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Saturday, March 29, 2014

What Happened to this Blog? (Computer Consulting Kit Preview Blog)

This Computer Consulting Kit Preview Blog hasn't been updated in quite some time...OK years!

If you like what was published over here, you'll love the Small Business Computer Consulting Blog.

Thanks for your continued support!

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Data Cabling Companies Partnering Strategies

Most data cabling companies face a choice of two distinctly different business development paths.

Some spend most of their marketing, sales, and business development resources pursuing large major bid opportunities with Fortune 1000 enterprises and government entities.

Other data cabling companies do a lot more in the small business space, where installations typically involve networks of anywhere from 10-100 nodes.

However it can be very difficult to profitably market to customers that really only need your services once… with perhaps some small add-on work a few years down the road.

This is because your customer acquisition costs can be quite high relative to the rather limited size of the job.

Think about it…. How much can you really afford to spend on marketing, sales and business development expenses when the upside potential of the projects is say $1,000 - $5,000?

That’s why for many data cabling companies that want to service small businesses, it makes more sense to partner with those technology providers that already have existing relationships with small business owners and managers.

How can you go about finding these movers and shakers that can not only drastically cut the length of your sales cycle, but also provide predictability and stability through constant referrals?

Consider these 5 ways to locate like-minded technology providers that are eager to work with data cabling companies like yours.

1. Look for Those Small Business Tech Providers that Don’t Do Cabling In-House. At the risk of stating the obvious, make sure those VARs, consultants, solution providers, MSPs, and integrators that you choose to partner with are complimentary to your core cabling skills, and not a direct or indirect competitor.

2. Check Out B2B Networking Events. Generally those technology providers that get involved with chamber of commerce organizations, lead sharing groups, and local expos are pretty receptive to building their businesses up on a variety of fronts.

3. Go Where Techies Hang Out. Often-overlooked, IT user groups can be a great way to network both with potential partners and those that routinely subcontract work to data cabling companies like yours.

4. Keep Your Ears Open at Training Events. Ever been to a reseller or channel partner event from an IT giant like Microsoft or Cisco? These confabs are often bursting at the seams with those technology providers eager for opportunity. The key thing… network with those who don’t fulfill the needs that you do.

5. Ask Your Accountant or Attorney to Facilitate Introductions. Chances are, your trusted business advisors like your accountant or attorney have clients that are VARs, consultants, solution providers, MSPs, and integrators. So don’t be shy about letting your trusted business advisors know that you’d appreciate any relevant, appropriate matchmaking. After all, you do already have one important thing in common… you’ve selected the same trusted business advisor.

Most data cabling companies are either excellent marketers or destined to starve themselves out of business. This can be an especially daunting challenge if you work primarily with small businesses. In this short article, we looked at 5 simple, proven, powerful strategies for leveraging the existing relationships of other technology providers to get an instant foot in the door. To learn more about how data cabling companies can attract more steady, high-paying clients, go sign-up for the free tips now at the attached link.

Copyright (C) DataCablingCompany.com All Rights Reserved

Thursday, March 26, 2009

IT Marketing Ideas that Attract More Great Clients

Are you looking for some IT marketing ideas to help you really get noticed by potential clients? Perhaps you should start looking beyond all the generalist tasks you are doing as a trusted technology provider for your clients … and start positioning yourself as a real IT specialist.

Why? Well, the truth is you don’t need that much industry experience to position yourself as an IT specialist. But specialization can make an enormous difference in your marketing results, your hourly billing rates, your sales call closing rates, and your clients' lifetime value.

Of course, there are a lot of IT marketing ideas that can help you position yourself as an IT specialist. But the key is identifying something you enjoy doing that many small business owners in your area need. Finding a specialty helps ensure you won’t just look like everyone else providing technology services.

Consider the following 5 IT marketing ideas to help you attract and retain great clients for your business.

1. Be Choosy with Your Clients. If you are like many others in the small business IT consulting field, you are probably doing everything for your clients, including tasks like network design, procurement, project management, dealing with phone companies, Web hosts and ISPs, deciding what to buy and inspecting it when it comes in, and doing configuration, testing, integration, customization, training and troubleshooting. Wow, that's a lot of hats to wear! Your Virtual CIO role as the person that does everything certainly makes you a generalist in some respects. But who says you have to be a generalist for everyone under the sun? IT marketing ideas that really work involve you being all things to only some of the people in a particular niche. You provide true IT consulting solutions and show your clients that the buck stops with you. You become accountable for everything your clients need. But most importantly, you must limit the scope of the kind of clients you pursue, usually by industry niche.

