Small Biz Tech Talk ™

How can you do everything with your computer contract job schedule?  You need time to devote to finding long-term computer consulting clients, but you will be already working 60, 70 or 80 hours a week.  

A Time Study

With a computer contract job, you need to look at where you spend most of your time and determine if there are some things you are doing that you could delegate, automate or even eliminate altogether.

As an example, maybe you are sitting around building PCs and putting in motherboards and power supplies 10 hours per week, which is something you could delegate.  If you are minding retail traffic in a retail computer store and you have someone else that can do that for a day per week, this is another good way to manage time.  

Delegation is Key

You need to consider which computer contract job tasks you can delegate based on your staff.  Then you can give yourself a free day to a day-and-a-half per week to work on cultivating business-to-business clients.  

What Should You Do with Extra Time?

With free time earned through delegation of computer contract job duties, you can go to networking events, plan marketing strategies, go out on sales calls and make follow-up calls.  

The Main Idea

If you are already working way too many hours, even with some computer contract job delegation and time management, you just need to find the time to get everything done.  Look out for where you spend computer contract job time and see if you can delegate a few things to free up some time for important marketing and networking tasks.

Submitted By:  Joshua Feinberg

If you don’t plot out time carefully in computer consulting, you will waste not only time but money.  

Time Journaling

You can figure out a lot about computer consulting time spent by journaling.  You should write down everything you do for a few weeks to get a good sample of how you use your time. Where are you wasting it?  How can you improve time management?  Use your journal to evaluate and combine it with an Excel spreadsheet or calendar.  Do you have enough time to do the business development for larger accounts?

Evaluation

Time is at a premium when you are working in the computer consulting business.  You may need to make decisions about where you can and can’t afford to spend as little as ten hours per week.

Make Time for Training

Training can be expensive.  But a lot of computer consulting firms do training that is more costly time-wise than financially.  Don’t send people out for five-day $2,500 Exchange Server courses.  Instead get the action pack subscription and buy some resale copies.  You can load it up on spare machines and whenever your techs have downtime, make them go through the tutorials.  Have them look at the read-me files, resource kits and have them do the CBT training.

Computer Consulting Plans Are Critical

If you are billing out computer consulting techs at 65 or 70 percent capacity and they spend six or eight hours per week just sitting there or doing some work around the store, structure their downtime more wisely.

Give them a plan during the month to concentrate all their time on learning how to do Microsoft Small Business Server 2003 or get stronger on troubleshooting Exchange Sever.       

The Main Point about Computer Consulting

Track where your time is spent and have technical staff spend some time each week keeping skills up to speed.  Identify your computer consulting skills gaps to get to the next level.

Added By:  Computer Consulting Kit

You need to think about the services you provide to your sweet spot IT consulting clients.  

Which Web Design Programs Do You Need?

You need to know basic web authoring tools in order to be able to set up simple websites for your IT consulting clients.  Also make sure you have your own website. Know Microsoft Front page, and if you are looking at more high-end websites, Macromedia or Dreamweaver.   

Terminal Services

Real is still a hot thing with small businesses.  Know what is built into the window server.  While the fax machine is probably going quickly, faxing over a network is very important.

Get to know what you can about performance monitoring so you can do tune-ups and checks.  You will be dealing with VPN and RADs, virtual private networking and remote access, particularly when working with teleworkers and branch offices.

Things to Know about Virus Protection

You need to know more about advanced virus protection applications, particularly when they cross over different applications.  When they work with a group-wide system like Exchange Server or IAS, know how to automate the process.  Also get to know some sophisticated firewall and intrusion detection packages to fully protect your IT consulting sweet spot clients.

Added By:  Joshua Feinberg

When you work in IT consulting you need to have some client options.  If you want to go larger than the sweet spot businesses in IT consulting, you can get into large small businesses.

What Are Large Small Businesses?

Large small businesses have between five and 100 seats, 50 and 100 computers and usually 50 – 200 employees.  The annual revenue of a large small business is typically from $5 - $20 million.  You will probably find a lot of publicly run corporations at this level.

Large small businesses will have two or more dedicated servers.  You will typically find an in-house IT manager that has been hired to do generalist tasks.

Professionals on Staff

Large small businesses will have more than a technician, coordinator or guru.  They will have a dedicated IT consulting professional with skills very similar to yours.  The IT manager will sometimes be vendor certified and might know a couple different operating systems, database platforms or be or be in touch with a software developer.  

No matter what the situation, large small businesses will have staff with IT consulting skills that make them professionals and are typically in charge of all the generalist work.  If you want to provide IT consulting to large small businesses, you will need to be a true specialist.

