Computer services business lead qualification tips

If you own or manage a computer services business, you may be wondering about how you can consistently find high-quality clients that build relationships and provide ongoing services revenue.

Many IT companies struggle to establish the right criteria to secure great client accounts. When you fail to have a consistent process for qualifying your leads, you will find yourself scrambling to get good clients and working way harder than you need in order to stabilize your computer services business.

The following 4 lead qualification criteria can help you find more great clients all the time.

(1) Proximity. A potential client for your computer services business needs to be geographically close to you. In most areas, this means within a 30-60-minute drive from your location. Proximity has an impact on the types of networking events you attend and everything else you do from a marketing perspective. Proximity will also be an important benefit to stress as you are building a long-term support contract plan. This way, you can build long-term relationships with your ongoing clients.

(2) Size. Make sure with your computer services business that you are targeting potential clients with 10-50 PC’s... those that we call Sweet Spot Clients™. Basically, prospects have to be big enough that they need a real server. Typically, this level of investment is required once a small business reaches somewhere between 10-100 employees. You can also measure size in annual revenue. A good prospect for you will have $1 – 10 million in annual sales. Know all the details of prospect size because that information will help you with your marketing efforts, particularly when you plan direct mail campaigns.

(3) Existing IT Assets. Most of the time your computer services business prospects will have their own e-mail domain. You will want to address how their users retrieve and send e-mails when meeting with them, because it’s going to be an important way to qualify them as good candidates for your services. Many times prospects will have a dedicated server, which will indicate that they have more serious IT needs and probably would be receptive to the solutions you offer.

(4) Platform Match. If your expertise is on Microsoft Windows, will you be able to adequately and profitably support a potential client's largely Mac-focused environment? As part of your lead qualification process, be sure to ask about predominant OS/NOS platform investments to make sure that you're not embarking on an unsupportable-platform wild-good-chase. Or at the minimum, make sure you have a competent contractor or partner that can help to bridge any of your own company's skills gaps.

In this article, we discussed 4 lead qualification tips for finding great clients for your computer services business. Learn more about how you can attract great, steady, high-paying clients to your computer services business now at http://www.ComputerServicesBusiness.com

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