowledge of small business networks, the client’s guru has been the trusted technology advisor so far. Before you get too far along in sizing up whether the internal guru knows what he or she is talking about, you’ll want to subtly determine whether your firm is being brought in to supplement the internal guru or replace the guru.

If your firm will be supplementing the internal guru and your efforts will be collaborative in nature, you’ll want to spend some time getting to know this key, internal resource person. As you get further along in discussions, the guru will be able to tell you how the technology was installed, what’s the history behind the implementation, and how the technology was supported before you arrived. You’ll also want to find out what the guru’s real job is.

While each small business is unique, the following guidelines should help you gain a better understanding of the role of the internal guru.

1. Is the guru a decision-maker? A techie? Or both?
2. Does the guru feel threatened by your firm? How does the guru feel about external IT vendors?
3. Does the guru have aspirations to someday assume a full-time IT position?
4. How strong is the guru’s technical knowledge in various areas? Does the guru feel comfortable asking for help when overwhelmed?
5. Does the guru’s boss make the computer-support part of the guru’s job a priority? Or is it just a task that the guru gets to when time permits?
6. Has the guru ever had any formal training?

It’s also extremely important to find out the relationship between the internal guru and the owner(s) of the small business. Often the internal computer guru is a family member, relative, or longtime personal friend of one of the principals in the business.

Regardless of whether you’ll now be providing all of the computer or network support to this small business or just serving as an escalation point, it’s important for you to get the political lay of the land before voicing any controversial opinions, such as “That guy Bob is a total idiot when it comes to routers.”

Which technical skills do you need to help your clients work better with their own IT assets and run a successful computer training business?

Consider the following 4  tips to figure out which technical skills you need to help your clients best utilize their computers and other IT assets.

1. Know Which Technical Skills Help Your Computer Training Business.  Most profitable small business customers, those with 10 or more systems, need basic hardware, software, and networking support.  They need you to provide cost-effective IT training and consulting, so they can learn how to use what they have. So investigate the needs of your target clients and see which software packages they use.

2. Part of Your Computer Training Business is Teaching Clients about Accounting Applications.  Clients need to know how to manage their accounting needs.  Therefore, you will need to train yourself on popular accounting applications and share your knowledge with small business owners.

3. Learn About CRM Applications to Improve Your Computer Training Business.  Many small business computer consultants make CRM applications a part of their supported software. Always share important information about what you know in business terms with your valued clients.
   
   
4. Position Your Company for Long-Term, Ongoing Relationships. Most computer training businesses just focus on selling and delivering classroom training. The problem with this… the opportunity for repeat business is pretty limited. However by setting up a consulting division, you’ll be in a much better position to assist your clients in their initial installations and ongoing, long-term support needs.

In this article, we talked about 4 tips that help you run a computer training business along with your outsourced virtual IT consulting business. Learn more about how you can attract great, steady, high-paying clients for your computer training business and consulting services now at the attached link.  

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   1. IT Consultants Need to Be Proactive with Their Clients. You can’t afford to be labeled as another clueless geek. So you need to make sure you act as a Virtual CIO for hire. Be vigilant about finding new ways to enhance your clients’ businesses rather than just fixing broken desktops or servers.

   2. IT Consultants Are Dedicated to Their Task and Relentless about Improving the Status Quo. Getting and keeping great computer consulting clients takes a lot of work. You need to stay away from one-shot deal sales and focus on the value to your business of lifetime clients. Remember that you are offering total, complex business solutions. You are a long-term visionary that needs to plan ahead and have tremendous staying power and perseverance.

   3. IT Consultants Are Creative with Client Relationships. Small business technology solutions need to be low cost, but incredibly effective. These IT solutions also need to work without the need for an in-house IT staff. In order to meet these challenges, you will often need to think outside the box and be incredibly resourceful.

   4. IT Consultants Evaluate How Their Clients’ Paper-Based Systems and Computer-Based Systems Work. Part of your role as a Virtual CIO is to see how existing client systems are meeting or not meeting present and future needs. Most of this work will be done during initial technology assessments, which will need to also be a point of focus as you are growing relationships with small businesses and setting you apart from the competition.

