Starting Your Own Computer Business the Right Way

Are you starting your own computer business? Do you want to make sure you launch it the right way, the first time around?

Then make sure you're aware of your new company's sales cycle.

If you are like a lot of other new computer business owners, maybe you don’t quite know how to sell your services or get long-term clients and predictable revenue. One of the first steps to building a successful computer business is knowing the sequence of the sales cycle and following it consistently every time you come into contact with a potential client.

There are six steps in the sales cycle, and often new or naive computer professionals think these are just the ideal of what they ought to be doing in a perfect world.

The reality is, the sales cycle is not just a hypothetical best case scenario. Following its steps is the only way for most to consistently sell the high-margin services you need to get steady, high-paying clients. Methods that are limited to selling products, canned solutions, and even managed services that are pretty much just commodities put lots of downward pressure on your profit margins and won’t help you build your business.

To keep you away from profit-destroying methods as you are starting your own computer business, follow the 6 steps of the sales cycle below.

1. Targeted Marketing Activities that Generate High-Quality Leads. As you are beginning the process of finding the best clients for your computer business, you need to plan and implement a whole bunch of targeted marketing activities that will find those most likely to benefit from your unique services and the solutions you provide.

2. Careful Lead Qualification. As you are starting your own computer business and building your potential client roster, you need to qualify leads to make sure they fit your criteria for what makes a good client. For example, are they geographically desirable? big enough to need steady weekly or monthly sophisticated technology services? small enough to not have a big in-house IT department? and invested in, or planning to invest in, a platform supported by your particular computer business?

3. Sales Calls as Mutual Interviews. Once you’ve qualified your prospects, you need to go on initial sales calls. You need to have a written-down, plotted-out agenda for these meetings, but also treat them as mutual interviews. They are checking you out as a potential service provider. But when you're prepared, calm, cool, and collected, you are also able to more proactively figure out whether or not they have the potential to become good clients for your company.

4. Proving Ground Projects Build Credibility and Trust with New Customers. This step in the sales sequence is often overlooked, especially when you are just starting your own computer business. If you did everything right up to this point, your next step will be selling a small billable project – an emergency service visit or a technology assessment. This project will act as a proving ground of sorts, during which your company will prove its value to new customers. And conversely, your new customers are proving themselves to your business as being able to work well with you and your staff.

5. Remediation Projects, Major Upgrades, Installations, and Rollouts. The fifth step in the sequence of the sales cycle only happens if the proving ground project works well. This step involves talking about fixing a larger problem... often a major upgrade of systems, a big installation, or some sort of rollout project. Naive computer business owners might try to sell this type of project right out of the gate, before the process of lead qualification or a smaller project have been completed. However getting impatient can be a big mistake if you want to build long-term relationships.

6. Annual Service Agreements for On-Going Maintenance. As you present the major project or installation, talk about how on-going maintenance will be handled and present an annual service agreement program of some sort. You really need to have this service agreement program in place as you are starting your own computer business, so you can create the framework for creating long-term relationships. This final step of the sales cycle will take some time to reach as you let relationships evolve naturally. If you start talking about this major commitment in the first sales call with your potential client, before you have even built trust or proven yourself, you will in nearly all cases sabotage that relationship. Make sure you don't propose marriage on your first date. Take time to let new customer and client relationships evolve naturally.

In this article we went over the 6-step sales cycle for new computer business owners. Learn more about starting your own computer business with the proven sales cycle that gets you great, steady, high-paying clients now at the attached link.

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