Computer Consultants Secrets ™

Finance credit should be extended very cautiously to your clients.  Even after you have built up a solid history with a client, you should still be strict about your practice of credit finance.  The use of finance credit and good basic billing practices will be a large factor in determining whether or not you actually get paid for the work you do.

Rules for Finance Credit

• Do not be too quick to give new clients finance credit.

• When clients ask for finance credit, always have them complete a credit application and send out some credit reference letters.

• After you have extended a client finance credit, keep their lines of credit relatively low until they’ve built up some history with you.

• With new clients, even after you get a credit application and send out some credit reference letters, start them out with $500 or $1,000 in finance credit. Don’t allow them to hang you up on a $5,000 or $10,000 leash before they’ve proven they’re able to pay small invoices.

• If new clients come on with a large project, rather than extend large amounts of finance credit, get larger deposits amounts.

To ensure you get paid regardless of finance credit, here are some guidelines to follow with your billing.

Rules for Billing Practices

• Always insist on written agreements, even if it’s a very small job.

• Always get a deposit check on any major project.

• Set up payment schedules that make sense. Do not take on a large, major project or any project for that matter, without getting at least 25% down.

• Bill weekly and not when you get around to it. Being busy is no excuse for sending your invoices regularly.

Bottom Line on Finance Credit
As a business owner you want to be able to extend credit finance to your clients.  When you do so, you always have to remember to protect yourself first.  Don’t be too quick to extend credit and make sure your billing practices get you paid.  These are two major ways to keep yourself from getting into big financial trouble really fast.
 
In this article, you’ve been introduced to Finance Credit. To learn more about how you can improve your knowledge about Finance Credit, just click here now to get access to a free one-hour audio training program on 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Computer Consulting Business.

Small business marketing tips are essential to learn in order to avoid the mistakes that so many people before you have made.  As a new IT consultant you need to absorb as many small business marketing tips as possible in order to run a successful business.  

Almost all small business marketing tips come down to two things:  test marketing and target marketing.  By following these two small business marketing tips you will be able to conserve your precious capital and use it in the most productive ways possible.

Top Two Small Business Marketing Tips

Run Tests

Whenever you’re doing anything with marketing, think about being able to run smaller, measured tests before making big marketing bets. For instance, with direct mail, don’t mail five or ten thousand pieces your first time out of the gate. Don’t put $2,500 or $5,000 or more on the line. Try a $500 test and see how you do.

Target Your Market

Many people make the mistake of running yellow page ads or advertising in a local newspaper.  These marketing techniques are not targeted to your audience in any way and they are expensive. There are so many better ways to market than to broadcast to an audience where 95% of the people aren’t interested.

If you feel you absolutely must advertise in these broad venues, follow small business marketing tip number one and start with a small test.  Always start small and test the waters before you decide to ramp up.

Bottom Line on Small Business Marketing Tips
Whenever you’re making decisions on marketing and business development, think about small, measured bets before making big marketing decisions.  This is the one small business marketing tip that transcends all others.  In addition, make your marketing efforts as targeted as possible.  This will help ensure you are spending your marketing dollars on things that will reach your intended audience.  

In this article, you’ve been introduced to Small Business Marketing Tips. To learn more about how you can improve your knowledge about Small Business Marketing Tips, just click here now to get access to a free one-hour audio training program on 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Computer Consulting Business.

Billable hours have a great deal to do with setting your rates.  The revenue you bring is in based on the number of billable hours you work.  From that revenue though, you have to take off your business expenses.  

You need to make sure your average, realistic billable hours multiplied by your hourly rate will be enough to turn a profit now and in the future.

Most new consultants come in with an hourly rate of $75 in their mind.  They believe that that rate will work out to a yearly gross of $150,000.  The fact is that if you carry a $75 or $85 per hour rate beyond the grand opening special to get your first couple of clients, your business will become more of a hobby or a non profit.

You say, “How can that be? Why doesn’t $75 an hour equate to $150,000 a year?” There are easily 2,000 billable hours per year, right? Wrong.

New consultants often fail to consider all the overhead and expenses that usually come up as a 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 consulting revenue.  They think that the number of hours billable in a week is 40.  Unfortunately that’s Fantasy Island.

Unless you’re working a 100 hours, you won’t even have a shot at making 40 billable hours per week.  A good percentage of your work day is taken up with non billable hours.  Networking, marketing, sales calls, training, etc…; these activities all eat away at your billable hours.  

You can’t ignore business development activities so you have to adjust your hourly rate to account for a realistic amount of billable hours per week.