   5. IT Consultants Think About What Their Clients Need from Them. As a computer consulting business owner, you must have good people skills and empathy for your clients’ business problems. But true Virtual CIO’s dig in and learn about their clients’ customers’ business problems when designing solutions.

   6. IT Consultants Keep Up with Technology Advances and New Versions. If you are going to be a real Virtual CIO, you need to advise clients on which tools can best help their businesses grow. While you can’t let this R & D and training eat up your entire weekly schedule, you need to stay a few steps ahead of your clients’ needs.

   7. IT Consultants Summarize and Share New Advances with Clients. Your R & D and training on new technology has to have one objective: finding out how a new platform or tool can add value to your clients’ existing or future installations. You need to be able to describe how new products or services can benefit non-technical small business owners in language they can understand.

 
In this article, we introduced 7 business-building secrets that can help IT consultants grow their businesses. Learn more about how IT consultants can get great, steady, high-paying clients now at the attached link.
 
Copyright (C), ITConsultantsSecrets.com, All Rights Reserved

If you decide to become a laptop reseller or to resell any sort of products, you need to think carefully about how you will use it as part of your services. Many resellers negotiate with companies for a certain quantity of product at a certain percentage off the list price.  But you typically have to sell a LOT of laptops to make this worth your while.  And the amount you will spend on marketing will typically far exceed the profit you will get.

The truth is, margins in the electronics business unless you are a HUGE company are not great.  Your best bet if you really want to become a laptop reseller is to work on building relationships with clients and offer advice on the right products to help them round out sophisticated solutions and help procuring them.

To learn more about reselling and what it means to become a laptop reseller (or a reseller of any other product!) visit the attached link.

Blogged By:  Computer Consulting Kit

Being a specialist and marketing yourself as such in small business computer consulting is essential to solving complex problems, and systems integrators perform a lot of complex tasks that can be very rewarding.

Three Things to Know about Systems Integrators

1.    Systems integrators specialize in bringing together subsystems that are part of larger systems and making sure everything works together.  In the IT industry, systems integrators typically integrate multiple systems that contribute to inputting, processing, interpreting, storing and putting data into categories.  

2.    Systems Integrators have to excel at putting clients’ needs together with technology products.  While systems integrators are specialists, they need to be very good at generalist tasks, and like many other computer consultants will find themselves doing a lot of “generalist” tasks such as diagnostic and troubleshooting work.  

3.    Good small business systems integrators excel at presenting technical information in easy-to-understand business terms.  Communication – as it is with any other IT consulting specialty – is critical to building successful relationships with clients.

Today we talked a little bit about what systems integrators do and the skills you might need to participate successfully in this specialized IT field.  To learn more about this subject and many more, visit the attached link!

Added By:  Computer Consulting Kit

You need to ask this question on a regular basis, both in surveys and in person as you are doing work, at least a couple times per year.  The suggestions you get will be incredibly enlightening!  Usually they will tell you things you can implement without charging them another cent like e-mail reminders about scheduled visits, etc.  Other times you might get suggestions on how you can improve the benefits you offer, such as response time or specific specialties.  Take to heart those that would actually improve your business and consider which ones just won’t work.

2.    “Is there anything else IT-related that your company needs?”

Even if you’ve been providing stellar service, sometimes you might overlook something that is really bothering them (or maybe they’ve been too afraid to ask!) related to their IT assets.  Make sure you regularly ask for their concerns with their IT assets and how it is working to inform the sophisticated solutions you provide.

3.    “Do you know anyone else – business associates, friends, family members, etc. in the area that could use some help with computer problems?”

To give your clients some help as your extended sales force, spend a minute or two when you ask this question (and any other time it’s appropriate!) reminding your clients what to look out for when they are talking to their friends and professional acquaintances.  For example, if they are on the phone with a vendor or supplier or family member that is complaining that everything is slow or the LAN’s down again, etc., this is an excellent time for them to point the person in your direction!