2. As an IT Specialist, You Can Market More Cost-Effectively to Your Niche. Marketing to a niche is actually easier and a lot more affordable than virtually any other IT marketing ideas. You will know exactly where to advertise when it comes to trade publications. You will be able to stop wasting time and money on generic ads in the newspaper, phone book or on the radio. When you understand your specialty and the needs of your niche, you will be able to come up with a marketing message that speaks directly to your target audience and really resonates. All of a sudden you become very valuable to potential clients and find yourself getting a warm response to your sales letters, postcards and any seminars you give.

3. Picking a Specialty Niche Doesn’t Always Require Extensive Experience. Finding your specialty and your niche can be as simple as having two or three clients, in the same or similar industries, who you’ve been working with for a year or two. Perhaps you’ve been doing a project such as migrating an antiquated MS-DOS-based industry-specific application to a 32-bit or to a Web-based application. As you go along, you may get to know a specific applications through work with a client or two. Now that you know that specific application, you most likely stand out from other consulting firms that those that use this industry-specific application could call.

4. Size Up the Market Size When You Think About Your Specialty Niche. One of the best and most important IT marketing ideas is to make sure you do your homework before you decide who you are going to serve. As an IT specialist, sometimes you will have to turn away potential clients, which may be counter-intuitive to the idea of growing your business. However, you are not really turning away any really viable clients. Instead you are making room for, almost like a kind of de-cluttering of your client list, and honing in on a segment that will be a good fit for your solutions and bring you a good source of high-margin, long-term, steady service revenue.

5. Develop a Marketing Message that Fits Your Specialty. Don’t try to speak to the masses with your marketing materials. You can’t possibly create a message that will resonate with everyone. And if you do, you will find yourself competing on price and reduced to a commodity. A well-defined specialty helps others know exactly what you do and for whom you do it. Plus focusing in on a well-defined niche avoids those prospects that would just call 30 companies they found in the phone book, looking for the lowest, dirt-cheap price.

In this article, we discussed 5 IT marketing ideas to help you become a specialist, so you can attract more great new clients. Learn more about how you can attract great, steady, high-paying clients with more proven IT marketing ideas now at the attached link.

Copyright (C), ITMarketingIdeas.com, All Rights Reserved

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Computer Company Tips for Overcoming Sales Objections

When you’re approaching your computer company clients with network upgrade proposals, often they will dwell on cost. They don’t think about the great cost to them of failing to invest in a network: lost employee productivity; downtime when they don’t think about fault tolerance and additional service costs from computer consultants when dead-end or impossible-to-support solutions are chosen just because they are cheap.

No matter how great you are at explaining your solutions to prospects, customers, and clients, inevitably some sales objections will crop up before you can get authorization to proceed. One minor concern can derail a whole sale, which is why you need to know how to overcome objections so you can close the deal on big network installations.

Use these 3 strategies to overcome common computer company sales objections, so you can be less emotional and defensive, and better prepared when you are trying to turn non-paying prospects into paying customers and clients.

1. Overcome Apathy. Apathy is a formidable force in the sales process. If small business decision makers have an apathetic outlook toward implementing a network, they might take weeks, months or even years before they feel a sense of urgency about your proposed network. Maybe these small business owners don’t see any problem with their peer-to-peer network. Luckily for you, sometimes all it takes is just one little disaster for those who are apathetic to see the light. Maybe a person working on the PC acting as a server accidentally hits the reset button with his/her knee, or maybe the server inadvertently performs an unannounced shutdown and restart due to a software setup issue. Situations that cause catastrophic data loss or interrupted business can be great ways to combat apathy. Suddenly a small business owner will be very receptive to your suggestions and solutions. You can also overcome apathy by discussing your prospect’s or client’s competition (without naming names), citing examples of those you are working with that are buying into more sophisticated computer solutions and changing the landscape of the industry.

