6 Proven Secrets for Your Computer Consultant Business
by Joshua Feinberg
(1) Understand Your Business Model and Target Audience
It’s not practical to be all things to all people. But you can be all things to some people. You can’t possibly have the advertising budget to market to everyone. So, find a specialty group to which you can market and focus your efforts there. While you’re at it, figure out what services you will and won’t provide.
(2) Be Proactive in Finding the Right People
Whether it’s finding prospects, customers, clients, staff, contractors or partners, work on these activities weekly. If you procrastinate, you may take on nightmare clients, unreliable employees or just generally make bad decisions. The time to make important decisions is when you’re not operating in crisis mode; those in crisis are likely to make mistakes! Constantly be on the lookout for people that can help you get where you need to be.
(3) Realize Quality Always Trumps Quantity
It’s not about having the biggest customer list. 50 great customers are better than 100 bad ones. Strive to have only the most profitable and stable customers on your client list.
(4) Teach Your Customers How to Treat You
If you pick rock-bottom rates, “eat” big blocks of time, tolerate verbal abuse from customers, accept late payments and allow your customers to pay you for 15 minutes of your time instead of signing a support contract, then you’ve taught your customers it’s okay not to respect you or your time. Set your policies in stone from the beginning and you will be a much happier business owner.
(5) Plan for Your Future Success
A full-blown business plan is ideal, but if that’s asking too much, have a weekly business development “to-do” list. Include three columns:
a. How much time you’ll spend;
b. How much money you’ll spend;
c. Your start and end dates.
Make sure you fill this out and track where you’re spending your time and how much money is coming in and going out. Analyzing it will help make your business more profitable.
(6) Time Is Money
Your time is your inventory. If you owned a brick and mortar store, would you freely give your inventory away? Of course not!
You shouldn’t give your time away either. So know where every ¼ hour block is going every week. It should fit into one of these three categories:
a. Billable to a client;
b. Management/administration;
c. Sales/marketing.
If you cannot put every piece of your time into one of these three categories, you need to re-evaluate how you’re spending your time.
If you're really serious about getting your computer consultant business off the ground, or taking your computer consultant business to the next level, we're put together a highly recommended page of tips on
Computer Consultant Business Proven Secrets.
Copyright © MMVIII, Joshua Feinberg. Unauthorized Reproduction is Expressly Disallowed.