IT Consulting: More Steps To Success

Before starting your IT consulting business, make sure all your ducks are in a row. In this article, learn some more of the steps you should take before beginning your IT consulting practice.

Step Thirteen. Volunteer if You Can't Get Paying IT Consulting Customers

If 30 days have passed since you let everyone you know you're open for business and you still don't have referrals or paying customers, then take the bull by the horns and volunteer for a non-profit. Give them a few volunteer hours to help them with a PC upgrade or a tune-up. Help them update their website or give them some computer training. Just be sure you limit it to a 2 or 4 hour type deal or you may not be getting an end to it.

Contact the executive director or the office manager and be honest. Tell them you have just opened up a new IT consulting business and you would like to donate a couple of hours of your time. Tell them specifically 2 hours, 3 hours whatever it is, in return for a testimonial from them and introductions to 3 active members that they think may have computer problems and could benefit from your IT consulting services.

Formalize it by putting a couple of sentences down on a piece of paper that gives them a statement of work and what they are agreeing to give you in return.

Step Fourteen is to Keep Repeating Step Thirteen

Volunteer your services until you have 3 or 4 testimonials from business owners or managers. The best testimonials are from well-known people in your community that other businesspeople will recognize.

Step Number Fifteen: Start attending Local Business to Business Events.

Look in the business section of your local paper. Pay attention to the networking and lead groups as well and Chambers of Commerce. See if you can attend as a guest. Plan on going to one networking event per week every single week for the next 4 weeks.

Then go around and be friendly. Tell people you are just starting up a business. Ask them how they use IT in their business and exchange business cards and see if there is any way your IT consulting business can help them.

Think about helping THEM, don’t make it a me, me, me thing. It’s very important that you ask them what is going on in their business ask what they are using computers for, what the biggest problems they are facing right now and see if there is any way to help them.

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IT Consulting: Steps To A Successful Launch

Before starting your IT consulting business, be prepared. In this article, learn some of the steps you should take before beginning your IT consulting practice.

Step Ten: Start a Simple Contact Database of Everyone You Meet.

Use a package like ACT of Goldmine - don’t reinvent the wheel. Start contacting each person and let them know you are opening your IT consulting business and you would appreciate them keeping their ears open for any referrals. Or tell them if there is any complaining or whine about computers, you want to know about it.

Use A Combination of Personal and Professional Visits

In person visits are the most powerful, then phone calls, then emails and postcards. Make sure you give each person couple of your IT consulting business cards with your mobile number on it. Also, give them some tech support stickers so they can put one on their computer and give them to others.

Step Eleven. Decide What To Charge and How To Bill

Think about your hourly billing rate and be very careful not to undercharge. Think about whether you want to assess a travel charge or a trip charge a call fee or flat fee on top of your hourly billing rate. Also consider your minimum onsite hours, 2-3 is generally the standard. You are going to have to go a lot of different places on any given day to make a living. So schedule efficiently.

Consider how you are going to bill for telephone support and remote support. Do not give it away for free. Figure out how you are going to charge for an off-site project.

Step Twelve: Get Your First Paying Customer

Do an awesome job with your first IT consulting customer. Go out of your way to over-deliver. Get paid and while that client is saying what a great job you did, get a testimonial. You are going to need a lot of those as time goes on.

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IT Consulting: 3 More Steps To Success

Before starting your IT consulting business, take the steps that will lead to your success. In this article, learn about three steps you should take before beginning your IT consulting practice.

Step Seven: Arrange Your Telecom Services

Get a business telephone number or a mobile phone or something that you can answer with your IT consulting business name so you sound professional. Don’t go too cheap and use your home phone number and a cheesey answering machine or it will really destroy your professional image.

Make sure you convey a professional image all the way. The $40 or $50 a month you spend will be well worth it.

You should also get a domain name registered. Ideally, you should pick out your domain name and IT consulting company name at the same time so you make sure you get your first choice of a dot com.

