Dealing with Time Constraints in Computer Consulting

If you’re already working 60, 70, or 80 hours each week, you may be wondering how you’ll ever be able to find long-term B2B clients. You may be asking, “Just where is this extra time supposed to come from?” Well, let’s talk a little about that.

First of all, you need to evaluate where you are spending most of your time. If you can cut down on the time spent on some of those activities by automating them, then you should go ahead and take that step.

Delegate, Delegate, Delegate

Second, you need to learn to delegate. I’m sure you want to do everything yourself, but at some point, you have to start spending your time on building your business rather than simply running it.

If you are spending your time putting in motherboards and power supplies, have someone else on your staff take care of those needs. If you’re dealing with retail traffic in a retail store, you can have someone take over that responsibility at least one day a week. Use the staff you already have most effectively by relying on them to do their jobs and take on new responsibilities.

Build Your Business

With the extra time you’ll gain, focus on business building activities. You can go to networking events, make plans, create marketing campaigns, and make the all-important follow-up calls.

If you want to know even more about building your business, check out the full article, Computer Consulting Time Constraints (link above).

Posted by Computer Consulting 101 Professional Kit

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IT Marketing: Reaching Out to Your Customer Database

Creating a mailing for your current customers is an excellent way to start in IT marketing and can be a very effective business tool. First of all, you already know the people on the list, so it should be easy for you to reach out to them. But, even more importantly, they already know and trust you, so they will be receptive to your ideas.

WHAT SHOULD YOU PITCH?

If you are already perfectly comfortable talking to business managers and owners you know about providing services like virus protection, firewalls, password protection, data back-up and other issues, it should be easy for you to add to that list more complex items like IT audit and data protection.

Chances are, the people that know you will listen to you, but they may not automatically buy into new ideas. When pitching new concepts, offer an extremely discounted IT audit package. For example, if normally you would charge $400, tell them it’s only $299. Throw in some bonus features like a surge protector or an entry-level battery back-up unit. Because they are your most valued clients, they not only deserve it, but they will respond with more business in the future.

TRACK YOUR RESULTS

Part of a successful IT marketing plan is tracking the responses you get from mailing campaigns. Your current client database is a good place to do a test to see how others in the community might respond to your offers. If you see that out of all the existing clients you reach, 5 percent respond and half of those take the audit package it will allow you to measure responses you might get from similar mailings to other potential clients.

HELP YOUR CUSTOMERS USE EXISTING RESOURCES

You can build trust in your relationships with current clients by asking them how you can help them additionally to better use hardware, software or other items that they already own. Most companies buy a lot of things that end up collecting dust. Showing them how to use things they already have that might truly advance their businesses will increase the esteem they have for you and boost your relationship with them. Helping them make use of things they already have will also help support your business by giving you incremental service revenue.

Posted By: Computer Consulting Kit

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