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Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Being an IT Specialist Means Branding Your Company

When you are an IT specialist, you can set yourself apart from the crowd of other consultants by branding your company. You want to sell your company name by adding an industry-specific twist.

You don’t need to advertise certifications and vendor logos as an IT specialist, because this practice will make you into just a product. These items can be a part of background information and a discussion point, but you don’t want to lead with them. Talk about the value and benefits you can bring to small businesses.

You Can Meet Unfulfilled Needs

Setting yourself apart as an IT specialist also means finding an underserved local niche and really taking it. Just ask around to find one that works for you.

Your Industry “Twist”

When you are at chamber meetings or other networking meetings and talking to prospects or at B2B expos, keep your eye out for a big problem that no one is solving. If you can think of a solution to a previously unresolved problem and there are enough people in the area that need that solution, you can make yourself stand out as an IT specialist.

Don’t Expect Your Clients to Agree about Problems

You don’t want to sell solutions to problems people don’t realize they have. You need prospects to understand the issue you are bringing up, or they will not be interested in buying the solution.

What is Your Competition?

You also have to know your local competition in order to be a successful IT specialist. Study your biggest five competitors by looking at their Web sites and brochures to see what they are doing. If they all look the same, you can probably figure out how to make yourself different as an IT specialist.

Blogged By: Computer Consulting Kit

Sunday, November 25, 2007

IT Emergencies and Planning

There will always be IT emergencies in the computer consulting world, and handling these situations is very important if you want to keep your customer base. They also provide an excellent opportunity to build new relationships. So how do you best handle IT emergencies?

Don’t Over-Book Your Staff

You want to schedule staff at about 75 percent capacity when you’re dealing with staff that don’t have sales or management duties. This will allow you to keep 25 percent of time open for non-billable work, IT emergencies and marketing towards new targets.

There will be peaks you cannot meet, and this is a time when you will need to have everyone’s cooperation to make sure you can appropriately do triage. If you book someone in the field for a full day, schedule him/her eight to 11 a.m. and then do an afternoon appointment from one p.m. to four p.m. You need to leave time open in case something happens.

What Are IT Emergencies? Explain Them Well to Clients

Clients that are engaged in long-term relationships with you will understand when IT emergencies crop up and will be amenable to rescheduling maintenance appointments. They would want you to do the same for you if they had IT emergencies, so they will be very accommodating.

If you have to call long-term clients and tell them you are stuck at a client emergency – a server’s down, lightening struck, a fire broke out – they will probably be okay with lateness. You just need to keep communications open, stay in contact with people, make best use of your resources and don’t over-schedule routine tasks.

The Main Idea about IT Emergencies

Your project work will be predictable because you will know in advance what needs to be done. But make sure you build in some time for IT emergencies.

Added By: Computer Consulting Kit

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

When to Offer Retainer Agreements

A good time to propose retainer agreements for customers is right after an emergency service call. This is when you are on great terms with customers.

Because customers must know, like and trust you in order to agree to long-term retainer agreements, you can really take advantage of emergencies. After an emergency, they love you because you have saved the day. They know you because you’ve probably worked with them closely for the past 16 hours non-stop. And they trust you because you came through with what you promised.

Damage Control and Retainer Agreements

After you’ve handled an emergency, customers will be receptive to listening to how they can in the future prevent the same situation. Offer a proposal that includes retainer agreements for on-going maintenance – support contracts.

IT Audits Are another Opportunity

After IT audits, customers will want to know what comes next. If they have asked for an audit, they will be more likely to be looking for a regular support person to look out for their needs and plan long-term maintenance and protection of their investments.

In order to get a customer to sign onto retainer agreements, you need to make sure he/she is PAYING. Once you have a paying customer with a retainer agreement, he/she becomes a client and beyond a transaction-based customer. You are dealing with a long-term agreement.

The Long-Term Approach

You may also confront a long sales cycle that can take a couple weeks to a couple months. Your customer will realize at some point he/she is not happy with a current tech provider for some reason and will actively shop for a new consulting firm.

