This presents a great opportunity for us to discuss the advantages, risks, and rewards of advertising your business. From our experience working with computer repair shops across the globe, we’ve found that while consumers respond to the marketing campaigns we provide to our Windows Renew partners, the platforms in which they respond to vary from region to region. In other words, a 3 month newspaper ad campaign may bring in a flood of new business in Arkansas, but may fall on deaf ears in Michigan. That same ad, or marketing message, when placed on Craigslist in Michigan, may bring in the flood of business that Arkansas experienced. This is due to the fact that consumer habits vary from region to region. New Yorkers may prefer their news on their mobile devices, where as someone in another part of the county may prefer a physical newspaper in their hands.

The point is, in advertising, you must always test.

There is no way to ever know for sure what will work or not work. The only way to know ahead of time would be through divine inspiration, and you and I both know that is not possible. The best way to approach advertising is to make the best educated guess you can based on the consumption habits of your local market, and go out with a test campaign.

At Windows Renew, we’ve had the privilege of testing campaigns, strategies, and varying messages across 150 different markets around the globe. Our past experience and test campaigns have led us to a solid understanding of what will work and what will not work. That helps our partners a great deal; however, the task of testing and measuring never stops. The market is always changing and it is critical to run stride for stride with your target market.

This brings me to my next point:

When you test, you must measure obsessively until you find the “code breaker.”

It’s not enough to simply launch an ad and track the sales. You must measure every step of the sales process. Consider measuring the following through an excel spreadsheet each week:

• How many people saw your ad? What is the circulation of the publication/platform?
• How many phone calls did you receive each week as a result of your ad?
• How many emails did you receive each week as a result of your ad?
• Are you asking every prospect that emails or calls you how they heard about you?
• What is your sales process? How many times do you follow-up? Via phone, email or both?

I cannot stress enough the importance of measuring each step along the way, because you may find that your ad is not what is failing you, it may be your sales process!

Your ad may be generating enough leads to produce an ROI (Return On Investment), but you may not be following up properly. You may not be following up enough times. Your prices may be too high, or worse, too low. You may not be effectively communicating the value of your services to the prospect and, as a result, you lose the sale.

Another common problem I see is when companies that advertise fail to have a cohesive brand across their marketing, website, and other points of contact with prospects.

I cannot tell you how many times I see an ad, then go to the website, and the website is completely different from the ad. The colors are not the same, the fonts are different, the over-all feel is not the same. This inconsistency is confusing and will cause prospects to write you off as “unprofessional” and continue looking elsewhere. You may actually be driving a lot of traffic to your website (which you will only know if you measure your analytics) but prospects may leave due to your confusing, boring, or inconsistent brand.

That is why measuring is critical. You must track each step of the sales process to determine where you are lacking, where prospects are falling through the cracks, and then hunt down and correct the culprit.

Continue to test, measure, and tweak the entire sales process until you generate ROI (Return On Investment).

Once ROI is achieved, you duplicate the campaign on a larger scale to gain more business. This is what we refer to as the “code breaker.”

I have one final lesson for you when you advertise: Never give up too soon.

Most advertising takes repetition to sink in with your target market and generate sales. I can remember getting phone calls from individuals who cut out our newspaper ad 6 months prior and were finally calling us to schedule an appointment. The thing about any service-based business like computer repair is that both you and your target market never know when they are going to be in need of your services. You can’t predict when a computer is going to be infected by a virus or experience a system crash. Your ad may be hitting home with your target market, and you may be producing “top of mind” with them, but they may simply not need your services at this precise moment.

That’s ok. It is to be expected.

That is why you must stick it out and give yourself at least 2-3 months of regular, consistent advertising. You are better off running a 1/4 page ad 4 times per week and running a full page ad just 1 time per week.

As for our Entrepreneur Magazine ad, time will tell whether it’s effective or not. We will test and measure until we know the precise results moving forward. That’s the only way a company can grow.

