Computer Consultants Secrets ™

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

Dell announced this year that it would be offering a new program for solution providers by the end of 2007, but many are doubtful Dell will be able to pull it together.  The following 10 items are what many believe Dell needs to do in order to fully serve its solution providers and succeed at this new initiative.

1.    Top management will have to really build and enforce a true solution providers channel plan.  Because of all the structural, business plan changes Dell has presented in the past few years, someone in charge needs to make a decision about what will happen.

2.    Dell must hire a top-level channel executive from outside the company to lead the channel program.  This will mean going outside its own company.

3.    Dell has to listen to solution providers and let their ideas inform the plan for the program as well as actually be willing to make necessary changes.  

4.    The business needs to appropriately pay sales people for channel sales and pay them more than for direct business.  Solution providers need encouragement.  

5.    The company needs to get out on the street and actually spend time working with solution providers rather than stand back from a distance and delegate.

6.    Having solution providers summits will be necessary in order for Dell to figure out who partners are and how they work.  Similarly, Dell’s top executives have to meet with solution providers regularly so they can build trust with solution providers and help them rethink the company.   

7.    Dell has to work on deal registration and build a program that will work – with a conflict resolution clause.  Solution providers need to know where they stand.  

8.    Solution providers involved in the program have to be able to make money along with Dell.  Dell needs to offer a good discount program as a reward for partnering and also give solution providers a reason to recommend Dell to their clients and customers

9.    The computer business needs to move quickly with plans for the new program.  Dell is already taking so long to put together its program that the skepticism among solution providers is only getting worse and will be a barrier for partnering in the future.    

10.    Top executives have to really lead the construction and enforcement of Dell’s new strategy and bring it to the table clearly for solution providers so they have confidence in the program and want to be involved.

For more information on this story for solution providers, visit the attached link. 

Blogged By:  Computer Consulting 101 Professional Kit

If you want to be unique as IT specialists, narrow your industry focus.  

Look for More Prospects Like Your Best Clients

You want to determine the key characteristics of your current clients and find more clients just like them.  Take your active client list and put it into a Microsoft Excel worksheet with columns.  Enter the client name, their revenue for the last 12 months, then divide by 12 to find out the monthly income and find out who your most valuable clients are.  

This exercise helps you figure out who your best clients are so you can decide who gets the best customer service, who is worth keeping as a client and who is REALLY paying the bills for your business as IT specialists.  

Clients Go into Categories

Once you’ve done this, look at your best, most active customers and clients.  Who falls into the following categories?  

1.     Micro small businesses – less than 10 systems;

2.    Sweet spot small businesses – 10 – 50 PC’s;

3.    Very large small businesses – those you might not be able to serve adequately without additional staff.  

This can help you find more clients that fall within your range of expertise.  How are your clients similar?  Answering these questions distinguishes between IT specialists and IT generalists.  Find commonalities – perhaps all your best clients are lawyers, accountants or doctors or maybe they are office managers.  Identify who they are so you can find more just like them.   

A Tight Industry Focus

When you narrow down your industry focus, you put yourself with other unique IT specialists and experts.  No matter what your industry, your focus will set you apart from the competition.  

What is Your Professional Background?

Your industry expertise is also a great way to become IT specialists.  When you show yourself to prospects, you will know their field of business, which will be a big selling point for prospects.  These small businesses will choose your firm over someone that is direct mailing a very generic piece to a large number of small businesses in many different industries.  

The Main Idea about IT Specialists

When you narrow your industry focus and examine your current client roster along with your own professional background, you establish your true identity as IT specialists.  

Blogged By:  Computer Consulting 101 Professional Kit

Solution providers are warning each other and advising everyone not to get quickly involved in the new SilverBack partner program from Dell.  Dell announced its new strategy to provide an organized partner program last summer and stated it would start to actively recruit more VARs.  However, solution providers have yet to get any concrete information from the computer business.  

Dell has and continues to state that it will be ready to offer its solution providers program by the end of 2007.  But the fact that the last six months have been marked by quiet and a decision by Dell to partner with SilverBack and EqualLogic (that have very formal channels) has been confusing.  

A partner of EqualLogic explained that he would be ready to de-partner from the organization immediately if Dell continues its silent treatment and does not offer specific information about plans for solution providers.  Many do not see how Dell will manage to completely change its mind about its notorious hatred of the channel and create a real partner program.  

However, while it has not been forthcoming about its plans for solution providers, Dell has been recruiting new VARs to resell Dell systems, though the contracts have put very serious restrictions on where products can be resold and to whom they can be resold.  Many solution providers say the contracts leave them no freedom to work within their own markets.  Also, others claim that Dell will not provide them with discounts beyond those that come standard with, for example, the Dell direct government price.  This means they will get no margin when they resell the products.    

Some optimistic solution providers and other industry experts state that very likely, Dell is quiet because it is carefully considering its move to the new business model, and trying to make sure that it proceeds cautiously and without destroying its progress and growth so far under the new regime.  

As Dell head honchos start to work on issues surrounding the programs for solution providers, many state that Dell’s Federal Government unit is doing a lot to build the new partner ideas.  This unit has a long history of channel partnership and is a great deal more experienced than Dell at creating good programs and relationships.  Some are optimistic that the unit’s involvement will help Dell overcome some issues with contracts that are creating concerns.