Bottom Line on Billable Hours
Billable hours and your hourly rate are tied together and will largely determine your degree of profitability.  You can’t expect to enjoy 100% of your time as billable hours.  You need to set your hourly rate high enough to remain profitable after considering a reasonable number of weekly billable hours.  

In this article, you’ve been introduced to Billable Hours. To learn more about how you can improve your knowledge about Billable Hours, just click here now to get access to a free one-hour audio training program on 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Computer Consulting Business.

Consulting fees must be set in order to sustain your business.  When you start off as a moonlighter it is tempting to charge low consulting fees in order to build up a client base.  The problem with this strategy is that when you want to transition to full time consulting, your consulting fees must be high enough to cover all the added expenses that go along with running a full time business.

To make this transition you must get the recurring revenue and charge market rates that are sustainable for the long haul. Your full time competitors have already figured out the consulting fees they need to charge to cover their overhead items that as a moonlighter you are probably overlooking. Items like:

• taxes
• training expenses
• insurance costs
• marketing and promotion
• research
• administration

To cover these basic expenses you won’t be able to charge bargain basement consulting fees.     If you’re thinking you can go out there and be the Crazy Eddie of computer support and charge consulting fees of $25, $35, $45 an hour you’re not going to make it up on volume. There are only so many hours you can work in a week, even on a full time basis.

Bottom Line on Consulting Fees
If you want to be able to survive and you want to be able to make the transition from part time to full time consulting, it’s very important that you copy the right people when it comes to your consulting fees.  You do not want to be the cheapest in your market because you won’t be able to sustain those low consulting fees for long.  Start out right and set your consulting fees at the higher end.  This prepares you to make the leap to full time and  paves the way for long term business health.   

In this article, you’ve been introduced to Consulting Fees. To learn more about how you can improve your knowledge about Consulting Fees, just click here now to get access to a free one-hour audio training program on 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Computer Consulting Business.

Target businesses must be looked at in terms of their ability to support your own business goals.  If you really want to make a decent living and want to have a good, successful, viable consulting business you have to know your target business clients. You have to narrow down your focus and develop a keen intuition so you are expert at spotting the best small business accounts to target.  

There are millions of small businesses in the U.S. and there are millions of small businesses abroad. Not all of these will fit with your target business profile but many will.  And, there’s a pretty good chance that there are thousands, if not tens of thousands of companies in your local area that qualify as target businesses.

If you don’t learn early on which businesses to target and which ones to stay away from your own business will suffer.  You need to know where to find the best target businesses and know when to say "no" to business that comes your way.

Your target businesses will be gratifying to work with.  You will get a great amount of career satisfaction by working with them.  That’s probably one of the reasons you’re looking at starting your own business as opposed to sticking with a traditional corporate IT career.

Target businesses will also prove to more lucrative accounts.  All small businesses are not created equal.  You want your clients to be a stable source of recurring revenue. Remember, your job is not to be the Mother Teresa of PC support. You’re not running a charitable organization.

Of course, you want to have empathy for the people you support and you want to do a great job for them, but at the same time, you have to look out for your own interests to make sure you’re going to be there for them six months to a year down the road.

Bottom Line on Target Businesses
It’s very important that you start right at the beginning to identify and find target businesses you want to work with.  The better your clients, the better your business.  The time you spend putting together a target business profile will pay off many times in the future.

In this article, you’ve been introduced to Target Businesses. To learn more about how you can improve your knowledge about Target Businesses, just click here now to get access to a free one-hour audio training program on 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Computer Consulting Business.

Computer skills are obviously a necessity before you launch your network consulting business.  However, you may not need the level and amount of computer skills you think you do to get started.  Here is a brief summary of the computer skills you will need for a majority of the clients you will be targeting.

Required Computer Skills

Hardware
You should know all the hardware skills extremely well that are required for micro-small businesses.  Plus you should be comfortable with server hardware including multi-processor servers. You should also know about RAID and multi-port communications adapters.

Storage-attached Networks
You should know the basic mid range data back up systems, DAT, DL2, UPS’s, power protection devices, routers, CSU’s, VSU’s, advance wi-fi hardware as well as items that support roaming and management.

Networking software
This is the bigger part of supporting sweet spot small businesses effectively. You should be comfortable with all the computer skills required for networking.  You really need to know the server OS’s extremely well. A big part of what you’ll be hired for is networking design, installation and ongoing support and maintenance. Specific computer skills here include:

• Microsoft Windows server
• Microsoft Small Business server
• Novell Netware
• Novell Small Business Suite
• Red Hat
• Microsoft Exchange server
• Novell GroupWise

Client Server Sequel Database Applications
Your computer skills here need to be advanced enough so you are comfortable checking on log files, knowing how to handle data backups, and knowing how they fit into the network.  You don’t need to be a database administrator or an applications developer.  

