Small Biz Tech Talk ™

You need to look at your current customers and figure out which will need IT audits.  You can judge this based on the number of PCs they have.  Usually businesses with more than five systems are great candidates for IT audits.  

Look at UPSs, data line protection, real surge protectors, the right number of antivirus software licenses, active and valid subscription for the licenses, etc.  You will need to figure out whether these people are dealing with updated software and hardware.  What are they doing with firewalls, network adjust translations and others that are protecting them?

Customers Need to Be Motivated

If you want to create a need for IT audits …

Talk to customers when they are in your store.

Conduct a telemarketing campaign.

Add an IT audits flyer to your invoices.

Do a single mailing – postcard, letter or brochure.  

Current Events and IT Audits

You need to take advantage of current events.  Viruses, power outages and other issues in the news can help you communicate your message.  You need to create urgency for IT audits.  

You need to create the idea that your IT audits are discounted and put deadlines on responses to offers for them.  You can say IT audits are regularly $350, for example and then offer then through a certain date for $199, limited to the first 25 respondents.

Added By:  Joshua Feinberg

Microsoft recently announced to solution providers that it would be implementing 10 new pricing and licensing changes for Windows Vista and Office 2007.  The company states that solution providers and end users should carefully look through these requirements before purchasing the products.

In December 2006, PCMS IT Advisor announced a new program, the License Acquisition Strategy Services Offer (LASSO) that finds and confirms the software features being used on customer sites and identifies the customer’s licensing and version status.  There are 10 pricing and licensing moves that will affect all Vista and Office 2007 customers:

1.    Price increases for upgrading Office Professional and Office Enterprise, five percent and 22 percent respectively.

2.     Office Enterprise 2007 is treated as anew product and offers Office Professional Plus 2007, OneNote and Groove that will go along with Office Standard 2007 and Office Professional Plus 2007 suites.

3.    There will be new CALs for Exchange Enterprise CAL and SharePoint Enterprise CAL.

4.    The new Enterprise CAL Suite will have all the elements of the Core CAL Suite and CALs for Office Communications Server Standard and many other programs.  

5.    Vista Enterprise will have BitLocker encryption, a multilingual capability, a new system for Unix-based applications and Virtual PC Express that can be used by only customers with Software Assurance.

6.    Only Software Assurance customers will be able to use the new Microsoft Optimization Pack and all its features in the new 2007 product.

7.    The new Professional Desktop product will be about $298 per user per year under the Enterprise Agreement that works for up to 250 users.  It has three parts:  the Core CAL; Windows Professional Desktop Upgrade; Office Professional Plus.

8.    The Enterprise desktop is $406 per user per year under the Enterprise Agreement that covers 250 users and has the following three parts:  the Core CAL; Enterprise CAL; Windows Professional Desktop Upgrade and Office Enterprise.  

9.    The Standard CAL gives users access to core server features.  Customers have to buy a Core CAL to run Enterprise CAL.

10.    The Open Value level of upgrade from Office Pro to Office Enterprise is $70 and does not include Outlook.

The new pricing and licensing issues are complicated, but PCMS IT Advisor states that many customers will get discounts between 52 percent and 69 percent if they buy an Enterprise CAL instead of just stand-alone CALs.  Solution providers and users can get more information in the linked article.  

Created By:  Computer Consulting 101 Professional Kit

When determining pricing for IT audits, use your hourly rate to guide you … but give a discount so you can get on the good side of your customers.

IT Audits:  Your Hourly Rate Should Lead You

When figuring out pricing of IT audits, take your hourly billing rate and realize you’re probably going to spend two or three hours on the call.  You will then spend another hour back in the shop writing reports for IT audits and writing down an estimate.  With all these factors in mind and your average hourly billing rate, what should you be charging?

