IT Consultants: 7 Business-Building Secrets for 2009 (and Beyond)

IT consultants that own or manage their own consulting companies often face challenges when growing their profits and client base.

If you are like many IT consultants, you may have trouble with the key ingredient of successful consulting firms -- being able to focus on your company’s profit and bottom line. Many in the IT services industry fall in love with technology gadgetry, or get seduced by attractive channel programs, often at the expense of their businesses’ profits. If you have fallen into this trap, you need to remember that your computer consulting company is a business, not charity and not a hobby, so you need to run it like a business.

The following 7 profit secrets can help IT consultants trying to build their client lists and grow their businesses exponentially.

(1) IT Consultants Need to Be Proactive with Their Clients. You can’t afford to be labeled as another clueless geek. So you need to make sure you act as a Virtual CIO for hire. Be vigilant about finding new ways to enhance your clients’ businesses rather than just fixing broken desktops or servers.

(2) IT Consultants Are Dedicated to Their Task and Relentless about Improving the Status Quo. Getting and keeping great computer consulting clients takes a lot of work. You need to stay away from one-shot deal sales and focus on the value to your business of lifetime clients. Remember that you are offering total, complex business solutions. You are a long-term visionary that needs to plan ahead and have tremendous staying power and perseverance.

(3) IT Consultants Are Creative with Client Relationships. Small business technology solutions need to be low cost, but incredibly effective. These IT solutions also need to work without the need for an in-house IT staff. In order to meet these challenges, you will often need to think outside the box and be incredibly resourceful.

(4) IT Consultants Evaluate How Their Clients’ Paper-Based Systems and Computer-Based Systems Work. Part of your role as a Virtual CIO is to see how existing client systems are meeting or not meeting present and future needs. Most of this work will be done during initial technology assessments, which will need to also be a point of focus as you are growing relationships with small businesses and setting you apart from the competition.

(5) IT Consultants Think About What Their Clients Need from Them. As a computer consulting business owner, you must have good people skills and empathy for your clients’ business problems. But true Virtual CIO’s dig in and learn about their clients’ customers’ business problems when designing solutions.

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