Client Server Business Specialty Applications
Your computer skills should allow you to be comfortable with applications like:

• Accounting packages
• CRM
• Web servers like Microsoft IS and Apache
• Web authoring tools like Microsoft Front Page or Macromedia Dream Weaver

Terminal services
Here, if you’re on the Windows side of things, network faxing is pretty important. You should also be able to handle performance monitoring, virtual private networking, BPM’s and RAZ.

Advanced virus protection
You should be able to set up protection for multi-applications and be very comfortable with security, like intrusion detection and firewall.

Bottom Line on Computer Skills
While you don’t need expert computer skills in each and every area mentioned, to support sweet spot small businesses effectively, you should know at least 25%, and optimally 50%, of the things mentioned above.  Armed with that scope and depth of computer skills you should be able to meet the needs of the majority of your clients.

In this article, you’ve been introduced to Computer Skills. To learn more about how you can improve your knowledge about Computer Skills, just click here now to get access to a free one-hour audio training program on 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Computer Consulting Business.

Shared files often present problems for your clients.  When you install a new LAN for a client, it can easily become disorganized if there is no control system put in place early on to manage the shared files.  Here are some tips to help you, help your clients keep control of their shared files.

Shared File Tips

• One person needs to be put in charge of organizing the shared files.  This “folder captain” doesn’t necessarily need to be that computer-literate, but does need to be very well-organized and detail-oriented.

• Organizing the shared files is a job that is a good fit for a department manager, supervisor or team leader.

• Organizing the shared files and folder is not a job for the internal guru or computer consultant to handle.  By the time storage space is running low or shared files and folders have become an out-of-control mess, it’s usually an unwelcome emergency task that easily can be avoided by taking the above proactive steps.

• As the virtual CIO, to be even more proactive, a few times a year following initial training, “check in” and review the condition of the server shared files and folders with the internal guru and appointed folder “captains”.

Shared File Points to Discuss With The Client

• How organized, or disorganized, are your clients’ file server shared folders?
• Is there anyone at each client site who’s currently in charge of monitoring and enforcing orderly use of shared files and folders and naming conventions?
• If your clients don’t currently have anyone accountable for maintaining a well organized set of server folders and naming conventions, do they have some employees or managers who would be good candidates for folder “owners” or “captains”?
• At client sites, who monitors how much storage space is remaining on the servers and who is using and possibly abusing various storage space resources? Do your clients use any third-party utility programs to automate these tasks?
• At each client site, who is responsible for archiving and purging obsolete shared files and folders?

Bottom Line on Shared Files
Shared files can become an area of concern for your client after you install a new LAN.  Be proactive in your consulting and help your client prepare to manage the shared files and folders before they pose a problem.  

In this article, you’ve been introduced to Shared Files. To learn more about how you can improve your knowledge about Shared Files, just click here now to get access to a free one-hour audio training program on 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Computer Consulting Business.

File formats can be standardized as part of your efforts to help clients avoid unnecessary software upgrades. If you look it from the clients point of view, they don’t want to spend more money than they have to.  This means most of your clients don’t want to upgrade their application suite each year.

From your perspective this works too.  Which is a better opportunity for you?

A) selling $1,000 worth of shrink-wrapped software products (perhaps a 10-20% profit margin…maybe) or
B) selling $1,000 worth of services (generally 60-90%+ profit margin, depending on your cost of labor and utilization rates)?

So if you can influence your clients to forgo unnecessary software upgrades and reallocate those funds toward projects that make a positive contribution to their bottom line, your clients are ahead of the game right? And it’s good for you as well, right?

Standardizing software application file formats just happens to be one of these kinds of opportunities that’s a big win-win for both your firm and your clients.

Because of the more subtle file format changes in recent Microsoft Office version upgrades, many of your clients can avoid purchasing unnecessary version upgrades.

Your clients do not need to upgrade all of their PCs to the same version of Microsoft Office applications to standardize on a single set of file formats. An across-the-board upgrade would be an expensive proposition for them (and not necessarily that profitable for your firm either).

Usually, version upgrades can be phased in gradually as new PCs that include bundled versions of Microsoft Office are purchased.

To get the compatibility benefits, your clients merely need to standardize the file format selections in use. This becomes a cinch as Microsoft Office 2000 and Microsoft Office XP offer integrated support for Microsoft Office 97 file formats. For all applications except Microsoft Access, there is basically full backward compatibility with Microsoft Office 97.

