Regardless
of whether you're looking to start a computer consulting business, a
value added reseller (VAR) business, a network integrator business, an
IT solution provider business, or a managed service provider (MSP)
business, your challenge is essentially the same.
The single most important part of starting a computer
consulting business comes down to finding the best, steady,
high-paying small business clients in your area... and getting them
signed onto your company's long-term ongoing annual support contracts.
When you're starting a computer consulting business,
your time is usually at a premium. So you need to really pay attention
to how you mange your time and work as smart as possible.
Your ability to FOCUS your efforts, with
laser precision, will largely determine whether you succeed or not. What
do I mean by “focus”?
Most new computer consultants, VARs, network integrators,
solution providers, and managed services providers are to put it simply…
ALL OVER THE PLACE!
It’s almost like IT-entrepreneurial ADD (attention deficit
disorder).
But it doesn't have to be that way
when you're starting a computer consulting business IF you know
what's most important and what's least important.
So many new computer consulting businesses emulate (a) Fortune 1000 competitors
and (b) completely clueless competitors. Basically they make the potentially fatal
mistake of trying to be ALL things to ALL people.
Trying to be ALL things to ALL people doesn’t work for
small computer consulting businesses that don’t have the resources of industry-giants like Best
Buy, Circuit City, Dell, Office Depot, and Staples.
So yes, the scary reality is that if you don’t focus your
efforts when you're starting a computer consulting business, you’ll end up staring down the barrel of direct-competition with
Fortune 1000 giants… who’ll spend more on advertising before lunchtime
on January 1st, then you’ll spend on your marketing and promotional
activities all-year-long!
This means you must work smarter… MUCH smarter… and
focus your marketing and lead generation activities squarely on more
substantial small businesses, generally with 10-100 workstations, who are
not well-served by impersonal, mass-market, commodity-oriented,
one-size-fits-all efforts.
To do so, you must know where to find the best, potential,
steady, high-paying small business computer consulting clients in your area, so you can make the
most of your limited marketing time and budget.
When you're starting a computer consulting business, you
also must know how to carefully qualify ALL of your leads
BEFORE you waste time going out on sales appointments… so you can work as
efficiently as possible and not get distracted on wild-goose chases.
You also need to have a concrete plan of attack for what you’ll
say and do on your sales appointments, so you can move your qualified leads
from “free” to “fee”-based new paying customers right away… and so
your sales process doesn’t drag on for weeks and weeks of mooching,
brain-picking, and free proposal writing.
And of course, what good is getting a new customer
for your new computer consulting business if you
can’t sell your services to that new customer on an ongoing, steady,
repeat basis?!?
So you’ll also need to know how to properly structure your
first paying projects with your new customers… Proving Ground Projects™…
so you exude professionalism and credibility right-off-the-bat… and plant
the seeds for a very long-term, mutually-beneficial relationship.
After this, you’ll
need to have a very smooth way to get your new customers on-board with your
recommendations for what needs to be fixed ASAP… Remediation Projects.
And finally, you need to know exactly when it’s the right
time to bring up the idea of an ongoing support contract arrangement, how to
structure those ongoing support contract arrangements, and what to say if
your new customers show resistance.
Starting a computer consulting business can be tricky
because so much of the conventional wisdom is wrong... and the
old-wives-tales and what you think **ought** to work simply doesn't.
And that's the reason why we've put together the Computer Consulting Kit Home Study
Course, based on field-tested, proven best practices for starting
a computer consulting business.
Why waste years of your time, banging your head
against the wall, trying to take a shot in the dark, making every
rookie mistake in the book?
...when you can simply study, borrow from, and adapt
from the same field-tested, proven best practices for starting a
computer consulting business that are already in use in all 50 United
States, 8 Canadian provinces, the United Kingdom, Australia, New
Zealand, South Africa, Ireland, and many other nations around the globe.