Today we talked about how to improve your computer consulting services by asking important questions of your clients on a regular basis.  To learn more about this subject, visit the attached link!

Added By:  Joshua Feinberg

1.    You get the perks of being part of a larger company;

2.    You get a built-in organizational peer support network;

3.    You get access to a LOT of tools and resources;

4.    You already have people (clients) to go with problems.

The Negatives of Being Part of an IT Franchise

While there certainly can be big benefits to owning an IT franchise, there can also be some significant “cons.”

1.    You need a substantial capital investment to start an IT franchise.

2.    You will be paying a percentage of your revenue or profit every month to a franchiser in the form of a royalty.

3.    You will be restricted as to what you can and cannot do with your business.  

The Main Point about Buying into an IT Franchise

Usually, starting a computer consulting business from scratch is a much lower overhead investment than starting an IT franchise.  However, you can expect to spend significant TIME on this type of business, when much of the work of starting an IT franchise has already been done because you are buying into an existent, thriving organization.

Today we talked about some pros and cons of buying into an IT franchise.  To get more business development tips and learn more about IT consulting, visit the attached link.

Blogged By: Computer Consulting Kit

To learn technical skills when you’re becoming an IT consultant …

You can get not-for-resale (NFR) copies of products you want to sell, install and support and work on them in the confines of your lab.  If you have a spare hour or half an hour, you can walk through basic installations, break them, and reinstall until you get comfortable.  

A lot of the installations you’ll be handling for small business clients when you’re becoming an IT consultant will be pretty self driven, meaning they have wizards for basic installations and won’t require advanced computer skills.  

Technical Skills You Need When Becoming an IT Consultant:

1.    Strong PC hardware skills;

2.    The ability to handle a peer-to-peer (P2P) set up;

3.    A knowledge of TCP/IP;

4.    An awareness of POP3 and SMTP;

5.    A familiarity with how to work basic SOHO routers.  

If you have these skills, you are on your way to becoming an IT consultant!

To learn more about this topic and many others, visit the attached link!

Submitted By:  Joshua Feinberg

So why not get your hands on some templates that can save you time and money? The Computer Consulting Kit Home Study Course offers a large collection of immediately downloadable, field-tested and PROVEN customizable computer repair forms and countless other templates that can get you started today taking YEARS off your learning curve, saving yourself hundreds or even thousands of hours of your time and adding tens of thousand dollars OR MORE to your company’s bottom line.   

If you are like other professional services firms, your time is probably valued at $100/hour or more by your clients, which makes using templates and readily-designed computer repair forms an obvious decision.  

Computer Repair Forms:  Three Steps to Using Templates That Can Save Your Business Time and Money

1.    Open each file from the Computer Consulting Kit Home Study Course download center;

2.    Customize your computer repair forms;

3.    Print out your document.

To learn more about how you can use customizable, field-tested, PROVEN computer repair forms from the Computer Consulting Kit Home Study Course, visit the attached link!

Added By:  Joshua Feinberg

Pure Computer Consulting Firms

Those that want to completely stay away from being computer resellers choose to be pure computer consulting firms.  They believe they will never make a penny off product margin and that computer resellers don’t make a dime.  They decide NOT to resell hardware, software or peripherals, though they do help clients decide exactly what to buy and how the specs should be.  

Purchasing Firms

Another variation on pure computer consulting firms is the concept of purchasing agents.  They do the purchasing for clients and bill them for a couple hours.  Their job is to review quotes, place and track orders and carry the product purchase to the end.  These types of consultants are still not officially computer resellers, but they are doing more than pure consultants.  

Hybrid Consulting Firms

These types of firms are part-time computer resellers.  They might sell white box PCs – non-branded desktops, servers and notebooks. 

How Do You Decide Whether or Not to Be Computer Resellers?