As an example, if you’re charging $95 per hour and you figure out the above information about on-site client time and time spent back at the shop along with a follow-up question and answer session afterwards, you can guess you will spend about five hours.  This means this IT audit will be worth a bit under $500.  To figure out the real price, round down and discount.

Never Bill the Full Amount for IT Audits

The idea behind IT audits is getting a foot in the door with clients.  Therefore, you would be wise not to bill IT audits at their full amount.  You want to give prospects the peace of mind in knowing they can afford your services.  You want to start off with trust that you’re not trying to run up a bill.  Your goal is to find out what their biggest problems are, help them organize and help them address major issues.  They could very well be your future clients.

You can expect to spend a couple hours coming up with recommendations, what it will cost the prospects and when they can schedule time.  Don’t give your time away for free, but don’t charge regular price for IT audits.

IT Audits:  Discount!

Your goal with IT audits is getting prospects to open up their wallet and spend money on future services.  Even if you only make 50 to 75 percent of regular price on IT audits, just call it cost of sales and an investment in your future.  

While it’s up to you what you charge, the typical range for IT audits is $250 - $350.  If you want to be really aggressive charge $199 or $200.  Make IT audits available at a fixed price and get prospects to prove they will spend money on IT audits.

Added By:  Computer Consulting 101 Professional Kit

The delay of the release of Windows Vista has allowed competitors to enter the market and has solution providers questioning whether they can deliver a comparable product.  Computer business Novell is working hard to seize the desktop operating system market with its release of SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10, an operating system trying to edge out Microsoft’s product by beating it in cost, manageability and features offered.

Solution providers and other experts are still asking whether the channel is ready for a Linux desktop to replace Windows, or better yet whether the Linux system itself is ready to enter the channel.  SUSE is set to be available by mid-July, 2007 whereas Vista will be released in January.

System builders and solution providers are already cautioning users about the new SUSE Linux, despite raving about its inexpensive $50 price tag, which comes in at $450 less than Windows XP with Office.  Many do not believe that there will be a grand migration from Microsoft to Linux, at least not immediately.

According to solution providers, SUSE has the feature set, compatibility and flexibility to fulfill the needs of a majority of corporate desktop users.  Solution providers feel they can count on Linux to fill the gaps previously filled only by Microsoft products.  However, there will be challenges.  Channel partners will need to train employees and customers on Linux, and there is a chance that applications may not exist in Linux that can truly meet line-of-business needs.  Simply put, there will be a significant learning curve to deal with before Linux reigns, and many will have a hard time giving up their friend Microsoft.  However, as son as Microsoft stops supporting XP, this could all change.      

Those looking to find out a feature-by-feature analysis of the new SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 as reviewed by solution providers can reference the linked article, which analyzes the operating system by categories such as ease of installation, basic feature set, user experience, administrator experience, network, security, add-ons and third-party applications and others.

Added By:  Computer Consulting 101 Professional Kit

IT audits typically produce conversations about your clients’ problems and what you can do to solve them.  But what questions might you expect to hear from clients during IT audits, and which ones should you answer?

When you are performing IT audits, you need identify problems you can solve for clients.  You also want the clients to see their problems and how your solutions will work for them.

Questions Will Bring You to the Needs Analysis

You need to ask prospects what they are looking for in IT support as part of IT audits.  During IT audits, they will ask you for advice on what they should buy, including products and platforms.  They will want to know what is the best value for their companies, and what will work best for them technically.  A simple needs analysis will answer these questions easily as part of an IT audit.  Assess their situation and spend a couple hours seeing what products prospects have.

You also need to think about compatibility of products and what will work together.  While prospects and anyone else can just go to the store and buy a cartful of items, they can’t make it work.  Integration and customization are areas where you come in, along with project management.  Your coordination abilities will mean a lot to prospects’ businesses.

What Other Services Will Clients Want?