While solution providers believe a major shift in building relationships will have to take place with Dell or the channel program will not happen, others are still optimistic.

Blogged By:  Joshua Feinberg

In the past decade, Microsoft Small Business Server has become a very well-respected small business networking tool.  The following three tips can help you get the most out of your experience of working with Small Business Server and help grow your computer consulting business.  

Tip 1:  Most Small Businesses Don’t Know about Small Business Server

Even though your area may have hundreds or even thousands of small businesses that would be well served by Small Business Server, most don’t know what it is.  If you want to increase your consulting profits and stop selling yourself as a commodity, you should probably lead off your sales pitch with something that is a more recognizable service than Small Business Server – like virus protection, SPAM blocking or other security issues.    

Tip 2:  Sell Your Small Business Prospects on Your Company First

If you’re going to sell Small Business Server, you don’t want to be just a “reseller” of the product.  The real money is going to happen when you establish a real relationship with your prospects.  You want to become their outsourced IT department.  

No small business owner will be dreaming of working with Small Business Server.  But most small business owners lose sleep over worrying about what will happen if computer systems fail.  You should sell yourself as the solution to business problems, and Small Business Server can be a tool to help you do this for your clients once you have a relationship.  

Tip 3:  Microsoft Doesn’t Really Care as Much about Computer Consultants as It Claims

The first version of Small Business Server was released in 1997 and code-named “SAM” because it was meant to be sold at Sam’s Club warehouse clubs to avoid having to put it into the reseller channel.  Therefore, the people that made the first product made it with the intention that it would be so simple that it could be used by anyone without the help of a computer consultant.

After the first version was on the market, Microsoft changed its mind and realized that the best way to reach small business owners was by going through its reseller channel and changed its plan.  But small business owners can still find 5-user versions of Small Business Server in retail stores.

Microsoft does not really “protect” sales of its Small Business Server, so you should not either.  Sell your company before you sell Small Business Server and build relationships.

Blogged By:  Computer Consulting 101 Professional Kit

In computer business news, on November 8, Pingdom announced it had a brand new monitoring package available.  Pingdom is known within the computer business for being a respected uptime monitoring service.  

The new monitoring service is designed for business users, as opposed to the last which was geared towards the home users market.  The new package offered to those working within the computer business has been named Pingdom Business; the old package was renamed Pingdom Basic.  This package is meant to target Web hosting and e-commerce businesses and runs for $39.95 as opposed to the basic package which is $9.95.
This new package allows those in need of computer business tools to monitor their uptime when they have a lot of websites, servers or services.  It can send alerts on performance to many different users and contacts.  Customers that purchase the package get 200 SMS when they sign up and also a big discount on the alerts portion of the package.

The new product offers 30 monitoring checks, an exclusive set of monitoring tools and a greater number of tools than are in the Basic package.

For more information on this new computer business package, visit the attached link.

Blogged By:  Computer Consulting 101 Professional Kit

After you’ve completed IT audits and further established a relationship with most of your clients, you will be able to start to plan a project and organize it on a monthly basis.  When you conduct IT audits, you will find some things that need to be done this month, some that can wait and still others that will be added to a wish list.    

What Are Wish List Items?

Wish list items after IT audits will be tasks that have to be done because of a vendor or regulations or because of a product that will be phased out soon.  Some wish list items will need to be completed by a specific date.

Because you are an outsourced IT department, you need to track wish list items by putting tasks down month-by-month.    

Organizing Tasks

After IT audits, you need to organize tasks clearly.  Just create an Excel spreadsheet with columns such as “Month,” “Task,” “Estimated Labor Cost,” “Estimated Product Cost” for software peripherals, etc.

For example, if a customer/client has an old Citrix server that will need to be upgraded and you don’t have the expertise to fix it yourself, knowing the project was coming up would give you time to look for a deeply-niched specialist in the area to which to subcontract.   

After IT audits, no matter what, stay organized to best create stable long-term relationships.

Blogged By:  Computer Consulting Kit

Many VARs worry that, despite predictions by experts that the industry and its businesses will grow in 2008, U.S. economic unrest will make the business climate difficult and may hinder growth.  

The 2008 VARBusiness State of the Market research report interviewed 733 North American VARs in October and found that while 27 percent of them thought their business would grow by at least 15 percent in 2008, 43 percent only predicted growth of as low as 5 percent.  

Some VARs stated that they are getting mixed message from the market in 2008 and are concerned about how the overall economy may inhibit business growth.  Many feel it will depend on the location of their businesses and the surrounding industry along with their specialties and niche markets.  

Nearly 43 percent of VARs surveyed thought that businesses might rein in their spending in 2008 to prepare for an unpredictable economy, particularly in the U.S.  And 42 percent of the VARs asked thought the declining value of the U.S. dollar against virtually every other major currency could do some serious damage on the market.

On November 1, the U.S. dollar dropped to only 95 percents against the Canadian Loonie, which is the first instance in over 30 years that the value of the Canadian dollar was stronger than the American dollar.     

On November 1, the U.S. Federal Reserve put $41 billion into the U.S. financial system, which is the largest amount put in since September 2001.  Some of the U.S. government’s attempts to help the situation with tax cuts could help eliminate some of the VARs’ main concerns.  Still, many feel the Federal Reserve is still not doing enough to truly foster business.  

Many VARs also predicted that a possible recession was coming.

Submitted By:  Computer Consulting 101 Professional Kit