IT consulting services come in all shapes and sizes. When you first start a business it is often difficult to decide which IT consulting services to offer. Should you sell what you know, sell what is trendy, or sell what you think people want?
The best way to figure out what IT consulting services to sell, and the products that are needed to support them, is to sell, service, and offer the IT consulting services that your prospects NEED.
Sounds pretty intuitive, but what typically happens is businesses start-up offering IT consulting services that their prospects want. A need and a want are two different things. The IT consulting services that a business owner thinks he/she needs are not necessarily the IT consulting services that are actually needed.
Think about this--if your prospects want an air conditioner, do you sell it to them in January? No, in the winter months, unless you're in the far south, you sell space heaters, car battery warmers, down comforters, and hot chocolate. The same goes for IT consulting services, you sell them what they need right now, so that they can continue to operate effectively. By selling IT consulting services they need, you will cover the wants in due time.
Now, when you are dealing with a non-technical business owner or manager, their needs may be quite superficial. That's ok. If they perceive that they need IT consulting services to fix their lockups, improve their sluggish performance, find out why they can't log on, or why they're losing drive letters - provide those services.
Once you prove to them you know what you're doing, then you can sell them the IT consulting services you know they need to reach peak performance. Basically, you want to sell aspirin for their aches and pains. You can't even start to sell the IT consulting services that you're trying to sell them --productivity tools, security tools, hardening, intrusion detection, collaboration, connectivity, wireless VPNs-- until you've fixed what they perceive their IT aches and pains to be.
Bottom Line on IT Consulting Services
When you start thinking about what IT consulting services to offer you need to think like your prospects. Try to understand what they need and separate that from what they want. Be careful to remember that non technical buyers will have legitimate surface need that must be addressed. Offer IT consulting services that cover both the basic fixes and the long term solutions and make yourself an invaluable asset to the businesses for which you provide IT consulting services.
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