There are two missing components that most computer consulting business owners fail to look for in new candidates:

1. Marketability
2. Personability

Yes, technical skill is critical, but it is also a no-brainer. You don’t hire based on technical ability. You require technical ability, but hire on someone’s ability to make you money. This is an intangible quality.

What do I mean?

In essence, a computer technician who can effectively communicate problems to a client and convincingly suggest recommending solutions is going to upsell each sale and bring you more profit. Would you rather have someone working for you who brings in $200 per appointment or $250 per appointment? That’s a 25% increase to your bottom line. That’s the difference between doing $2.5 million a year in sales and$3.125 million a year with the same clients, same sales, and same efforts.

When most computer consultants set out to hire new IT staff, the typical place they look is on Craigslist or Monster.com, and the obvious litmus test they use revolves around the candidates technical strengths and weaknesses. This approach will work, but there is a secret that the best hiring professionals use:

The top place to look for hiring qualified, skilled, and socially talented computer technicians is on your competitor’s payroll!

If you’re struggling to find the right applicant, schedule a consultation with 5 to 10 of your competitors in the surrounding area and see their technicians in action. You don’t have to worry about padded resumes and fake references when you are testing a potential hire out in a real-world situation. When you find that “diamond in the rough” you were looking for, offer them a position.

Remember that technical skills are always a necessary requirement when hiring a computer technician or network troubleshooter, but don’t forget to look for qualities that show someone who is personable, presents him- or herself well, and possesses solid communication skills. These are elements your company simply cannot afford to overlook.

As each passing day goes by, we zoom in further and further into our techie worlds, completely absorbed in it’s miniature workings. We focus on the tasks at hand: fixing this network, solving that virus infection.

It’s easy to get engulfed in tasks that we give ourselves. We check off one thing after the other and pat ourselves on the backs for meeting client deadlines and moving the needle forward.

But, we often forget that we are in business, and business does not prosper from linear tasks we set for ourselves. Business is strategy. Business is like a chess game. You cannot zoom in and focus on moving your pawn one space forward. You have to zoom completely out and look at the entire chess board. See your whole arsenal of attack. Think about how each piece is an invaluable component to a grand scheme that is your company.

Most business owners I work with for the first time don’t zoom out. They don’t know how. Many of them wouldn’t know what to do once they did zoom out. That’s why they become a Windows Renew partner. They need the guidance. They need specific direction, set strategies, and a blueprint to follow.

To be successful with your technology consulting business, you must zoom out, observe where you are in the game, observe which pieces you have,  and which pieces your opponents have. You must look ahead to predict obstacles, and strategize your series of moves.

You cannot walk around with your head to the ground and expect to move in a straight line. You also cannot expect to zoom in and out of your business with ease until you begin to do so every day and allow it to develop as a skill. You must look into the distance, change your path when needed, and never accept defeat.

If your technology business is suffering, it’s because you have missing pieces in your chess game. You may not be thinking enough about your client’s experience with you. You may be failing to “wow” them with an idea, service, brand or unique approach. Your return calls may be lacking. Your deadlines may be fuzzy. You may be marketing the wrong message through the wrong platform to the wrong market. You may not even HAVE a real marketing message even when you think you do. Your service offering may be inconsistent. Your brand may be too confusing. All these things will negatively effect the spread of word-of-mouth and lose you new business that is in your grasp.

These are the macro details you should be investing your time on every day. These elements will explode or crush your company. They will be the difference between millions of dollars or pennies in profit. You are the driver of your company. Where you end up solely depends on you. Be smart in your path, diligent in your approach, and learn to consider yourself a master of chess.

In your computer repair company, that “action that causes a reaction” is the marketing and business systems you put in place to service your clients and promote your business. The equal and opposite reaction, ideally, is when your business propels forward to improved service offerings and greater profits.

It kills me whenever I talk to struggling computer repair business owners about the health of their company. Their first reaction when profits are down is to tighten up the belt, cut spending, turn down the heat, and pray for a new day. That’s the same thing your body does when you starve it. During a hunger strike, the human body begins to hold fat to a greater degree. It’s a downward spiral of weight gain that ends with you waking up one morning realizing that you are worse off than you were in the beginning of your hunger strike.