2. Overcome Unrealistic Expectations. You may not think there is such a thing as a prospect being too enthusiastic about jumping headfirst into a major IT project, especially if you are a new computer company owner. However, too much enthusiasm can be dangerous. Succumbing to hype is essentially the exact opposite of succumbing to apathy. Be careful to manage client expectations regarding undue optimism … as soon as possible. As an example, maybe a small business owner returns from a trade show with a glossy brochure for an industry-specific application and is incredibly excited, seeing it as the next big thing. While the small business owner may have been really impressed by the demo at the trade show, you need to overcome the hype surrounding the application and save your client from making huge investments in anything that will not be best for his/her business. Part of your responsibility as a computer company owner and outsourced Virtual CIO is to make sure your clients don’t squander scarce IT budgetary resources on ill-advised solutions that fail to deliver as advertised.

3. Overcome Denial. A big question you might get from prospects, customers, and clients, when you’re trying to sell a major project is, “Why do I need something as big and powerful as the system you’re recommending? We’re just a seven-person company and our network works great … most of the time …” Also popular is, “My staff has been with me for years, is very careful about sensitive data and I trust them completely,” as well as “It could never happen to me!” The truth is, in order to overcome denial, you have to sell fear. Be ready to tell horror stories about catastrophic data loss, employee betrayal and other security disasters. Small business owners rarely think about issues like IT security until it’s already too late. You need to get small business prospects, customers, and clients thinking about sensitive files such as credit card numbers, social security numbers, trade secrets, payroll data and annual employee reviews. You need to get them thinking about the big picture and why your solutions will help protect them, so they can understand the pieces of their business that are at risk, and what you can do about this risk. This helps you overcome the “it could never happen to me” denial.

While you will encounter more than just apathy, unrealistic expectations and denial when it comes to small business sales objections, those are three big obstacles you need to be prepared to confront and overcome. In this article we talked about 3 tips to help you overcome computer company sales objections. Learn more about how you can attract great, steady, high-paying clients to your computer company now at the attached link.

Tuesday, October 07, 2008

The Computer Consulting Kit Audio Training Program: Learn about the Course with the Quick Start Guide

Many computer consultants just like you have totally changed their way of thinking about their business – and enjoyed amazing changes in revenue and relationships with clients – thanks to their investment in the Computer Consulting Kit Home Study Course.

As part of your Computer Consulting Kit investment, you get amazing resources from the audio training program. The Quick Start Guide audio training program features TWO hours of detailed help navigating the information in the course.

The Quick Start Audio Training Program offers …

1. Advice on how to get the most out of your training investment as you familiarize yourself with the HUGE collection of powerful, field-tested, PROVEN small business computer consulting tools and resources.

2. An outline of how you can get the most impact from the time you invest studying up on the Computer Consulting Kit materials.

3. A jump-start overview of eight critical business development concepts so you can start using them right away and get ahead TODAY through training, even before you finish reading the first Module of the course.

4. A structured method for tracking your self-study progress so you can stay organized and use what you learn easily as part of your own business.

To learn more about how you can get this audio training program and make the decision to invest in the Computer Consulting Kit Home Study Course, visit the attached link.

Added By: Joshua Feinberg

Thursday, October 02, 2008

Forecast Your IT Consulting Cash Flow with Easy-to-Use Templates

When you are running your own IT consulting business, templates can really help keep you efficient and consistent to improve your credibility and the level of professionalism you exhibit to your prospects, customers, clients and potential partners.

If you want to really streamline your IT consulting business, you need to watch your cash flow and make sure you are getting the most out of your relationship investments with prospects and clients. Once you get paying customers and clients, you will find yourself busy with billable hours and in need of important templates to help you manage what’s coming in and turn it into profit for your business.

The Computer Consulting Kit Home Study Course offers IMMEDIATELY downloadable templates to help you with cash flow. That means you can get started NOW with managing your client relationships and your cash flow – before you get overwhelmed and find yourself up against obstacles you cannot overcome.

As soon as you pay for the Computer Consulting Kit Home Study Course through our Verisign Class 3 Server, you can immediately get access to the tools that so many consultants JUST LIKE YOU worldwide have used to really jump-start their businesses. You get ALL the sample document templates, audio training programs, Module workbooks and special bonuses (including the cash flow templates) so you don’t miss a beat while you build your IT consulting company.

To learn more about how you can get templates like the cash flow forecasting worksheets on a slew of different subjects relevant to your IT consulting business, visit the attached link!

Added By: Joshua Feinberg

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

IT Marketing: Learn More about Marketing in Tough Economic Times with Audio Training Seminars

Whether you live in the United States … or any other part of the world, you know we are living in a time when the economy is less than predictable and IT marketing can be difficult when people are unsure about investing. If you are running your own IT business, you need to be able to plant the seeds for your future business development activities no matter WHAT the state of the economy.