Your decision to resell products depends on where you want to spend your time.  Do you want to invest the time trying to get incremental profit off product sales or focus on pure consulting dollars?  No matter what you decide, if you want to make money at being an IT consultant, you can’t lead with product sales.  You have to sell comprehensive business solutions that can truly help your clients’ companies thrive.

Today we talked about computer resellers.  To learn more about this topic and others, visit the attached link!

Submitted By:  Joshua Feinberg

The Pros of an IT Franchise

1.    You get the benefit of being part of a larger company;

2.    You get a strong peer support network as part of the organization;

3.    You get some valuable tools and resources to help you run your business;

4.    You have people already there to be clients and customers.  

The Cons of an IT Franchise

1.    You have to have significant capital to get started;

2.    You will end up paying a large part of your revenue/profit each month as a royalty to your franchiser;

3.    You will have some restrictions about where you can go with your business.

You need  to think carefully about how you approach IT franchise ownership and weigh the above pros and cons as well as any others you can think of before making your decision.

Today we talked a little bit about the pros and cons of owning an IT franchise.  To learn more about this subject – and much more – visit the attached link!

Added By:  Computer Consulting Kit

Some Tips for Judging Time for IT Company Startup

1.    Don’t expect franchises to be easy.  Even though you get some things set up for you with franchises when you start an IT company, you’re still not going to get a set client list.

2.    If you want set client lists, you’re going to have to buy a current business (but expect to pay quite a lot of money for it!).  Even a small IT company is going to cost you anywhere between a few hundred thousand dollars and a few million dollars.  

3.    Starting your own IT company from scratch is possible with just a few thousand dollars.  You need a business phone number and voicemail, a cell phone, business cards and legal licensing registrations.  And you’ll have to pay for some accounting and legal services to make sure you’re squared away.  

The main point is, starting an IT company is full of opportunities but takes time.  Decide which type of business is for you and then be prepared to put in the hours.

Added By:  Joshua Feinberg

You might be saying, “That’s great … but an IT contractor needs to know a lot of general things about computers to make it!”

It’s true that you will need to know about the following topics if you want to be a successful IT contractor working with small businesses:  network design; procurement; managing relations; dealing with phone companies, Web hosts and Internet access ISPs; deciding what to buy and also inspecting it when it arrives; configuring, testing, integrating, customizing, training and troubleshooting for your clients.

The truth is, an IT contractor that is commanding high rates will do EVERYTHING, which is technically being a generalist.  So how can you be a specialist?

A Good IT Contractor is Choosy

If you want to be a specialist in a generalist’s world, you need to provide the soups-to-nuts complete solution to a SELECT group of people.  You’ll provide a virtual IT experience and take full accountability of everything your clients need.  But to survive in the world of IT, you need to choose the type of clients you go after.  Find a niche and a select group of people that could use your help and run with it!  

Today we talked about being a good IT contractor and a true specialist.  To learn more about this topic, visit the attached link!

Added By:  Computer Consulting Kit

You’re an IT Consultant … Prepare!

Doing some homework and research on clients before a meeting may take you 30-45 minutes, but you have to invest the time as a responsible IT consultant so you can help close the sale.  In order for prospects to agree to pay for your services, you have to build credibility, and part of this is showing you know and care about their unique business problems. It’s pretty easy to go to Google and type in a person’s name or phone number and address to get a little information.  

An IT Consultant Knows Prospects and Clients

You need to learn …

1.    What their business is about;

2.    Their specific industry;

3.    The types of services they provide;

4.    The number of locations they have;

5.    How long they’ve existed.

You should also look up news stories and see what your potential clients have been up to in the community.

Today we talked about how you as an IT consultant can get more involved with your clients and build a better business.  To learn more about this topic, visit the attached link!

Added By:  Computer Consulting Kit

1.    Be ready to talk about your computer consultancy by taking some time to prepare for meetings.  Spend 30-45 minutes before sales calls and other meetings with potential clients to learn something about your prospects so you can figure out how your solutions will fit.

2.    Put together a complete profile of your prospects to make sure you know how you can work with their complex business problems.  Find out what their business is about, which industry they are in, which types of services they provide, how many locations they have and how long they’ve been in business.