Once you’re fat and you realize you need to go on a diet, your nutritionist will tell you that the way to stay healthy and slim isn’t to starve yourself, but to feed yourself regular portions of healthy food every three hours. It’s consistency that’s key. Eating small portions every three hours keeps your metabolism turning and your fat burning machine on overdrive.

Your computer repair business operates the same way. When business is down, you can’t starve your company from healthy marketing and expect any real change. Starving your company will put you in a downward spiral of weight-gain (a.k.a. bills piling up).  In marketing, as in health, consistency is King. One ad on craigslist once a month won’t do you any good. What about one ad a day, every day, for a month? Now you’re talking! The same principle applies to paid advertising. You will have more success with a small, daily print ad, than you will with one big, weekly print ad.

Your computer repair business is a living organism. It needs consistent portions of healthy marketing to survive. Do this and your profit-engine (a.k.a. your business metabolism) will run on overdrive.

You start with healthy marketing. You follow with a consistent effort. You end with new clients and higher profits.

Now go make Einstein proud.

Where’s the personality? Where’s the human element? Where is the anecdote that I can actually relate to as a potential client? Its not there, and that’s a problem.

From my experience, businesses become stale like this because the owners are afraid of taking a chance. They don’t want to appear unprofessional. They are usually one-man-bands who suffer from what I call the “Entrepreneurial Napolean Complex.” Many times, they are so afraid of appearing small that they do everything in their power to appear “big.” What’s interesting to me is that, in actuality, appearing “big” or “small” is directly related to your company’s social footprint.

Think about this:

Why does Apple come across to you as such a big presence? Yes, they have thousands of employees, and Billions of dollars in revenue, but you don’t see that those employees or have access to their bank account on a daily basis. So how do you know it’s there? You can just “feel it,” right? What is it about the consumer experience with Apple that makes us feel Apple’s gigantic size? It has to do with your experience with Apple’s social footprint! It’s being on the train and seeing 3 iPads around you in action. It’s about going into the office and seeing co-workers viewing  a freshly designed company brochure from a Mac monitor. Its about pulling up the news and seeing an  article about a new Apple product. Its about social interaction!

Business doesn’t drive people. People drive business. People are the key factor in whether a business appears big or small. That is because your perceived size directly relates to your popularity!

The more people that use your company, talk about your company, comment on your Facebook page (you DO have a Facebook page, right?), friend you, follow you on Twitter, etc., etc., the more “popular” you become. The more popular you become in your town, the more business you will bring in.

It’s so ironic too, because, many times, in an effort to try and make a computer repair business seem larger, the owner ends up making it look “smaller” with stale marketing, boring web copy, and an energy-less brand! There is a reason why Facebook, the most socially interactive website in existence, is also the most trafficked.

Your clients want to do business with real people. They want to connect with you, relate with you, share their computer frustrations with you. They want to know that you care about them, that you care about their precious data, that you will fight to the death to see to it that their digital lives are fast moving, productive and stress-free.

They don’t want a salesman. They don’t care about your certifications, or your flashy website navigation. They will run for the hills if you start spewing out technical jargon and preach to them about system over-clocking and hard drive re-imaging.

They want a real person.

If you’re a one-man-band. BE a one-man-band. Promote it! Celebrate it! Own it! Showcase your advantages. Highlight them. After all, because you are a small company, you can provide more personalized service. “Forget the Geek Squad!” Your overhead is lower, so your prices are cheaper. You care more, because each day you are fighting to pay the bills.

People love a good story. They root for the underdog. They relate to him. They want him to win. They PROMOTE him! Wouldn’t you like people to do that for your company?

So start letting people see you are real and authentic. Start interacting with them online. Share in their personal lives. Let them see pictures from your last vacation. Post pictures of your clients on your website. Let them post comments.

And for Pete’s sake, take down that boring corporate mumbo jumbo and replace it with your story!