Now more than ever you CANNOT afford to procrastinate finding more clients with a well-crafted IT marketing plan if you are serious about growing your business. That’s why the Computer Consulting Kit offers an information-packed audio training seminar to help you with your lead generation activities with over a dozen field-tested, low-cost, high-impact techniques that can help you find great clients even when times are tough.

IT Marketing Tips You Will Learn:

1. How to get more word-of-mouth referrals … even if you have been out of touch with contacts for months and YEARS;

2. How to find the huge service revenue opportunities that are around you on a daily basis;

3. Why preparing IT marketing materials the right way will help you boost the number of prospects you can turn into great clients;

4. How you can avoid making rookie mistakes during sales calls;

5. Where you can get much, MUCH more help with your IT marketing campaign.

To learn more about this IT marketing audio training opportunity, visit the attached link!

Submitted By: Computer Consulting Kit

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

IT Audits: A Sample Client Questionnaire

Small business IT audits are incredibly important to your computer consulting business. Not only are they typically the first paid services you provide for new customers, but they are the gateway to determining if your customers will make good long-term clients.

Many new computer consultants might feel overwhelmed by the process of IT audits. Which questions do you need to ask and answer to get the most thorough picture of what assets your new customers have? How can you make sure you don’t miss anything so you can come up with the best long-term solution?

The sample client IT audits questionnaire template from the Computer Consulting Kit helps you quickly and efficiently pull together key IT asset information and gives you a MUCH clearer picture of what your new customer currently has and what he/she is missing so you can figure out which tasks need to be done right away and close much larger and more profitable sales.

This template gives you a logical way to survey shortcomings, potential problems and accidents that are waiting to happen so you can start new relationships off on the right foot with your IT audits.

To learn more about IT audits and ways to streamline other important elements of your computer consulting business, visit the attached link, where you can find additional information on other templates you can enjoy by signing up for the Computer Consulting Kit.

Added By: Computer Consulting Kit

Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Small Business Computer Consulting: Make the Leap with Audio Training

You need to have very special skills if you want to have a successful small business computer consulting business. Even if you’ve been in computer consulting for years working for a large corporation and decide to start your own small firm, you probably need a refresher course on the strategies you need to get started.

The Computer Consulting Kit offers an hour of training in mp3 format to help you start your small business computer consulting firm right so you can be successful long term!

Here are just some of the things you will learn:

1. How to decide which services to offer so you can save a LOT of time and money;

2. How to set your small business computer consulting rates right THE FIRST TIME so you don’t charge too little and doom your business to failure;

3. Ways to size up your local competition so you can better position your business;

4. Methods for establishing your credibility and your business so you can be successful;

5. Filling up your calendar with PAID services so you can start earning a profit.

Of course, there are MANY more topics covered in this valuable resource. To learn more about this small business computer consulting audio training to help get you started, visit the attached link.

Added By: Computer Consulting Kit

Thursday, September 04, 2008

IT Audits: A Template for Your Summary of Findings Report

When you work as a computer consultant for small businesses, IT audits are a very important gateway to selling long-term support contract agreements to your customers. And it is your CLIENTS on support contracts that give you predictable, on-going revenue for your business and help you provide services that keep both you and your clients happy.

Having strong templates in place for your IT audits and tasks BEYOND them can help you more efficiently run your business. The Computer Consulting Kit offers many templates to help you conduct successful IT audits, including a template for your Summary of Findings Report.

This template for your IT audits process helps you quickly and easily package your IT audit into a sophisticated, long-term solution with very high perceived value. What does this IT audits template do?

1. Helps you organize your deliverable so you can set the stage for selling additional consulting work that stays consistent with your initial findings and recommendations.

2. Provides the framework for turning endless free questions into tangible, BILLABLE IT audits and long-term technology projects.

To learn more about templates for IT audits and other important components of your computer consulting business, visit the attached link.

Added By: Computer Consulting Kit

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Computer Consultants Speak: Case Study MP3’s from People Just Like You

Do you ever wonder how much more you could learn if you could just call up a few competing computer consultants in your own town and pick their brains for an hour, asking them anything and everything about what it takes to succeed in the business?