At this point, you can gather notes and then propose that you come back for an IT audit. This can lead to retainer agreements.

Added By: Computer Consulting Kit

Sunday, November 18, 2007

IT Services Contracts: Follow through with Promises

You may have just started working with the IT services contracts business model. And you might very well be worried about how you can live up to the promises you make as part of your IT services contracts agreements. For example, perhaps you have eight clients commanding $165,000 annually in revenue. So how can you support these clients on a short-term basis?

Planning Ahead Increases Your Confidence

With IT services contracts and your business, you need to gauge what you can do today. Set an inventory skills list. Look at what your competitors are doing and find out where there are gaps in your solutions. Which of your services would be useful for those clients that have a real LAN and network? And then look at how competitors make up for their own clients’ deficiencies. You can use this to your advantage when designing attractive IT services contracts.

Certifications?

Most small businesses are a two or three years behind the technology curve, so if your technicians don’t have large numbers of complex certifications or experience with new software, your clients most likely won’t either.

Here are some basic certifications you should look for: a basic MCP; the Microsoft Certified Professional; anything that helps them work with basic desktop operating systems that you will find in small businesses.

Most sweet spot small businesses will not be focused on certifications and will not be able to tell the difference between advanced and entry-level certifications. The important idea is to really think about how you design your IT services contracts and plan ahead.

Blogged By: Computer Consulting 101 Professional Kit

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

IT Businesses: Spotting Potential Prospect Problems

When working in IT businesses, you need to be mindful of potential prospect problems by looking for early warning signs.

IT Businesses: Do Prospects Respect Your Time?

If you have a meeting with a prospect looking for IT businesses and the prospect makes you sit around for 15 or 20 minutes, you can expect that unless there is an emergency, if you take this person on as a client, the wait time isn’t going to decrease. You can predict that you will show up on time and have to wait – probably every time – and you’ll be unproductive because the prospect is disorganized.

The Value of a Pleasant Disposition

If a prospect is late, really obnoxious, abusive or nasty or if you find out that the owners or managers don’t respect employees, these are clues that this prospect probably won’t work too well with IT businesses either.

If you get an early warning sign during your first meeting, don’t walk out the door. Instead, put it in your notes and think later about whether or not you want to take this person on as a client.

It Goes Both Ways

The initial meeting with a prospect and IT businesses is a two-way interview. You are interviewing the prospect, and the prospect is interviewing you to see if you will work well together. Every prospect needs to know where his/her business is going and how IT can be incorporated.

Blogged By: Computer Consulting Kit

Sunday, November 11, 2007

Project Management: How to Overcome Small Business Sales Objections

One of the biggest issues for those selling computer networks, IT-related products and services to small businesses is project management; and a more specific challenge related to project management is the process of overcoming sales objections that your prospects have.

Where Does this Project Management Problem Begin?

Typically, when you start trying to sell a network upgrade, a lot of small business prospects, customers and clients start to focus on cost. But what they are not thinking about are the soft costs involved in NOT installing a network. They don’t realize they can experience loss of employee productivity, downtime because fault-tolerance is thought of after the fact and services costs that result from bad solutions selected simply because they don’t cost a lot.

This is where you have to think about how to approach this from a strong project management perspective. Even if you are very thorough with your initial consultation, IT audit, site survey, reports, etc., some prospect, customer and client objections can come up right before you get the “okay” to proceed with the project.

Project Management: Overcoming Sales Objections is Critical

A minor concern can stop an entire sale, so you need to have great project management skills and be ready to address concerns when trying to close the deal. If you’re aware of the most common objections, you can anticipate them ahead of time.

The First Sales Objection: Apathy

Apathy is very difficult for those even with the best project management skills to overcome. When small business decision makers are apathetic towards installing a network, the process of selling might take weeks, months or perhaps even years. But if you can figure out the root of the apathy, you can move the process along much faster.