Your business is a movie script, and, to quote the great Seth Godin, “marketing is nothing but great storytelling.”

So what kind of story do you want your business to tell? That B-list story on daytime television? Or, Schindler’s List, which wins you 7 Oscars at the Academy Awards?

HERE IS THE ORIGINAL QUESTION:

“I am wondering what thoughts people have concerning the future of techs fixing pcs and macs.   As time goes on, I see computer prices dropping between $350 and $650.  At what point will people just say ‘I might as well buy a new computer?’

Also, within the next 10 years what kind of computers are going to be  produced?  Will they even have a motherboard or a hard drive and if not, how can we help them?

I believe the industry will change which will also bring about new opportunities which we should start thinking about now.  Any suggestions or answers are greatly appreciated.”

HERE IS MY TAKE ON THE MATTER:

I believe the first questions to ponder, regardless of the price of computers in the future, are: “Will consumers ever be able to just scrap their computer with all of their personal files and software on it for a new one? Will they be savvy enough to do a back-up and restore to a new machine in the future? Will someone or some company provide a new software tool that would enable them to do a back-up and restore themselves?”

If so, how will that change the computer repair industry? What will the role of the computer repair consultant be? My educated guess is that the “computer repair consultant” may transition into more of a “virtual confidant.” Similar to a financial planner, but managing people’s virtual lives rather than their financial portfolios. SaaS (Software As A Service) is the future of all computing. Eventually, there may be no such thing as software installed onto our computers. Instead, we may use our computers to access the internet where all of our software services (e.g. Microsoft Office, Adobe CS5, etc.) will be accessible or launchable via a web browser. This phenomenon has been a long time coming (e.g. gmail, google docs, sales force, etc.) and certainly has been talked about for awhile now in tech, business, and marketing circles. Our personal files may all be stored online in the “cloud,” much like our pictures and videos are all virtually stored on Facebook. The need for hard drives as data storage devices may no longer exist.

In the event that computers transform in purpose to more of a liaison to the virtual world, there will be a new spark for the need to help consumers manage, control and setup their virtual worlds. They will have so many options available to them. Which services are right for them? How do they integrate them together? How do they best manage their time? How do they protect their privacy? How do they protect themselves from security hackers and identity thieves? How do they manage their children’s activities online and protect them from dangers?

I foresee monthly recurring revenue opportunities for “virtual confidantes” in this realm as they charge for their consulting services and then take a monthly commission on the SaaS services they sell their clients on.

To me, it’s a logical step forward, and I believe it’s one we can take in stride as we prepare for the inevitable before it occurs and ultimately move ahead our competition into a newly defined industry: The Virtual Confidant Industry

These are things I think about everyday and I am working to push the needle forward to help my Windows Renew Partners make that slow, steady transition. We’re not there yet in terms of needing to change our business model to survive, so we can slowly start to incorporate these new ideas in future service offerings, marketing material, and “lingo” we use when working with clients.

“How do I successfully run a computer consulting company out of my home?”

It’s actually really easy to do.

First Step – Your Image
First and foremost, you really have to commit yourself to projecting a professional image.  It is really easy to do that. You need to make sure clients see you in a professional way through your marketing, your 1-800 number, your business cards, your website, and other elements like magnetic signs on your car.

When I first started out, and didn’t have any clients, I got polo shirts made that had my logo right on the chest.  So, I had a brand, I had a color scheme, I had a logo, I had a website, and I was running it out of my home.  So, I did all of the work in house, but nobody ever knew that I was running it out of my house. All they saw was a 1-800 number, they saw professional ads, they saw me in a uniform, they saw my logo on my uniform, they saw my business cards, and they saw signs on my car. Each of these things were like little check boxes being checked off in their minds that helped them come to a conclusion that I was a professional company.  So, that’s the first thing. You want to project that professional image, and it’s not expensive or hard to do.