Formal and informal training is an area where clients might need your help.  This training includes end-user training and administrator training.  The following areas will also be needs:

1.    Management of routine and scheduled upgrades;

2.    Coordination with outside vendors for industry-specific package installations;

3.    Network maintenance and installation.

IT Audits and One-Stop Shopping

Customers are looking for you to be a single point of contact.  They want to trust you as a technology advisor as much as they trust their accountants and attorneys, or managing consulting firms or marketing consultants.  IT audits can help both consultants and clients figure out roles within a company.  

Added By:  Computer Consulting Kit

Contact management systems are an excellent way to track the success of your various marketing techniques. You can put together a quick spreadsheet to track your contact data but why?  It is time consuming and with the excellent contact management systems available commercially, there is no need to reinvent the wheel.

Your primary role is business development not software development.  Rather than spending your time creating a custom contact management system, you should be out there drumming up more contacts to put into a system.

There are many different contact management systems out there.  You can spend more than $25,000 on a system if you choose.  What you spend though, is less important than the amount of time you spend and discipline you follow actually using the contact management system.  

When buying a contact management system, the off-the-shelf packages are, for the most part, pretty good.  There are two contact management systems that get a lot of attention:  ACT and Goldmine.

• Act sells for a little over $230, provides links to PDAs and has an online version.  

• Goldmine is the second most popular contact management system with many of the same features at a price point of approximately $200.

• Other notable contact management systems are Maximizer, which is similar to Goldmine, and Sales Force, which has a free online service that is very limited or you can upgrade to the Team Edition for $1000 per year.

Key features to look for in most of the modern contact management systems are:

• Import and export capability from all the popular Microsoft formats - Word,
• Excel, Outlook
• Links to PDAs
• Links to accounting software
• More robust client server online solutions

Bottom Line on Contact Management Systems
Contact management systems are great - but they are only great if you actually use them. Do some research before purchasing a contact management system and make sure you are committed to using it.  You do need to start using a contact management system so you might as well get into the habit early on - better to know what marketing techniques work right from the start rather than spending a lot of time and money on things that are not producing results.

In this article, you’ve been introduced to contact management systems. To learn more about how you can improve your knowledge about contact management systems, 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. 

Joshua Feinberg, author of the Computer Consulting 101 Professional Kit, will be speaking next Tuesday, June 27 at the Ziff Davis Media SMB Virtual Tradeshow: "The World is Flat - Using Technology to Compete on a Grander Scale".

At 5pm EDT on Tuesday, June 27, Joshua Feinberg will be part of a panel discussion on how SMBs can proactively protect their data from various threats and how to prepare for the next big data disaster.

Also on the panel are Donna Childs, Co-author, "Contingency Planning and Disaster Recovery: A Small Business Guide" and Tom Serio, Director Business Continuity Management for Office Depot. The moderator is Pam Schancupp, Executive Editor, Ziff Davis Media eSeminars.

Joshua Feinberg will also be a providing a complimentary special report to attendees on how to disaster-proof your small business computer systems.

To sign-up for "Hot Button Panel 3: You Get What You Pay For: Disaster Recovery and Continuity Strategies That May Save Your Business", visit http://smb.eseminarslive.com/ and click on the Registration link at the top of the page.

To learn more about Joshua Feinberg, author of the Computer Consulting 101 Professional Kit, visit http://www.joshuafeinberg.com/
 

A hundred years ago, all you needed to seal a deal was a simple handshake. Not today. Both you and your clients should sign a service agreement so you are both clear on what your responsibilties are. With the right service agreements and clients, you’ll business will be successful for the long haul.

Read on to find out how one of our consultants benefited from service agreements:

"This year I learned to get things in writing and lay out what I will and won’t do for each company. The section on service agreements made it very easy and logical.  By following this section, I didn’t leave anything out that I would have forgotten or not even known to put in our service contracts."

Shawna Tillotson, Cabintree Consulting
Alpine, Wyoming

The Bottom Line about Service Agreements

To learn more about service agreements, click here now to get access to free tips and an audio training excerpt on service agreements.