The only warning to head before making any changes to the underlying file formats your clients use, or upgrading your clients’ Microsoft Office applications, is that you should always make sure that your clients have at least one verified and tested full system backup.

Bottom Line on File Formats
File formats that are standardized allow you to hold off on unnecessary software upgrades.  When this happens, the money the clients save on new software can be put to good use by you in terms of improving their system effectiveness.  

In this article, you’ve been introduced to File Formats. To learn more about how you can improve your knowledge about File Formats, just click here now to get access to a free one-hour audio training program on 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Computer Consulting Business.

Intranet setup is an area that provides you many opportunities to add value to your client’s business. With an intranet setup there is very little extra cost incurred by the client, which makes it a relatively easy sell.  The extra revenue you can earn from providing intranet setup makes it an attractive option for you to pursue as well.

Here are some questions to ask yourself when determining whether your client would benefit from having an intranet setup.

Intranet Setup Considerations

• Are you looking for some innovative ways to help your clients get greater ROI from their networking investments?

• Do your clients have a strong need to share updated documents and information on a workgroup basis, as well as company-wide?

• Do you want to deliver an easy and low-cost but highly effective “killer app” to your clients without spending a small fortune on software development time?

• Does your consulting firm have the expertise to design a basic Web site?

• Do your clients already have hardware and software to run a personal or workgroup Web server internally on their LAN?

• If your clients have multiple locations, that each have some kind of Internet access:  Is there available space where their Web sites are hosted to set up a password protected folder for “private” files?

If your answer to many of the above questions is "yes" then exploring an intranet setup with your client is something you should definitely do.

The next issue to ponder is where exactly the client will benefit from having an intranet setup for them.  There are many specific applications and departmental opportunities to explore.  Here is a brief summary:

Intranet Setup Opportunities Per Department

• Finance department. Guidelines on charge backs, inter-company billing, budgeting information and T&E reimbursement procedures.

• Human resources department. Benefits information, policies, training manuals, payroll withholding, orientation materials, job openings, and employee rosters.

• Public relations department. Media coverage, press re-leases, and communication guidelines.

• Purchasing department. Procedures, approved vendors, backlogs, and available product lines.

• Sales/marketing department. Tracking hot leads, major opportunities, new accounts, success stories, case studies, competitive data, and expansion into new markets.

Bottom Line on Intranet Setup
Setting up an intranet is a solution that can be deployed with almost no additional hardware or software investment on your clients’ part and very little, if any, “coding” time from you. These factors make an intranet setup an excellent opportunity for you to add value to your client’s business and generate a healthy revenue stream for yourself.

In this article, you’ve been introduced to Intranet Setup. To learn more about how you can improve your knowledge about Intranet Setup, just click here now to get access to a free one-hour audio training program on 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Computer Consulting Business.

Email domains that are specific to a company help increase portability and branding.  To help your clients save money and improve their web presence, have them consider acquiring a company specific email domain.

Email Domain Issues to Consider

• Because many small business owners publish their e-mail address from a domain that they clearly don’t own (i.e. Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL or MSN accounts), if they ever have to change ISPs, switching all their documents becomes an expensive proposition.  A typical small business owner has their e-mail addresses on everything from business cards to print advertisements to direct mail pieces and yellow pages ads.  Without a brand specific email domain, changing e-mail addresses is enough to bring on a major migraine.

• When a company does have a specific email domain, if their ISPs’ raise prices, start giving horrendously poor customer service, or go out of business, it is easy for you to move the Web site and e-mail domain hosting to another ISP.  

• The small business owner wedded to an inexpensive standalone dial-up account, is frequently unaware of the risks of not having their own email domain. As your small business clients’ virtual IT director, discuss these issues at the outset when planning a small business network.

• If your clients do already have a company specific email domain, be sure to review the WhoIs domain name reports with them to be sure your clients really own the domain names in question (and that the contact information is correct.)

• When the client has a dedicated email domain, all of the employees in the company can use the same email domain, which makes it easy for customers to communicate.

• Finally, because most companies with a “dot com” presence follow this convention, having a consistent e-mail domain naming structure also promotes the Web site URL. For example, when people see our questions@ComputerConsulting101.com e-mail address in a direct mail piece, even if we don’t explicitly list the Web site URL, the vast majority will surmise that www.ComputerConsulting101.com is our Web site URL.