Get your email and Webster-hosting ready to go. Decide what physical address you are going to use. Watch out for any home office zoning laws if you are going to be operating your IT consulting business out of your home.

Step Eight: Order Your Business Cards

Go either with 2 color or 4 color at this stage of the game. If your budget for business cards is 60 to $80 for a thousand cards, you should be fine. Don’t go overboard on printing a ton of them.

If you do, your bound to decide to change your logo or address and you'll be stuck with cards you can't use. Get the minimum quantity. You can always get a reprint later.

Step Nine: Set Up Your Sales Tax

If you are reselling products, you will need to get a sale tax certificate or sales tax collection receipt from the province or state you are located in. It is one type of regulatory agency there.

You may want to open up some distributor accounts especially with the big two Ingram Micro and Tech Data. Ingrammicro.com and techdata.com. The big two distributors are XENIX, which just went public, and D&H. You should also have a merchant account. You want to be able to get a credit card authorization for any sales.

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You Need More Than Just Technical Skills

To be successful in IT consulting, you need to know about servers, hardware, and software, but more importantly, you need to know business skills.

Learn How to Say "No"

Anyone in IT consulting can tell you that, at first, you are going to get a lot of crazy requests. You'll get a lot of people wasting your time with half-baked nonsense. They don’t have the money to pay for you or they ask for ridiculous things.

Of course, all the customer service gurus will tell you that the word, "no" should not be in your vocabulary. Nonsense; you need to learn how to say no.

Learn About Banking and Merchant Accounts

You will need to set up a business bank account. If you plan on reselling products, you'll need to set up a merchant account. This gives you the ability to accept credit cards.

Learn How to Manage Your Finances

You need to make sure you get paid, get paid well, and get paid fast. You're going to need to figure out your expenses, know how to balance your checkbook, know about credit and collections and how that ties in to your whole billing and invoicing system.

Learn How to Track Prospects and Clients

You don't want prospects or clients slipping through the cracks. You'll need to set up simple databases to track your prospects and clients. Fortunately, there are many off-the-shelf products that can help you do just that.

Learn How to Delegate

Even if you plan on your IT consulting business being "just you" for a long time, delegating skills are still important. At some time in your business, you are probably going to end up working with some business partners and contractors.

You are going to have all kinds of vendor relationships. You need to know when to pass it off to them and you need to know how to successfully manage and delegate work.

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Motherboard / CPU Damage From Power Supply

The number one cause for damaged motherboards and/or CPU's is a faulty power supply. Several years ago my home PC's power supply literally caught on fire. When the power supply went it took my motherboard and both hard drives with it. Needless to say I lost a lot of data I did not have backed up.

When customers bring in their PC's to get repaired with the "I push the power button and nothing happens" symptom, it is all too evident what happened. Whether it was some kind of power surge or an internal fault with that power supply, it doesn't matter, that PSU is toast. Now you need to figure out if the damage is limited to the power supply or if it took out other key components as well.

First thing, change the power supply. The PC will get power and the fans will spin, but will the motherboard POST? If it doesn't you have to eliminate other components first. If you have two sticks of memory remove one stick at a time and attempt to start again. If it fails reinstall the one you removed and then remove the next one. If start up still fails remove both sticks of memory and install another stick that wasn't in the PC originally. If that fails, then you can eliminate memory from being the problem.

Next thing to do is to reset the CMOS to default settings. This can be accomplished by a reset jumper on the motherboard. The jumper should be located very close to the CMOS battery. The battery is the size of a quarter. Close by you should see three pins with a jumper on two of those pins. To reset the CMOS, move the jumper over one slot. If you have difficulty with this, an alternate method is to just remove the battery itself for a minimum of one half hour. Please consult the motherboard's manual for exact instructions. If you don't have the manual, it can be found online with a little bit of research.

If the CMOS reset worked, GREAT! All you have to do is reset your clocks and you should be in business. If it did not work you can try disconnecting your hard drive and see if the motherboard will post. From experience, this is a long shot, but you must try it first. If you are still not having any luck, then either the Motherboard or the CPU or both are damaged.