If you’re new to small business consulting, you may think there is no such thing as a prospect or client being too enthusiastic about jumping headfirst into a major IT project. Enthusiasm is a good thing when it comes to signing your firm’s small business consulting contract, right? Well, not always.

Manage Clients’ Optimism

Although hype isn’t exactly a sales obstacle, you need to manage client expectations regarding “unjustified” optimism at your earliest opportunity.  During small business consulting projects, there is often a need to combat hype with vertical industry software solutions.

Keeping Client’s Expectations Realistic

The small business owner or manager may return from a trade show with a gorgeous glossy brochure (and mouse pad) for an industry-specific application. Since your small business consulting client thinks the application is the best software since Lotus 1-2-3, he is ready to open up his firm’s checkbook — but wants to run the application by the internal guru and your small business consulting firm, first.

Although the ISV’s marketing literature and Web site seem quite professional, upon further investigation you learn this $5,000 per seat package is built on an MS-DOS-based Clipper database engine (circa 1991).

The Bottom Line about Small Business Consulting

While your client might have been impressed initially with the demo at the trade show, you need to overcome the hype surrounding the application and save your client from making a sizable investment in an application that should’ve been retired or supplanted years ago.

Otherwise, your prospect or client may end up squandering scarce IT budgetary resources that could be better invested in the network solution that you’re recommending.

In this article, you’ve learned about small business consulting. To learn more about small business 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.

If you’re new to small business consulting, you may think there is no such thing as a prospect or client being too enthusiastic about jumping headfirst into a major IT project. Enthusiasm is a good thing when it comes to signing your firm’s small business consulting contract, right? Well, not always.

Manage Clients’ Optimism

Although hype isn’t exactly a sales obstacle, you need to manage client expectations regarding "unjustified" optimism at your earliest opportunity.  During small business consulting projects, there is often a need to combat hype with vertical industry software solutions.

Keeping Client’s Expectations Realistic

The small business owner or manager may return from a trade show with a gorgeous glossy brochure (and mouse pad) for an industry-specific application. Since your small business consulting client thinks the application is the best software since Lotus 1-2-3, he is ready to open up his firm’s checkbook — but wants to run the application by the internal guru and your small business consulting firm, first.

Although the ISV’s marketing literature and Web site seem quite professional, upon further investigation you learn this $5,000 per seat package is built on an MS-DOS-based Clipper database engine (circa 1991).

The Bottom Line about Small Business Consulting

While your client might have been impressed initially with the demo at the trade show, you need to overcome the hype surrounding the application and save your client from making a sizable investment in an application that should’ve been retired or supplanted years ago.

Otherwise, your prospect or client may end up squandering scarce IT budgetary resources that could be better invested in the network solution that you’re recommending.

In this article, you’ve learned about small business consulting. To learn more about small business 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.

Often when you evaluate a system a customer is using, you can point out improvements that will save them time and money… and provide more consulting income to your firm in the process.

Read on to see how technology assessments benefitted one of our computer consultants.

"I used technology assessments to get my foot in the door. It gave me an organized way to point out to the customer how their network could be better even though they didn’t realize there was a problem."

Jason Welshonse, Ancient Geek, Inc.
Bay Point, California

The Bottom Line about Technology Assessments

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.

Over the years, as IT consultants, you’ve probably supported thousands of PC hardware configurations. During this time period, you likely have formulated a strong opinion of what PC hardware specs make for a solid purchase recommendation.

However, in order to properly position your professional expertise, it’s important to be able to convey this hardware selection benefit effectively to clients. After all, "everyone" is an expert at buying PCs, right?!? Not!

IT Consultants Can Help Clients Choose Right the First Time

Choosing the right PC specs can save your clients big money on unpredictable installation and support costs.

In a perfect world, all software and hardware vendors claiming compatibility, under a particular operating system or PC environment, would have products that work well together. But, this isn’t a perfect world.