Bottom Line on Email Domains
Aside from protecting your clients from being orphaned or trapped by their ISPs, company based e-mail domains  help to strengthen your client’s branding and marketing identities. Consistency breeds brand-name recognition.  The cost is minimal to use an email domain that matches the website domain and the benefits are huge.

In this article, you’ve been introduced to Email Domains. To learn more about how you can improve your knowledge about Email Domains, just click here now to get access to a free one-hour audio training program on 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Computer Consulting Business. 

LAN networks are something you should discuss with every small business client you work with:  especially in terms of delivering Internet and email access.  The efficiency increases with LAN networks make it an almost essential feature of today’s workplace.

The typical objection you will get relates to the cost of a LAN network.  If you prepare your argument correctly and do some research, you will more than likely prove that having a LAN network actually saves money in the long run.  Here’s how:

Just as many of your small business clients install their first network to share and cost-justify the purchase of an “expensive” resource, like a color laser printer, discuss how the newly installed LAN network allows your clients to buy a bigger “pipe” (i.e. more bandwidth) to the Internet. Just as with the color laser printer, sharing a resource on the LAN spreads a fixed cost over a number of users.

Again, many of your small business clients may initially have just one or two analog dial-up ISP accounts. Small business owners may “think” this low-budget approach “works,” but in reality the standalone approach is almost always more expensive than it appears on the surface. Consider the following hidden costs of using the traditional stand-alone system:  

One Time Out-of-Pocket Expenses

• Cost of modem    
• Cost of telephone company setup for analog line    
• Cost of inside wiring for modem jack, by telephone company or private contractor    
• Any setup charges for the ISP dial-up account    

One Time Computer Support Costs

• Researching and purchasing modem, and performing modem installation    
• Ordering analog line from telephone company    
• Hiring someone to install inside wiring for analog line    
• Researching and ordering ISP dial-up account    
• Configuring the ISP dial-up account on the PC and in related software applications    

Recurring Monthly Fixed and Variable Out of Pocket Expenses

• Fixed charge for analog line, including tariffs and various calling and wire maintenance plans    
• Any toll charges associated with reaching the ISP’s point of presence (POP), if ISP doesn’t have a local dial-up telephone number    
• Any variable or metered charges (i.e. message units) for the analog line    
• Monthly recurring fixed-charges for the ISP account    
• Any variable or metered charges for the ISP account    

Recurring Monthly Computer Support Costs

• Monitoring telephone bill to make sure charges are bona fide    
• Monitoring credit card bill to make sure ISP recurring charges are bona fide, including ample time for dispute resolution    
• Troubleshooting modem/PC, ISP account, and analog telephone line    

Bottom Line on LAN Networks
Installing and maintaining a LAN network will actually save your client money in the medium to long term.  Armed with the data and rationale presented here, you should be able to quickly quell any objections your client has to upgrading to a LAN network.

In this article, you’ve been introduced to LAN Networks. To learn more about how you can improve your knowledge about LAN Networks, just click here now to get access to a free one-hour audio training program on 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Computer Consulting Business. 

Computer gurus can help you to build your computer business.  The computer guru at your client’s site is not competition and their work will not reduce your profit.  Anything that improves the efficiency and effectiveness of the computers makes you look good.  For this reason you should take every opportunity you can to improve the computer guru’s skills.  

Providing orientation and training sessions for the computer guru is an excellent way to accomplish this.  Here are eight competencies you should instill in the computer gurus working at your client sites:

Top 8 Computer Guru Tasks

• Administrator Password Sanctity - The administrator user account is all-powerful. Use these credentials only when absolutely necessary. If a breach is suspected, change the password immediately. Otherwise, follow your computer consultant’s suggested guidelines for regularly changing passwords.

• Antivirus Software - Since new viruses are discovered al-most daily, antivirus software needs constant updates. Be-cause automatic updates don’t always work, show how to check the date of last update and how to force a manual up-date.

• Lock the Server Console - Even if kept in a locked room, the server keyboard should always be “locked” – either manually, or with a password-protected blank screen saver (and a very short time delay).

• Log File Watching - To nip problems early, show where to look for log files for data backup, power protection, virus protection and security systems. Just as important, show examples of what a “success” and “failure” looks like.

• Password Changes - Sooner or later, someone will “forget” their password — or leave the company. Show how to manually reset a password.

• Printer Job Administration - If a problematic print job in-advertently goes to an expensive-to-operate printer, such as a check printer or color laser printer, the guru should know how to rapidly locate and delete the job from the queue. Also, consider using network permissions to restrict printer access.