Second Step – Your Business Model
The second thing you need to think about is what your business model is going to be.  You could run this business out of your home for the rest of your life.  You could run a million-dollar consulting firm out of your home if you wanted to.  I have seen it done.  I’m here in Pittsburgh, and I have a client locally who has been doing this for many years. He runs the whole thing out of his home and people love it. His clients even come to his home to drop their computers off and he makes a lot of money.

Sample Business Model #1
The first business model that’s easy to run when starting out is providing all in-home appointments.  In this scenario, anytime someone schedules an appointment, you will go to his or her home or business and work on the machines there.  Now, if you run into a problem on site and you need to spend more time on the computer, then you would tell your client that you have to take the computer back to your shop for an ‘advanced diagnostic’.  With this model you never have them drop their computer off or pick it up at your house.

Sample Business Model #2
Now, the second business model is the pick-up and drop-off model. I am a big fan of this model.  In this scenario, anytime someone schedule’s an appointment with you, you pick up their computer, fix it at your house, then drop it off the next day.  The key is to not make a million trips. You want to create a weekly schedule on certain days such as Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Pick up all the computers at one time of the day, and drop them off at another time of the day.  You want to build your schedule and organize it so that you are combining trips. The pick-up/ drop-off model is very effective because clients don’t have to wait for you to fix their computer in their house and they don’t have to ‘lug’ their computer across town to get it fixed.  Also, you can take your time repairing the computer, and most importantly, you can fix multiple computers at one time.

If you run a service like the Windows Renew Service, you’ll make between 75 and 100 dollars per hour.  With the pick-up / drop-off model you can service 3 to 4 computers at one time in your home. As a result, you’ll end up averaging upwards to $200 an hour.

Conclusion
If you’re running on a tight budget, than I recommend you strongly consider one of the above two business model’s as the structure for your business.  Once you get started with one of these models, you can either continue to run it out of your home or you can transition into a storefront.  I don’t recommend starting out with a storefront if you are strapped for cash because there are a lot of unnecessary expenses involved.  It’s going to take a while to get your business going. It will take a few months to build your base clientele.  So, their really is no point in having a storefront and paying 3 to 4 months worth of expenses when you are not going to have the clients established yet.  As a smart business owner, you want to do everything you can to give yourself the best opportunity to be successful in your business.

A Proven System To Running A Computer Consulting Business Out Of Your Home
If you are looking for a complete, ‘done for you’, system to starting up, running and growing a profitable computer consulting company without having to spend a fortune to get started, I recommend you consider the Computer Consulting Business-In-A-Box.

Just like with all of your marketing, you must create a systematic process to cultivating referrals. Even if you are already asking for referrals from your clients, imagine how much MORE business you could secure if you were aggressive and thorough in your approach!

So What Is The #1  Secret To Generating A Flood Of Referrals?

You’ll be surprised to know that the answer doesn’t involve slick sales letters or cute marketing campaigns. The best way to generate massive referral business is to earn it by WOWING your clients.

Here’s the thing…

If you provide good service that meets your clients expectations, they will not refer you to their friends and family. If you successfully EXCEED their expectations, deliver MORE than they expect from you, and hand them a total WOW experience, they will become super clients.

• Super clients will happily pay premium prices for your services.
• Super clients will buy from you often.
• Super clients will tell everyone how much they love your company and gladly bring you a ton of new business

So ask yourself this: Are your clients just satisfied with your work or are they RAVING about it? What can you do to blindside them with incredible service?

Case In Point: Consider The iPhone

Apple sold over 13.7 million iPhones in 2008 alone. They sold 3.7 million MORE iPhones then what they expected to sell from the marketing they put in place. Why did sales growth explode beyond their expectations without any additional effort? It’s because of the PRODUCT. The iPhone is such a “WOW” product and delivers features that consumers have never experienced before. Buyers are so impressed after they purchase and start using their iPhone that they become super clients and do everything in their power to tell their friends and family how amazing the product is and how everyone should buy one! This kind of word of mouth is free and priceless. Apple doesn’t solicit for referrals. They don’t offer affiliate marketing and cute referral campaigns. They just focus on delivering an incredible product and let the product sell itself. For Apple, this approach brought them an additional 3.7 million units sold.