Blogged By:  Computer Consulting 101 Professional Kit

When you are working with sweet spot customers in IT consulting, you will need several different types of skills.  You will have to have hardware, software and networking skills in order to offer the best services. 

Which networking skills specifically should you have to best serve your IT consulting customers?  Where networking software is concerned, you should know some client server messaging packages including Microsoft Exchange Server, Novell group wise, client server and sequel database applications.  Microsoft sequel server will play a large part in your IT consulting business. 

Accounting Applications

To provide the best IT consulting solutions, know Microsoft Business Solutions and Great Plains’ Best 90. 

CRM Applications

You may want to make CRM applications a specialty.  Get to know Best Software and Microsoft Business Solutions.  Microsoft Business Solutions can fit well into your IT consulting solutions.  Also establish some knowledge of web servers, administering Microsoft IS and Open Source Apache. 

The Bottom Line About Skills for Sweet Spot Customers

When it comes to offering the most comprehensive solutions to valued IT consulting customers, be prepared to have some basic skills in terms of networking software, accounting software and CRM applications. 

Submitted By:  Computer Consulting Kit

When it comes to small business computer consulting, $100 per hour is about the right rate and can make a huge difference in your business growth.  To see why, you can take the $100 per hour rate and multiply it by about 1,500 hours per year (which represents a 75% utilization rate or 75% of a 40-hour work week).  Your gross income will be $150,000 for your small business computer consulting.  

How to Manage Salary

When you have a small business computer consulting firm, you will take a third of your gross and use it for sales and marketing.  This means you can afford a $40,000 base salary for a sales account executive.  Of the one-third of your gross small business computer consulting income, $40,000 goes to base salary and $10,000 goes to marketing expenses.  

Another one-third will handle taxes, insurance and overhead items.  $50,000 will be left to pay technical staff salary.

How Do You Get Past $100 Per Hour?

If you are thinking about going beyond a $100 per hour rate for your small business computer consulting firm, you can hit the hourly billing rate ceiling.  If your clients are paying $110 to $125 per hour, you will be more able to afford the best, most qualified technical staff.

Higher Rates Mean a Different Business

If you want to charge beyond $100 per hour, you will need to go beyond sweet spot small business clients and start serving large small businesses, medium-sized businesses and enterprise accounts that will mean a new business model and new technical skills for your small business computer consulting firm.

Blogged By:  Joshua Feinberg

As an IT specialist, you can go after non-profits.  But you have to realize they are not in your sweet spot.  Be prepared to learn an entirely new bidding process and expect not to experience great financial rewards.

IT Specialists:  The Positive Side of Working with Non-Profits

1.    You can reach non-profits because they are part of trade groups.  You will find non-profits in directories available to the public.

2.    Non-profits can provide IT specialists with emotional satisfaction and rewards that you can’t get anywhere else but through working with a cause that means something to you. 

IT Specialists:  The Negative Aspects of Working with Non-Profits

1.    Non-profits provide poor profit margins.

2.    Approaching non-profits can involve you in bidding wars.

Bidding wars reduce your firm to a product rather than a service.  Also, when you bid against someone else’s prices, your competitors could be working to get you to lower your bid price to a point where you forget to offer the most realistic and best solution.

When you’re involved in a bidding war, you don’t have credibility, trust and personality on your side.  The bottom line is whether you can offer the lowest price in the right amount of time and generally follow the rules.  Bidding wars create a great deal of non-billable work up-front as well for which you would normally charge in the private sector.     

IT Specialists:  Non-Profits and Government Bids

Selling to private sector small businesses is easier than selling to non-profits and government organizations for most IT specialists.  Many times non-profits and government agencies have to take quoted prices for legal reasons, which can cause you problems when trying to lay out benefits for both you and the non-profit.

Bid Smart as an IT Specialist

Don’t risk your whole company just to make a competitive bid to non-profits.  Make sure you spend no more than 20% of your business development on bid chasing if your company is not purely dedicated to non-profits and government agencies.

A government organization looking to outsource support services that has a very good request for proposal is a much better bet for you than a prospect without a clear plan or one that is just looking for a one-shot deal.

Non-profit and government agencies are better options for providing niche services as an IT specialist than retail services.  However, non-profit and government sectors are still not as favorable as the sweet spot of small business computer consulting. 

Added By:  Computer Consulting Kit

IT project management for business server and/or LAN installations is something that seasoned small business computer consultants become well versed in.  The key to successful IT project management for these installs, is learning to spot and address potential problems before they evolve into major catastrophes.