Unfortunately, you can’t really do that. As you probably have discovered, computer consultants aren’t (and shouldn’t be) that forthcoming about their biggest business secrets, especially not when it comes to their direct competitors.

But now, the Computer Consulting Kit gives you just that opportunity by providing you with THREE recorded case study interviews from computer consultants just like you in different geographic regions throughout the world. All of them have different levels of experience and come from very different occupational backgrounds. So you get not only the perspective of the experts at the Computer Consulting Kit but also some insider tips from three other successful small business computer consultants.

To learn more about what these computer consultants have to say along with how you can get access to this audio resource and many more, visit the attached link!

Added By: Joshua Feinberg

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Support Contract Templates: Your Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA)

As a computer consultant working with a support contract business model, your time is very valuable. In fact, depending on your location in the world, you are probably charging $100 per hour or more to provide your brand of unique, comprehensive, total business solutions.

The Computer Consulting Kit offers a variety of support contract templates that can help you streamline your business and save HUNDREDS if not THOUSANDS of hours of time so you have more billable hours and can earn a greater profit and increase your bottom line significantly. These templates are immediately downloadable and easy –to-customize, so there’s no excuse not to invest in them and start using them, no matter where you are located or how much time you THINK you have.

An important part of support contract relationships with clients is the non-disclosure agreement (NDA), which can protect you and your clients in many ways and add real value and weight to your contracts.

What does the non-disclosure agreement do?

1. It protects the confidential information exchanged between each individual within the support contract relationship (both you AND your small business computer consulting client.

2. It helps you avoid major misunderstandings and potential economic loss down the road (in other words, it contributes to a healthy relationship by enabling clear communication between you and your client).

To learn more about how you can protect your valuable support contract relationships with the NDA and other important templates from the Computer Consulting Kit, visit the attached link!

Added By: Computer Consulting Kit

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

IT Marketing: Find Great Clients -- Even During Difficult Times -- with Special Audio Training Seminars

In today’s challenging economy, as a small business computer consultant you need to have the IT marketing skills to recruit new clients no matter what the climate is.

The Computer Consulting Kit offers an hour and fifteen minute-long audio training seminar to help you with your IT marketing skills so you can attract the best clients possible for your business. You need to make sure you know how to constantly look out for new client business opportunities and contribute directly to your future IT marketing activities.

This information-packed IT marketing training seminar helps you organize your lead generation activities with over a dozen field-tested, low-cost, STRONG techniques for finding new clients in challenging times.

Here are just a few things you will learn:

1. Getting more word-of-mouth referrals, even if you haven’t been in touch with your contacts in months or years;

2. Uncovering service revenue opportunities that are in your everyday environment;

3. Preparing IT marketing materials that will really boost your prospect numbers and help you convert more of them into long-term clients, committed to your computer consulting firm;

4. The number one mistake consultants make during sales calls and how you can avoid it;

5. Rising above your competitors using very simple customer service techniques that will help you gain loyalty and trust with new clients.

Today we talked about IT marketing audio training from the Computer Consulting Kit and how you can learn how to boost your client acquisition strategies even during the most challenging times. To learn more about this topic and how you can access lots of valuable audio training seminars, visit the attached link!

Added By: Computer Consulting Kit

Wednesday, August 06, 2008

IT Audits: A Sample Worksheet from the Computer Consulting Kit

IT audits are an incredibly important part of the sales process if you want to get more long-term, steady, GREAT clients on support contracts and on board with your computer consulting business. They’re your first paid “gig,” so you want to make sure you’re doing your job right!

But many computer consultants don’t know how to run IT audits efficiently and effectively so they can accurately assess which assets their prospects and customers have and come up with a comprehensive, sophisticated IT solution.

The Computer Consulting Kit presents a sample worksheet to help consultants get through IT audits so they can quickly AND efficiently gather key IT asset information. This small business worksheet gives you a better idea of what your new customer currently has and what the customer is missing so you can easily decide, “What needs to be done right away?” and “What can wait a while for a long-term plan?”

When you know what to do during IT audits, you can close much larger, MUCH more profitable sales and get to those value-added remediation services that are really going to make your clients happy.

The worksheet for IT audits provided by the Computer Consulting Kit provides you with a very logical way to assess shortcomings, potential problems and accidents BEFORE they happen.

To learn more about the template for guiding you through IT audits and to get more templates to help make your computer consulting business efficient, visit the attached link!

Added By: Joshua Feinberg