• Rebooting the Server - Show how to properly reboot the server(s): check for open files, manually stop key services to speed up the reboot, and shut down/power cycle the server.

• Tape Backup Management - Although backup systems are generally reliable, they do malfunction occasionally. Besides monitoring the tape backup log and rebooting the server to un-jam a stuck tape, show how to restore a file. File restoration is also a great way to test if the backup system is working as well as you think it is. Also, demonstrate how to launch a manual, off-schedule backup job.

Bottom Line on Computer Gurus
Computer gurus will help you to provide superior service to your clients.  The onus is on you to train and orient them so that they can manage the small issues that crop up on a daily basis.  In the long run, your profits will increase as a direct result of the work done by your computer gurus.

In this article, you’ve been introduced to Computer Gurus. To learn more about how you can improve your knowledge about Computer Gurus, just click here now to get access to a free one-hour audio training program on 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Computer Consulting Business.

Computer software training is an area of huge revenue potential for the savvy network consultant.  Not only are you the computer department for your client companies, you are also the computer expert.  By offering computer software training you increase the value of your services many times over.  

Here are some helpful ideas regarding computer software training.

• When you do computer software training you add value to the human resources of the company, not just the IT based resources.  This puts you and your services in a whole new light and it allows you to deepen your relationship with your client.

• Computer software training also helps to prevent one of the biggest potential obstacles of server and LAN installations.  When clients lack training it prevents them from fully utilizing the new system.  This causes them to devalue the service you provide.  

• Small business end users rarely have the luxury of taking full-day or multi-day off-site computer software training classes. Now more than ever, the small business network consultant is often the only way that clients’ staff will ever get any formal software training – even if it’s relatively informal one-on-one or small group sessions.

• When you get a new client, be sure to discuss computer software training outset.  This way you can craft a custom training solution appropriate for each client’s unique needs.

• Be sure to strongly recommend and factor in a few hours of one-on-one or small group end user computer software training sessions into every server or LAN proposal.

• Remember that your clients desperately need this computer software training to get maximum value out of their IT investments. Incorporate this message into your marketing and sales approaches.  

• Computer software training is a significant factor for helping clients avoid buyer’s remorse.

• You and your clients should see a dramatic reduction in relatively frivolous help desk calls. (“HELP! I lost my toolbar again!”)

• By providing computer software training you’ll almost always uncover future sales opportunities for your consulting services. (think of it as hidden gold bullion!)

Bottom Line on Computer Software Training
Computer software training presents a golden opportunity.  Don’t leave this really easy money on the table. Get involved with, and prepared for, offering this type of training as soon as possible.  

In this article, you’ve been introduced to Computer Software Training. To learn more about how you can improve your knowledge about Computer Software Training, just click here now to get access to a free one-hour audio training program on 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Computer Consulting Business.

Service level agreements may be very formal or consist of a few sentences in your service contract.  Whatever format it takes, there are some things that you need to consider before constructing your service level agreement.   

The first thing to take into consideration when forming a service level agreement is anticipating how often you need to be on-site.  You need to know your time commitment in terms of taking care of their needs.  How many phone calls, how many emails, or things like that is the client going to need in between visits?

Example:

If you have a client with five work stations and one server, you will probably be on-site once a month for two or three hours.  Additionally, you will probably provide an hour or so of phone support over the course of the month.

So for your service level agreement you should figure on providing about four or five hours a month to take care of on-site and phone support as well as all the miscellaneous follow up issues that emerge.  Remember too, with service level agreements, if the client has any upgrades or projects, that is above and beyond the agreement.  

The second consideration is how to sell a service level agreement.  Essentially you need to give clients a compelling package of benefits.  Here are some examples:

• If your rate is $125 an hour then if they have a $500 per month service level agreement, your rate effectively drops to $100 an hour.  

• In addition to the hourly savings, service level agreements should also include your being available to come onsite for emergencies.

• Consider offering a service level agreement that provides weekend or evening work without charging them extra.  

• Include a little bit of proactive maintenance to clients on service level agreements.  

Bottom Line on Service Level Agreements
Your main consideration with service level agreements is to anticipate how much time a client will typically need based on their applications and servers. The second issue to address is how you will get clients onto service level agreements in the first place.  Offering a package of soft benefits above and beyond just the dollar benefits, is the best way to entice clients to sign up for a service level agreement.

In this article, you’ve been introduced to Service Level Agreements. To learn more about how you can improve your knowledge about Service Level Agreements, just click here now to get access to a free one-hour audio training program on 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Computer Consulting Business. 