Here are some relatively universal risk-reduction tips you can use for planning most small business server and LAN installations:

IT Project Management Tips For Server and/or LAN Installations

• Build a “test bed” in your office to become more technically comfortable with your standard server and LAN product recommendations. Know the major product features inside-out and backwards before you install the product at a client site. Remember this simple rule of thumb for IT project management: Client guinea pigs make great former clients.

• 70-80% of the work for the project is often advanced planning and coordination. Without this rigorous planning, your IT project management efforts will result in failure.

• Schedule the upgrade to occur after hours. This is a critical aspect of IT project management that should be planned a few weeks in advance.

• Have your “fire extinguisher” fully charged up. Make sure you know who to call (vendor tech support phone numbers, passwords, hours, newsgroups, etc.) when you’re stumped before you get stumped and become totally stressed out.

• Review your clients’ IT asset inventories and site survey notes for any shortcomings that could derail your planned server/LAN installation. IT project management is always proactive.  

• Don’t even think about taking on a major network rollout if the client is too cheap to pay for a few hours of your time to prepare an updated site survey and asset inventory document.

• Develop testing criteria with your client. After all, how will you know if you’ve succeeded if you don’t have a working definition of “success”? As the up-grade or rollout nears completion your IT project management plan should detail which business applications to test and how.

• Fortify the client’s backup arsenal. Never, never, never undertake any major installation or upgrade until you are triple positive that the client has multiple, verified and tested backup media sets readily available.

Bottom Line on IT Project Management
Successful IT project management requires proactive thinking and excellent planning.  As a computer consultant, you will be asked to perform IT project management particularly for server and LAN installations, so you need to have excellent skills in IT project management.

In this article, you’ve been introduced to IT Project Management. To learn more about how you can improve your knowledge about IT Project Management, just click here now to get access to a free one-hour audio training program on 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Computer Consulting Business. 

Effective project management benefits you and your customers–less downtime, headaches and scheduling nightmares for everyone. Sometimes you need to be creative in your project management efforts.

Read on to see how one of our computer consultants was able to do an upgrade quickly and effectively.

"The project management section {of the Computer Consulting Kit} was most valuable to me. It has helped me earn an additional $10,000. I upgraded a customer from Microsoft Windows Server 2000 to Microsoft Windows Server 2003 with minimum down time. I used a lab server to temporarily run all customer applications while loading the customer server with Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and all applications. Customer down time was less than 2 hours in this process. The key is planning, planning, planning! You can never plan enough."

Rowland Johnson, SiMS
Clearwater, Florida

The Bottom Line about Project Management

To learn more about technology assessments, click here now to get access to a free one-hour audio training program on 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Computer Consulting Business.

Businesses run more smoothly when processes and procedures are in place.

Many of our respondents found that by setting up standard operating procedures and tracking solutions, they were able to streamline processes and make more efficient use of their time.

Read on to see what one of our computer consultants did to jump start his business.

"I started my computer consulting business this year. The Computer Consulting Kit was a very important resource that helped me successfully set up operations of my computer consulting business.  It would have taken me a very long time to do this on my own.  I appreciate the depth and detail of the Computer Consulting Kit and additional resources provided by Joshua and his team. The Computer Consulting Kit gave me a good framework for targeting the right clients as well as provided excellent resources and templates to help me successfully run my business."

Neal Castles, Castles Technology Consulting LLC
State College, Pennsylvania

The Bottom Line about Project Management

To learn more about project management, click here now to get access to a free one-hour audio training program on 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Computer Consulting Business.

As a computer consulting business, you shouldn’t be spending precious time and your clients’ limited budgets troubleshooting a malfunctioning monitor or CD-RW drive.

If your computer consulting business is large enough that you have both senior-level and technician-level staff, you’re probably already doing a great job of directing workload to the right personnel.

Are You a Company of One?

However, if you are a small computer consulting business, where perhaps you are the "company", it makes sense to let the PC vendor’s technical support staff arrange for hardware warranty repairs, using their large networks of national service providers.

Know the Facts about Warranty Service

As a computer consulting business, you will want to know how long the warranty period is, if it covers parts, labor or both and what the promised response and turnaround time on warranty service may be.

Also, determine whether the vendor will try to pressure your clients to do their own service.  If so, are your clients prepared to pay your consulting firm to do the labor?

Scheduling Hardware Warranty Service Calls

If possible, try to have your clients’ internal gurus schedule hardware warranty service calls to coincide with times when you are at your clients’ offices on other related computer consulting business.

Or at the minimum, be sure that your clients’ internal gurus are there to supervise the third party hardware technicians.

