As you grow in your IT consulting practice, should you go after government, city, state, municipality contracts like school district contracts? Maybe.

They are an entirely different business model. When you are talking about selling to medium sized businesses, again go back and assess your tech skills.

Can You Go Deep into a Skill?

Assess what kind of skills you are bringing to the table and see how close you are to being able to being that deep into a few skills. That’s what these medium sized businesses are looking for with IT consulting. They are not looking for an outsourced version of a central IT manager.

Government and Schools Involve More Red Tape

Going after government, city, state, municipality, public school districts, etc. involves bids, bid packets, bid surety bonds, long sales cycles, and a lot of politics.  It’s a very different business model; very different than selling IT consulting to the sweet spot of small businesses or even small businesses in general.

Have You Exhausted The Sweet Spot Businesses?

Only go after these kinds of things after you have completely exhausted and completely saturated your sweet spot marketing roll out.  In other words, don’t persue them until most of the sweet spot small businesses within a 50 mile radius know who you are, are in your prospect funnel, or have grown them to the point that you have absolutely maximized them out and you still don’t have enough business.  This is pretty unlikely unless you are located in the middle of nowhere.

Consider High-End Micros or Medium Sized Businesses Instead

You should consider supplementing your IT consulting business base with some high-end micros and some medium sized businesses before going after government work.

This is because of the level of aggravation with the bids, then the politics and the waiting to get paid. It’s not a very good place for people to be – especially in their start up stage. 

The Bottom Line about IT Consulting
 
In this article, you’ve been introduced to IT consulting.  To learn more about IT consulting, click here now to get access to a free one-hour audio training program on 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Computer Consulting Business.