When computer business providers start laying out their marketing plans, normally their eyes are bigger than their stomachs when they pick the average size of the companies the will target.
I can see many of them counting their chickens before they hatch as they start drooling over the prospect of signing up two or three large businesses that have at least 50 computers on their network.
However, I think many of them might have forgotten a lesson that should have been learned on a fishing trip. You have to start small and catch some minnows or bait that you can use to lure in the Larger Fish! (more…)
Every managed services provider that starts their business dreams of becoming a millionaire! However something bizarre seems to happen along the way that kills that dream for the average computer consultant.
When most computer business owners first open their doors they don’t often think about the many potential marketing hurdles that might block their path to success.
There is a Fork in there road for many computer consultants that are in the process of marketing their business. There are really two basic ways of packaging your services and offering them to the public, but they are both extremely different from one another. The first concept is to have more of a boutique computer company that only plans on having a very few select customers and therefore charges the highest price possible. The other style is to try to reach the mass market by signing up as many clients as humanly possible. The problem arises when a technology firm is trying to reach the mass market but doing so with the highest price possible. The two methods can’t be more incompatible and therefore not realizing the difference can destroy your chances of successful IT marketing. 
Have you ever gone shopping for something you really wanted only to find all the shelves empty. Then you go from one store to the next and at each store you find all the shelves empty. This can be very frustrating and end up wasting a lot of time, however many computer business owners go in pursuit of an IT marketing compensation plan commonly called having ’skin in the game’ that doesn’t really exist. This concept would be very attractive for the consultants because it means they only pay if and when a marketing techniques produces results. I have tried to pitch this idea to a few advertisers like the local radio station and newspaper but for some strange reason when I suggested that I only pay when a sale closes they looked at me like I was crazy! Why can’t this model be found in the market place but more importantly why keep searching for it? 
An ancient Chinese proverbs says that a person should never open a store if they can’t smile. The question is, what in the world does smiling have to to with opening a store or any business? I believe that smiling people are basically happy and likable. This makes sense because if you’re not a likable person then you won’t do very well with customers that come into the store. You will probably have an even harder time dealing with disgruntled workers and customers if you’re not a likable person. I think this proverb would apply even more to a sales person trying to persuade someone to buy something especially IT. This is how the article applies to computer business owners who will need to be good sales people if they want to grow their managed services business with good sales and marketing techniques. 
I have been to a few baseball games and seen several games on TV but the only time I have ever seen a home run hit was in the highlights on Sports News. However, just the other day I happen to be watching a game at my health club and was amazed that I saw a home run hit live for the very first time. After watching the home run hit and the player run around the bases I started wondering why that was the first time I every saw one live? This is when I realized that in reality I wasn’t a serious fan and never watched that many games on TV nor attended that many games consecutively. This means I was just hit and miss with watching baseball games so my chances for seeing a live hit were very low. Suddenly the connection to the IT business and marketing hit me as I had a Ah Ha moment, when I realized that if you want to get a home run hit with your computer business marketing then you have to go to all the games! 
The other day I talked with three computer business owners that told me their bandwidth was full and they didn’t have any operational room to take on any other managed services clients. This situation is fairly common among most IT firms as they only have one or two techs and so when they sign up just 2 or 3 clients the on-boarding process shuts them down for several months. This is the question that the technology marketing & operational veterans John Black and Wayne Goldstein will answer as they discuss how you can make one call and expand your operational bandwidth by at least 80% and have enough room to start up your IT marketing to grow your business by getting more IT sales leads. This Webinar will be Thursday June 2 nd at 3:15 Central Time/2:15 Mountain/1:15 Pacific/4:15 Eastern. 
They say that practice makes perfect but in reality if you practice something the wrong way over and over again then you’re just reinforcing the wrong techniques. Therefore, many professionals will rehearse their techniques in front of a coach so they can improve and also get instant feedback when they get off track or leave out something critical. Of course if you’re talking about making a speech or a sales presentation then you can also role play with someone that understands your material well or is able to give you practical advice. Role playing is something that we highly recommend for the computer business professional trying to improve their marketing skills. However, where can a computer consultant turn for this type of sales support? 
There was a great story in the book, “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”, about a ship captain that sees a light in the distance headed directly towards his ship. The Captain orders that the other ’ship’ should be radioed and informed that they need to change coarse. The two lock horns in a battle over who is going to change coarse, then the Captain comes on the radio personally to inform the other ’ship’ of his high position and that they are going to have to change coarse. Finally, the person communicating from the distant light informs the Captain that they are a ‘light house’ and it is the captain who is going to have to make a coarse correction. Of course the light house represents principals that we can’t change, so the question is what principals should computer business owners consider with marketing for IT sales leads? 