Be Involved

It’s really up to you to decide how active of a role your computer consulting business wants to take in coordinating and managing these hardware warranty repairs. In some cases, getting in involved with the full end-to-end responsibility makes sense, including packaging up the defective part to send back.

In other cases, you may be better off training your clients’ internal gurus on how to place these vendor tech support calls and supervise the hardware warranty repairs.

The Bottom Line about the Computer Consulting Business

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

Systems integrator projects require a complete understanding of fee structures.  A systems integrator may choose to offer one fee on the completion of the project. 

Another option for the systems integrator is to use billable hours.  Analyze each project to determine which method is best.

How to Use Billable Hours

Using billable hours means that a systems integrator determines an hourly rate for his work.  Payment might occur at different stages of a project or only at completion of the project.  All of these details should be determined before a project is started to alleviate any future disputes.

Be Specific

A client should never be confronted with surprises when working with billable hours.  Before a project begins, a systems integrator should sit down with a client to discuss all details.  Discuss the hourly rate and a fair estimate as to how many hours it will take to complete the job. 

Handling Additional Hours

A systems integrator should also determine, up front, how any excess hours would be handled.  All of these topics should be covered in a written contract. 

Typically, a client will want to approve any overtime.  This is a very good reason for the systems integrator to constantly keep a client apprised of progress.  This reduces the “surprise” factor.

Inform the Client of How You Track Your Time

A systems integrator should discuss what would be included in a “billable hour”. Determine if drive time, phone time, or other details are part of your work. 

Often a client will expect some compromise in this area.  Before the job starts, the systems integrator should know what items are most important so they are included in the contract. 

The Bottom Line about a Systems Integrator and Hourly Billing

A systems integrator can track his hours manually.  However, for large projects this may be very time consuming and tedious.  Consider purchasing an accounting package to keep track of billable hours.

In this article, you’ve learned more about the systems integrator. To learn more about the system integrator click here now to get access to a free one-hour audio training program on 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Computer Consulting Business.

Technology consultant work involves an understanding of project management.  The five stages of project management will assist a technology consultant in reaching their goals.

The technology consultant will find that the project runs more smoothly and efficiently if successfully managed.  A well-organized project is more likely to be completed on time, within budget, and up to standards.

Stage I: Initiation

A technology consultant may initiate a project or he may be approached with a project idea.  Regardless of who makes the first move, all parties should agree upon goals and objectives. 

Setting target dates for each objective’s completion is also advisable.  This keeps everyone involved working towards completion and decreases delays.

Stage II: Planning

Once objectives have been stated, the technology consultant should begin planning the project.  Determine necessary resources, explain what actions will take place and when, and establish contact names or decision makers. 

Spell out how payment will take place, as well.  Often, a technology consultant will request a percentage of the price up front, having remaining fees paid at completion of various project phases. 

Stage III: Implementation

Communication is probably the most important factor in the implementation phase.  A technology consultant needs to be able to lead all members of the team. 

These team members are usually the hiring company’s employees.  Hence, this job becomes even more difficult.  Allow all involved access to important project information and keep communication lines open.

Stage IV: Motivating and Monitoring

Monitoring a project on an on-going basis is crucial.  One small setback can change the whole dynamics of a project.  Suddenly, deadlines are not met and the dominoes begin to fall! 

Request regular progress reports and organize team meetings to review the project.  The technology consultant should motivate all project associates with praise and gratitude. 

Stage V: Close

A technology consultant who follows the stages of project management is more likely to finish the project on time and within budget.  Obviously, this is the desired outcome of any project. 

However, delays do occur in any well-planned job.  Meet these challenges and end the project on a positive note.  The main objective is a satisfied client.

The Bottom Line about The Technology Consultant

Understanding project management and its many facets will allow a technology consultant to provide a well-managed project.  Initiate, plan, and implement the project.  Motivate the team and monitor all progress to close the project on a positive.

In this article, you’ve been introduced to the technology consultant’s project management stages.  To learn more about the technology consultant, click here now to get access to a free one-hour audio training program on 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Computer Consulting Business.

Information technology consultant projects begin with an initial contact with the client.  A client’s first impression of the information technology consultant will determine if a contract will be signed.  Therefore, the first few steps in beginning a job are vital for the information technology consultant. 

Early Beginnings 

The beginning of a project starts before a contract is ever signed.  Obviously, without a contract there is not project.  Therefore, every information technology consultant should be prepared for these early steps.  Determining your goals during initial contact is imperative.  After the initial contact, preparing for the first meeting with a client should be well planned - enabling a decision to be made.