3.    Look in the news for information about your potential client.  You will probably be able to find news stories in Google or in the local newspaper through search functions. This will help you know more about your prospects and what they are doing and accomplishing.

Today we talked about some tips that can help you better communicate information about your computer consultancy.  To learn more about this topic, visit the attached link!

Submitted By:  Joshua Feinberg

Tower’s main package is TRIM Context, an enterprise content management system that helps organize information while following best practices.  If computer business HP’s acquisition of the company closes during the second quarter of this year, as planned, the computer business will fold the TRIM package into its information management software business alongside HP’s current Archive platform (known previously as the HP Reference Information Storage System – RISS).  TRIM Context will add important records management to HP’s current platform.  

Tower serves 1,000 global customers, with most of these being in Australia.  Computer business HP plans to take the new offering to larger systems integrators such as EDS of Plano, Texas and BearingPoint of McLean, Virginia.  Also a focus will be mid-market solution providers.

The details of the computer business acquisition have not yet been released.

Added By:  Computer Consulting Kit    

Abaca’s new partner program will help grow businesses by increasing their margins on the company’s security appliance products and services.  The program will also make it possible for solution providers to offer Abaca’s famous “99 percent accuracy” guarantee for email filtering to their own customers.  

Features of the Solution Providers Program

1.    Resources that will help partners better sell and support products from Abaca.  

2.    Free training in sales and technology.

3.    Incentive programs for participants.

4.    Access to PartnerNet for solution providers.  This is a special online portal that allows partners to manage online sales, marketing efforts and technical resources.

Three Levels of Partnership

1.    Abaca Premier Partners is for solution providers with small-to-medium and large businesses.  At this level, partners work on market penetration and building revenue.  

2.    Abaca Preferred Partners is a level for solution providers that want to work with Abaca and its products to improve the changing security needs of their customers.

3.    Abaca Select Partners give customers email security solutions from the company and can have access to the many resources available on the Web by way of the Abaca PartnerNet system.

For more about this new solution providers program, visit the attached link.  

Submitted By:  Joshua Feinberg

As a note, if you are in Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand or any other nation besides the U.S., please be sure to convert these revenue figures to your local currency.  

The High End of the Sweet Spot

When you start dealing with the top of the computer consultant repair business sweet spot – more than 50 PCs or more than $10 million in annual sales – you will run into more companies that are hiring salaried IT people instead of outsourcing computer consulting needs.  At this point, you start to face stiff competition and people that will add up your invoices and figure out if they can do it more cheaply in house.  

Real Servers

When qualifying computer consultant repair business sweet spot clients, you need to seek out those companies large enough to need a real, dedicated server and not just a peer-to-peer network.  When a business needs a real server, it needs a lot of professional services to accompany it.  This is your chance to become an outsourced IT department and computer consultant repair specialist!

Does the Company Have More than One Location?

Often a sweet spot computer consultant repair client will have just one location, but sometimes there will be a main office and branch offices.  Branch offices become opportunities for your computer consultant repair business because they will need data sharing techniques in real time between many different locations.

Submitted By:  Computer Consulting Business

157 VARs voted on which was the best-performing POS keyboard supplier. Criteria used to determine it was established by VSR.  Cherry also took first place in “Product Features,” Innovation” and “Reliability” categories.  A spokesperson for Cherry, Keyboard Marketing Manager David Michielli expressed the company’s continued commitment to point-of-sale marketing and stated that the company would continue to serve VARs and focus on VARs’ clients.

Added By: Computer Consulting 101 Professional Kit

Lombardi has helped many major systems integrators and companies improve their way of doing business with great software options.  Customers of the company include Allianz Life, Aflac, Banco Espirito Santo, Capital One, Dell, El Paso Corp., Hasbro, ING Direct, National Bank of Canada, Sprint, T-Mobile, Universal Music Group and many other governmental agencies and other companies.

Added By:  Joshua Feinberg