Utilization is an essential ingredient for profitability.  The way to maximize your profitability is to maximize your utilization.  Here are 7 simple ways to boost your utilization rate.   

• Create a boiler plate for your email signature and email responses for the most common customer service and administrative tasks.  Remember your time is money.  Any way that you can work a little more efficiently, or save a little time, through automation can make a huge difference in your utilization rate.

• Turn your top support request into a FAQ bulletin.  This way you can easily email it out to clients so you’re not reinventing the wheel every single time.  

• Purchase a notebook PC.  Use this as your primary computer so you have everything with you all the time.  Add to it mobile Internet access, and your utilization will skyrocket.

• Schedule longer client visits whenever possible.  Schedule three or four hours at a time.  Less time driving around means more billable time and better utilization.

• Book your appointment calendar four to eight weeks in advance.  This maximizes your schedule efficiency and utilization rate because you will have fewer holes in your calendar to fill up later.

• Always have backup subcontractors prescreened and lined up for every major virtual IT need.  Utilization suffers when you have lag time.  If you don’t have to scramble for subcontractors, you won’t suffer as much time loss.

• Track every minute that you work.  This includes your marketing work. Log your time into a billing system and calculate your utilization rates and profitability per quarter.  

Bottom Line on Utilization
Utilization is a part of your business that you need to keep track of.  Once you know where you are spending your time, the onus is on you to maximize that time and create a high rate of utilization.  The more efficient you are, the more profitable you are so the smart choice is to get serious about your utilization.  

In this article, you’ve been introduced to Utilization. To learn more about how you can improve your knowledge about Utilization, just click here now to get access to a free one-hour audio training program on 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Computer Consulting Business.

Excellent customer service means exceeding customer expectations.  We have put together a checklist of the top ten things to do to provide excellent customer service.  By following these tips you will stay on the right side of the customer and exceed their expectations as much as possible.  

Top 10 Ways To Provide Excellent Customer Service

• First strategy for excellent customer service, stick to your standard configurations as much as you can.  Warn the client in advance if you need to deviate from your standard configurations, which should be their standard configuration too.

• Second strategy for excellent customer service, look through Google and newsgroups in order to proactively preempt any compatibility risks, bugs or workarounds that you’re concerned about.

• Third strategy for excellent customer service, never use your client as a guinea pig.  Even if the client is the first to run a product, try it out internally before you run it in the live client environment.  

• Fourth strategy for excellent customer service, when in doubt, hire a specialist.  If you can’t see the project through from end to end you need to hire a specialist as a subcontractor to get the job done.    

• Fifth strategy for excellent customer service, recognize that there is no such thing as over-documenting or over-communicating.  If a client wants a checklist, give it to them.  If they want to talk to you once a week, do it.  

• Sixth strategy for excellent customer service, avoid procrastinating on longer projects.

• Seventh strategy for excellent customer service, always build a cushion of time into your schedule to accommodate unexpected delays.

• Eighth strategy for excellent customer service, make your invoices as clear as possible.  Clients shouldn’t need a decoder ring to figure out what’s going on with your invoices or statements.  Use plain English and avoid techno-speak and jargon at all costs.  

• Nineth strategy for excellent customer service, don’t assume anything.  Continuoulsy ask if the client has questions.  

• Tenth strategy for excellent customer service, offer to train the internal guru.  Even if that training causes you to lose some short-term consulting revenue, you are in this for the long run.

Bottom Line on Excellent Customer Service
By following these ten pointers for excellent customer service you will put yourself head and shoulders above your competition.  Service businesses are all about exceeding expectations and the key to that is providing excellent customer service.

In this article, you’ve been introduced to Excellent Customer Service. To learn more about how you can improve your knowledge about Excellent Customer Service, just click here now to get access to a free one-hour audio training program on 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Computer Consulting Business.

Customer expectations are often built around project management issues.  If you use good organization and make sure projects are completed properly and timely, you will surely exceed customers’ expectations.

Project Management Tips For Exceeding Customer Expectations

• Meet with the decision-maker and the guru about four times a year (once a quarter) to review things like the projects you completed, what projects are pending, and what projects you are planning on starting.

• Exceed customer expectations by going over your week by week schedule with them.  

• Make sure the schedule you planned doesn’t conflict with anything the client has going on.  Exceeding customer expectations means going out of your way to ensure the client’s experience is as smooth as possible. Make sure you do things at their convenience, not yours.

• When you sit down with the guru or decision maker, find out if there is anything else outstanding that needs to be addressed.  Is there anything that they would like to see happen over the next 90 days?  Again, exceed customer expectations by placing their needs first - even if that means rearranging your work to accommodate.