For example, you might come across someone that sees no problem with a P2P network. But a few big problems can cause the small business owner to see how wrong he/she is. For example, the server might be totally reliable until someone working on the computer acting as the server accidentally hits the reset button. Then everything goes down and there can be lost data and other major problems.

If you want to have great project management skills and overcome more of the common sales objections, you have to have a store of horror stories and know when to deliver them.

Network Reliability, Project Management and Overcoming Sales Objections

PC/LAN network reliability can be problematic when the P2P server “accidentally” performs an unannounced and unscheduled shutdown and restart because of a prompted reboot from a software program.

Using P2P networks means protecting data is not a concern right off the bat. If the server is not protected with hard drives, a tape backup drive, a server-class UPS and antivirus software, the P2P network is susceptible to failure. Often, some “divine intervention” in the form of a storm and blackout can make clients see the light when their “server” shuts completely down and they cannot retrieve important data.

The Fear of Catastrophic Data Loss

Catastrophic data loss is an excellent motivator for surmounting apathy and can help prospects, customers and clients see the importance of your suggestions for better project management techniques. You can show them how important centralized data protection and control is to their businesses.

The Main Idea

If you are selling IT-related products and services, you have to hone your sales skills and project management techniques in order to overcome common sales objections.

Added By: Computer Consulting Kit

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

A Good Contract for Maintenance is about Practice

After you have the idea to start a contract for maintenance of your clients’ computer systems and put all your clients in it, you may have some questions. Are you afraid you won’t be able to deliver all you promise?

A Contract for Maintenance: Experience

You want to start off offering and selling services and proceed slowly until you gain enough confidence to go further. You won’t get real confidence through training, reading a report or preparing a template. You need to actually start selling one contract for maintenance after another and doing the work.

You should start with small accounts and work your way up to larger accounts. If a larger account falls into your lap, don’t turn it away automatically if you aren’t to that point yet. But just make sure to start with accounts that are small enough for you to manage efficiently in the beginning.

Prepare in Advance

When you don’t manage the sales process and take a prospect through it from sales call to IT audit, you will not be successful at selling a contract for maintenance. You need to have a concrete plan and a clear end goal. Otherwise, you will find yourself handling only emergencies and not developing any long-term relationships. A good contract for maintenance will connect you with your clients like a marriage.

Do You Want a Profitable Business?

You can’t really succeed all the way in IT services if you just wait for customers to come to you or just do a few hours here and there. When you establish a good contract for maintenance, you will find clients that need long-term relationships with you, oversight and the security that only an outsourced IT department can provide.

The Main Idea about a Good Contract for Maintenance

Without a clearly laid-out contract for maintenance, you will always be wondering when and if you will get a call from customers and whether or not they will enter into long-term relationships. A well-crafted contract for maintenance guarantees a long-term relationship that will sustain your business.

Added By: Computer Consulting Kit

Sunday, November 04, 2007

Don't Just Engage in Partnering with Other Computer Consultants

When looking for partnering relationships, you shouldn’t just seek out other technicians. Many not involved in the IT business – management consultants, etc. – will be able to refer a lot of business to clients.

Accountants and Partnering

Accountants can refer you to small businesses that can be excellent clients because they are already trusted by most small businesses like attorneys, management consultants and advertising consultants.

Accountants probably do a lot of QuickBooks installs because of their job and might be getting some questions from customers about how to back up and protect their systems. Accountants won’t want to be involved in this process and can refer clients to you for a partnering situation.

With Partnering, You Become More Valuable

You can use your partnering relationships to put you ahead of other larger companies when it comes to support and services. You want to move up the value chain and provide services that will be hard to beat, particularly for companies like Dell and others that are often based on commodities. Partnering can help you enhance your personality, communication skills and ability to manage great relationships.

You Have Many Partnering Options

There are a lot of ways to take advantage of partnering – partnering with professionals like accountants and attorneys or with ISPs and other companies. You will help build your business if you explore many different partnering options.

Added By: Computer Consulting 101 Professional Kit