IT Consultants Can Save Their Clients Time and Frustration

You can save your clients considerable time and potential aggravation, and pick up substantial service revenue, by getting actively involved in the selection of various hardware components and software programs that come preinstalled with the purchase of a new PC.

IT Consultants Can Save Their Clients Money with Hardware and Software Solutions

In much the same way that you’ll often find greater overall value by getting more menu items bundled into a complete dinner at a restaurant, rather than a la carte, you’ll find the same thing with computer purchasing.

It often makes small business sense for your clients to purchase various hardware components and upgrades with the purchase of the PC — as opposed to shopping for these hardware components and upgrades a la carte at a later date.

IT Consultants Can Help Determine the Value of The Components

The challenge however is knowing which components and upgrades are "worth" it, which are a waste of money and which are a potential land mine of tech support troubles. That’s where your firm steps in to save the day!

The Bottom Line about IT Consultants

In this article, you’ve learned about IT consultants. To learn more about IT consultants, 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 assessment involves face-to-face selling.  This can be a scary and daunting idea to many technology assessment consultants.  Consider a few basic selling techniques when selling your technology assessment services.

Finding Clients

This is the most important step in selling your technology assessment skills.  Sometimes, clients are referred to you. 

However, when first starting out, you will probably need to seek out potential customers.  Consult local business directories to determine which businesses might benefit from your services.  Contact them directly.

Setting an Appointment

Most consultants feel more comfortable with first sending a letter or brochure about their business to a prospect.  This letter should detail that you will be calling to discuss your services in more detail.  After a week, phone the prospective client. 

Some will not be interested; some will, and some won’t even come to the phone.  Be prepared for these responses and do not take them personally. 

Making a Face-to-Face Sale Presentation

Once an appointment has been set, research the business and any important background information.  Arrive to the appointment on time, with a positive expression and attitude.

Once a prospect’s needs have been determined, you can detail the technology assessment services that you can provide.  A prospect’s objections are often a good sign, indicating they are interested in your services.  Listen carefully so you can overcome any objections throughout the sales presentation.

Closing the Sale

Believe it or not, many consultants forget to ask for the sale!  Once you and the prospective client have discussed fees and any other negotiable items, it is time to close the sale. 

Detail the exact technology assessment services that you will provide, set the fee, and determine when the project will begin.  Get out your appointment book and have a contract ready.  Don’t miss the opportunity to gain a new client!

The Bottom Line about Technology Assessment – Selling Your Services

Understanding some basic sales techniques will assist the technology assessment consultant in gaining clients.  Although it is a frightening task for many consultants, it is a necessity.  Preparation and role-playing will assist the consultant in feeling more comfortable with the process.

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

Look among your existing customers to determine who are good candidates for IT audits. You can do this based on the number of PCs they have. Generally, businesses that have more than five systems are really good possibilities for IT audits.

You will be checking around for UPSs and data line protection, real surge protectors, the right number of antivirus software licenses, good, active, valid subscription for the licenses to keep their antivirus and firewall up to date. You’ll also want to determine whether everything is updated, what they’re doing with routers, firewalls, network adjust translations, and other items that keep them protected.

Your Customers May Need Some Motivation

To generate demand for IT Audits:

• Talk to your customers when they’re in the store
• Do an outbound telemarketing campaign
• Include a flyer with your invoices.
• Do a solo mailing, either a letter or a postcard or a brochure

Jump on the current events. If there are viruses, power outages, etc., in the news, piggyback on those to get your message across. Create a sense of urgency in the offer of IT audits.

Make your IT audits at least have the perception of being discounted and put some kind of deadline on it. If you say it’s regularly $350, but now through a certain date it is discounted to $199 and due to demand, is limited to only the first 25 customers. 

The Bottom Line about IT Audits

The urgency and the scarcity in terms of marketing will make a world of difference.

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