• Set clear guidelines for interim deliverables. When you set up phases or milestones you give both parties opportunities to discuss the project, make changes, and ensure the schedule is still doable.   

• Provide weekly progress reports for any substantial offsite work you do. This is an excellent way to exceed expectations because many clients have never been treated to such service.  Call or send an email once a week, whether you are on-site or not.  Little  things like this, that take a minute or two, can make such a huge difference in exceeding customers’ expectations.

Bottom Line on Customer Expectations
Managing a project effectively and keeping the decision maker and/or guru informed is an excellent way to exceed customer expectations.  These are the kinds of things that typically do not take much time, or cost much money but the end result is so worth it.  

In this article, you’ve been introduced to Customer Expectations. To learn more about how you can improve your knowledge about Customer Expectations, just click here now to get access to a free one-hour audio training program on 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Computer Consulting Business.

Customer expectations have to be met, consistently, in order for you to grow a successful business.  If you expect to get the big bucks as a small business computer consultant, you have to meet and exceed customer expectations.

Clients are going to expect a lot from you.  They have very little tolerance for anything less than their notion of what is perfection.  The key to meeting customer expectations is defining exactly what their idea of perfection is.

What’s involved in exceeding customer expectations?  

The big secret here is, you need to get your clients to define their expectations right at the outset.  This is not as easy as that sounds.  There is no textbook for this, so you have to try a bunch of things until one of them works.  

The best way to understand customer expectation is obviously to ask the client directly.  However, because most of your clients don’t come from consulting backgrounds, they’re not B2B professional services providers.  This means they don’t typically have experience talking to other businesses about their needs.  

In order for you to define their customer expectation, you are going to need to help them along during the process.  You need to get them to open up about how they define meeting and exceeding customer expectations.  

Many new computer consultants will assume this conversations about customer expectations should come once a lead becomes a paying customer.  If you want to exceed customer expectations, you actually need to start gathering this before they are clients.  If you understand up-front what their customer expectations are, you can determine whether your skills, knowledge, and ability are sufficient to exceed them.

Bottom Line on Customer Expectations
You have to know and understand customer expectations before you can hope to meet and exceed them.  By asking potential customers to define their expectations before hand, you are in a position to qualify your clients based on your ability to exceed their customer expectations.  This is extremely important if you want to find and keep well paying, sweet-spot clients.

In this article, you’ve been introduced to Customer Expectations. To learn more about how you can improve your knowledge about Customer Expectations, just click here now to get access to a free one-hour audio training program on 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Computer Consulting Business. 

Business partnerships are well worth pursuing  There are some things to watch out for though, when it comes to forming business partnerships.  Here are some common issues and concerns that arise.

Tips For Business Partnerships

• Make sure you form business partnerships with companies that do not compete with you on any level.  Look at their business card, marketing collateral, websites, etc.. and talk to their references to confirm.

• Always initiate a non-disclosure agreement and a non-compete agreement with companies you enter into a business partnership with. Have these agreements reviewed by your attorney.

• Make sure your clients are very seriously committed to the project before you waste your time, and your potential partner’s time.  You don’t want to be forming business partnerships and having them quote on jobs or do exploratory work, only to find out the client wasn’t that serious.

• Qualify your client’s budget, timeline, and urgency before soliciting a business partnership.  

• Discuss the nature of the relationship and the specifics of the business partnerships at the outset.  At a minimum, you need to decide whether work is on an informal referral basis, whether there will be revenue sharing, whether the relationship will be master-subcontractor, who’s going to be the lead on the account, and who owns the account.  

• Don’t assume that your partner understands the concept of small business virtual IT.  You may need to spend a few minutes educating them and actively managing all the relationships.

• You have to manage the relationship between your client and your business partner as a diplomat. Your role is to shield your partner and your client from things that are outside of their comfort zone.  

• You will also need to act as a translator when you enter a business partnership.  Your client and your partner may not talk the same language (business language, not French versus English) so you will be the switchboard.  You must coordinate the whole process.   

Bottom Line on Business Partnerships
As a virtual CIO, when you enter into a business partnership you become the manager of the project your partner is working on for your client.  You need to have clear guidelines set with your business partner, and you also need to make sure that the processes done through your business partnership are of the same high quality you would do yourself.  Your role is mainly as liaison, making sure the project is completed to everyone’s satisfaction.

In this article, you’ve been introduced to Business Partnerships. To learn more about how you can improve your knowledge about Business Partnerships, just click here now to get access to a free one-hour audio training program on 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Computer Consulting Business.