Now there is no sure fire way of determining which of the two is bad without replacing one of them. The dangers of this is that if you guess CPU and it was the motherboard, when you replace the CPU with a new one you WILL most likely damage the new CPU. Therefore it is wise to replace them both. If you don't, you could end up spending a lot more money than you originally planned.

Of course, now that you've changed the motherboard and CPU all the hardware is working, and you think that you are out of the woods. BUT, that is not the case. When you try to start Windows, 9 out of 10 times, the operating system will not load because of the new motherboard. If you replaced the motherboard with the exact same model, you probably won't have this problem. If you replaced the motherboard with a different model then you have two options:

1. Try doing a repair installation of Windows. You will need the Windows disk to accomplish this.

2. If the above fails, then you will have to reformat your hard drive which means wipe everything off the drive and do a clean installation of Windows.

If you have valuable data on your drive that is NOT backed up, you are going to have to start looking at ways to retrieve that data BEFORE you reformat.

Good Luck!

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What Non IT Skills Do You Need?

IT consulting is more than just knowing all about laptops and servers. To be successful, you need to have business skills, too. This article will give you some examples of skills you need for your IT consulting business.

Good Data Management Will Keep You Organized

You should have strong spreadsheet skills and hopefully know Excel pretty well. There will be all kinds of data you will need to put together for internal use and for client’s use. For time management, you need to know how to draw the line. You will need to keep on schedule and keep priorities in check.

The Phone Will Be Your Friend

For IT consulting, you will need good verbal skills, and feel comfortable on the phone. Because you are going to need that for following up on leads and setting up appointments. You'll also need good phone skills for providing tech support and for keeping clients and vendors in check.

Speaking Effectively in Public Might Close the Deal

In IT consulting, you'll be doing small group presentations. You'll be doing these with an internal training or on a sales call. You are going to be talking to 3, 4, 5 as much as 10 people at once sometimes. You may get a company where they will bring in literally all of their middle management to grill you on the solution to make sure you have it.

Proper Grammar and Spelling Will Let Your Professionalism Shine Through

You should have decent word processing and email communications skills to get with your clients, prospects and partners. Those are some of the important business skills.

The Bottom Line about IT Consulting

Much of what determines someone's success in IT consulting is his business skills rather than technical proficiency. If you have deficiencies in these skills, now is the time to work on them so you can stay in the IT consulting field for the long haul.

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3 Steps You Need To Take

To begin your IT consulting practice, there are 21 steps you should take before you hit your first day on the job. In this article, you'll learn about three of the steps you should take before entering the business of full-time IT consulting.

Step Four. Engage Professional Services

You should have an accountant and an attorney before you start your IT consulting business. Sit down with them for a few minutes and tell them about your business plans. They’ll help you pick out what kind of business entity makes the most sense for you - whether it is a sole proprietor, limited partnership, or a corporation.

They can introduce you to the pros and cons of each option and you can do your own research, too. A professional's advice is money well-spent for your IT consulting business. Even buying a half hour or hour of an attorney or accountant's time can help.

To save money, you can file some of the paperwork if you want to. But at least talk with them about where you are in your IT consulting business and your personal financial situation.

Step Five: Open a Business Bank Account

Clients are going to write checks to your IT consulting business; not you personally. They are not going to want to end up with you being called a statutory employee. They want to make sure that they are actually paying a business that they are employing which is corporation to corporation. So you will need a bank account so you can cash those checks.

Apply for a merchant account if you are planning on reselling products or want more flexibility so you can accept credit cards. Discover, MasterCard, Visa and American Express are the big ones.

Step Six: Buy Some Insurance.

Talk to a property and casualty insurance agent about getting commercial insurance for your IT consulting business. General liability and professional liability are good, as well as Errors and Omissions. You want yourself and your business to be protected in case of problems.

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