Small Biz Tech Talk ™

You need to know where to find sweet spot clients that will agree to maintenance support agreements.  This means you need to find clients that will spend $1,000 or $2,000 per month on IT services.  

Evaluate Each Client for Maintenance Support Agreements

Find out if each client is big enough to need a real server, a genuine firewall and backup solution and offsite or online backup.  You also need to figure out if they need to focus on security, power protection and virus protection.  Do they need a professional to give them on-going support for networks and LAN-WAN needs?

The sweet spot clients will need more than just volunteers or friends to handle their IT needs.  They will need to be on maintenance support agreements that help them keep up their productivity and get them more sophisticated solutions.  

Who is Able to Afford Maintenance Support Agreements?

When examining ideal clients, you will find small businesses that will have a budget that allows them to spend $1,000-$2,000 on IT support.  This means you will be there a few half days per month and will respond to phone calls for emergencies and remote support.

What Does a Sweet Spot Client that Can Afford Your Maintenance Support Agreements Resemble?

This type of client will not need very generic support or support for a P2P network.  They need to be big enough for downtime and data loss to be really expensive.  They will need your maintenance support agreements for peace of mind.  

Blogged By:  Computer Consulting 101 Professional Kit

You need to find  a niche if you want to be an IT specialist.  How can you figure out this niche?

The Horizontal Niche

With a horizontal niche as an IT specialist, your ideal clients are not in the same industry (which is a vertical niche) but they have contacts in the same position.  For example, you might discover most of your clients’ main contacts are office managers.  The next step once you discover this is to take an informal survey and ask what their biggest IT problems are along with their biggest business problems and try to be a solution to these problems.  

Asking these questions will help you retain these clients and also inform you of their biggest business and IT issues.  You will then be able to create a great sales pitch as an IT specialist and find other clients just like the ones you have that are great.  Look at magazines, mailing lists, organizations and conferences where you can find office managers.   

An IT Specialist Should Know Things about Prospects

You need to know who your prospects are, what they read, which trade publications are out there and related to them (and which ezines), which newsletters they get, which local/regional conferences they might already be attending, which trade groups have local chapters they belong to, where they hang out, what they talk about and what they worry about.

Talk to your best clients if you want to be a real IT specialist!

You’ve probably already created personal relationships already.  Take clients out to breakfast, lunch and tell them you want to be an IT specialist and ask questions so you know how to look for clients just like them.

Created By:  Joshua Feinberg

Testimonials are excellent IT marketing resources to help advance your consulting business.  

Give Yourself Credibility!

If you want to be believed and seen by prospects, you need to have believable, credible testimonials.  This means they need to be clearly REAL, marked by a client or customer’s first name, last name, job title, company name and MINIMALLY, a city and state to verify location.  These characteristics of testimonials show prospects that you are serious.

When you have real testimonials, people will be more likely to believe that you are offering good services.  Prospects (and anyone really) will believe third parties without a financial stake in your company more than they will believe your own IT marketing shtick.  

Qualities of Good Testimonials

You want benefits-focused testimonials placed on clients’ letterhead that talk about how your company has helped them.  You want to use very pointed examples that speak to return on investment, your reliability, dependability and what kind of response time you have.  You also want to show that you are there for emergencies, understand business needs and work well within a budget and with a concrete deadline.

How Do You Get IT Marketing Testimonials?

1.    Interview clients and help them with certain questions that take them exactly where you want to go.

2.    Draft suggested testimonials and email them, ask them to review them and approve.  Have clients put the finished product on their letterhead and send it along.     

3.    Take clients out to lunch or breakfast and conduct interviews.  Take notes and go back to your office to type up testimonials, email them and ask for a review to make sure the finished product reflects the conversation you had.  If clients are happy with the testimonials, they can put them on their letterhead and sign them so you can file it away for IT marketing purposes.  

The main idea is to make the process of giving you testimonials easy for clients so they will be very likely to give you what you need to boost your business.

Submitted By:  Joshua Feinberg

Recent studies related to small business computer consulting stated that worldwide, the CRM industry is going to double in the next six years.  Also, the adoption of this model will continue to rise.

The phenomenon of “CRM Market Fertility” measures the percent of companies that are using or planning to use CRM and has currently risen from 18 – 25% to 38%.  On-demand CRM in particular is tied in with small businesses and those involved in small business computer consulting as new developments are making it possible now for small businesses to afford and implement new, sophisticated solutions.

Small business computer consulting professionals have noted that CRM needs for their clients have become much more sophisticated over the years.  87% or SMBs are deciding to choose on-demand CRM solutions as opposed to alternatives.  

Those that work with enterprises primarily have been offering small businesses a very pared-down version of a CRM enterprise solution, which does not work to really solve the problems of these companies.  Small business computer consulting professionals have noted that SMBs have been typically overlooked by larger CRM providers, and as a result many consultants and small businesses have had to create a customized in-house CRM solution to meet needs or else go back to spreadsheets and applications to manage their relationships.

For more information on how CRM is developing to work with small businesses and how small business computer consulting firms are helping to deliver a new solution, please visit the attached link.

Added By:  Computer Consulting Kit