Initial Contact

A client will make first contact with an information technology consultant via phone, e-mail, or some other method.  This is the client’s first impression and should be taken very seriously.  If there is no connection, there will not be a first meeting. 

The information technology consultant should be screening the customer during this first contact.  If he is unable to meet the client’s needs, there is no need to pursue the project any further.  If the project is within reach, the consultant should obtain necessary information to prepare for the first meeting.  The information technology consultant needs to know the problem and the reason the client has approached him for help, allowing the consultant to prepare a brief plan of action.

The First Meeting

Building a relationship is the goal of this first meeting between the client and an information technology consultant.  There should be open communication and dialogue.  This is not a presentation!  It would be impossible for an information technology consultant to have a complete plan drawn up without knowing all of the details of the project.  Explain this to any client who is under a different impression. 

The presence of all decision makers at this meeting is very beneficial.  Realistically, this is not always possible.  Encourage these individuals to be present for subsequent meetings, allowing the process to flow more smoothly.

The ultimate objective of this first meeting is to secure a decision on the future of the project.  The client may decide not to use the information technology consultant at this time.  He may want to move forward.  Or, the client might want to meet again with other decision makers to discuss it further.  Leave the meeting with a firm commitment and a scheduled second meeting if so desired.

The Bottom Line about the Information Technology Consultant

By preparing for the early stages of a project, an information technology consultant will be able to move forward or focus on other projects.  He should remember the importance of relationship building and open communication.  The ideal situation is for a client and consultant to feel there is a match.

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

Be prepared for IT emergencies with checklists, the ability to access online resources, telephone support lines, and tool kits ready to go.

Begin with matching your abilities to their basic needs. Find out what kind of hardware your customer has, what the operating system is, what applications are involved, and how is it impacting their business—operationally and financially.

Failure to assess the situation before you are on site can quickly get you into quicksand. Make sure that IT emergencies are something that you think you can fix or something for which you can provide a quick workaround.

IT Emergencies: Can You Fix It?

For example, if they have a major problem with a Linux and you don’t have that kind of experience, IT emergencies and cleanups are not the place to start the learning curve.  The more the problem impacts the company, the better the opportunity, if you are prepared for it. 

If this is a situation that looks ripe for building an ongoing business relationship, don’t go for “combat pay.”  If it is not, charge what your services are worth to their business, not your going rate.

You Can’t Know Everything

With a new client, there’s a good chance that even if their hardware and their operating system are familiar, they may be using an oddball hub, switch, or router.   If it is going to cost you more to learn how to fix this sort of item, it is better for you and the customer to replace it with something that you are comfortable supporting. You can get the customer up and running faster and you are building a common installed base, “cookie-cutting”, to make any future support burden easier.

In this respect, it is simply the same approach you are working toward with your regular clients. You can provide better service in less time when you focus on one type of server, one backup software program, one anti virus solution, etc. than to have to keep up with all the upgrades and renewals or replacements for a broad range of quickly changing products. 

The Bottom Line about IT Emergencies

Remember that in the customer’s eyes, if you can handle taking care of IT emergencies and prioritize through triage and cleanup, they are going to be extremely receptive to anything else that you recommend. 

In this article, you learned more about IT emergencies. To learn more about IT emergencies, click here now to get access to a free one-hour audio training program on 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Computer Consulting Business.

Where can you find time to do it all?  How can you devote time to finding long-term B2B computer consulting clients when you’re already working 60, 70, 80 hours a week? There’s no easy answer. In this article, you’ll learn some possible options for finding long term clients in computer consulting. 

Do a Time Study

Really looking at where you spend most of your time and figure out if there are some things that you’re doing that you can afford to delegate (or automate or eliminate).

For instance, if you’re sitting there building PCs and putting in motherboards and power supplies 10 hours a week, that’s something you can delegate.  If you’re sitting and minding the retail traffic in a retail computer store and you have someone else who can do that for a day a week, that is something you can delegate, too.

Delegate, Delegate, Delegate

Think about what you can safely delegate based on the staff that you already have. Then you can free yourself up for a day to a day-and-a-half a week to start working on actively cultivating B2B computer consulting clients.

What to Do With the Extra Time

This delegation can free up some time to go out to networking events, planning, marketing campaigns, going out on sales call and making follow-up phone calls.

The Bottom Line about Computer Consulting Time Restraints
Unfortunately, if you’re already working a ton of hours, you somehow just need to find the time.  Think through your time management challenges.  Look at where you really spend the bulk of your time every week and figure out if there are a few things that you can delegate to free up some time for the marketing. Really plan how you’re going to develop this part of your consulting business. 

In this article, you’ve learned about time constraints in computer consulting. To learn more about computer 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.