To “WOW” your clients, you need a knockout punch of a unique service, an organized and systematic customer service and support follow-up plan, and marketing that educates clients on the value they are receiving. You may be delivering a “WOW” service but if you don’t educate your clients to the point that they truly understand and appreciate every detail of value you are providing them, they will not realize how much you are helping them and ultimately not turn into super clients.

My Computer Repair Business In-A-Box teaches you a “WOW” computer consulting service you can provide and comes with 1-year’s worth of “done-for-you” marketing campaigns that are designed to sell your service, position your company as unique, and educate prospects and customers on the value you are providing.

From my own experiencing  of cold calling for my computer consulting business and from implementing cold calling techniques for clients who buy my Computer Repair Business In-A-Box, I can tell you that cold calling can be extremely effective if done correctly.

The secret to cold calling is to make it more of a WARM call.

Here Are 2 Reasons You Should Seriously Consider Cold Calling:

1. Cold calling is the perfect way to find and win new business if you’re working with little to no marketing budget.
2. Cold calling gets your foot in the door with companies who may never have called you otherwise.

8 Ways To Turn Cold Calls Into Warm Calls and Close Business:

1. Join organizations that your target market belongs to.If you focus on accountants, for instance, and you join a local accounting association, when you call potential accountants up in your area to pitch them your service, you can say you’re a member of the same organization. This gives you an excuse to call and starts up conversation. You will also learn intimate details about the particular industry your prospect belongs to. This will provide you with insight into real challenges that your prospects face and may give you ideas of specific solutions you can offer to solve those challenges.
2. Make sure you are calling a targeted list where you already know problems your list is facing in their business.The best way to find out problems is to educate yourself on the industry by subscribing to industry magazines, researching industry websites, visiting industry forums and asking questions about legislation, finding out common software programs used and developing a relationship with the vendors, and learning industry terminology.
3. During the cold call, ask questions to try and expose pain points.As you expose pain points, immediately talk about your service as a solution. Then, try to close an appointment so you can solve these pain points.
4. Prepare bullet points of exactly what you are going to say on the call.You’re making cold calls not “blind calls”. Be prepared with what questions to ask, what pain points to look for, and a few topics you can bring up that will show you are familiar with their industry.
5. If nobody answers, leave a short message.Don’t ever leave a message with everything you were going to say had someone picked up. This will eliminate any need for them to call you back. Instead just leave a brief message like:“Hey Mr. Customer it’s Ryan calling. Can you give me a call back? I have a question only you can answer. My number is 555-555-5555. Thank you.”
   
6. Always do your cold calling in-house. Never outsource.Outsource Companies will never care about your prospects as much as you do. Plus, you can never be sure as to how professional (or unprofessional) they will be. These calls are first impressions you are leaving with your prospects. Do you really want some random telemarketer who could care less about your business and doesn’t know anything about your prospects, calling them up? I know I don’t.
7. Your passion HAS to show through on the call.Don’t be a dud. Let your enthusiasm shine. Show the prospect how much you care about their business and how passionate you are about what you do. This will make the call easier for you and your appointment pitch more convincing.

AVOID THESE MISTAKES When Cold Calling:

1. Don’t give away all the details about your company or product during the first call.Many cold caller’s make the mistake of barfing everything about what they are selling as soon as someone says “hello?”. Instead, you want to call, establish a relationship by talking about the PROSPECTS business (not yours) and just try to get an appointment scheduled so you can meet face to face.
2. Discover the pain, get the appointment, but DON’T GIVE AWAY YOUR SOLUTIONS OVER THE PHONE!This is a huge mistake. You never want to offer specific solutions to your prospect’s problems, because if you do this, you will negate any need for your service. Instead just peak their interest, get the appointment and stop talking!

Give cold calling a serious try. It won’t cost you anything but your time and can bring you a lot of new business. If you’d like a complete cold-calling system handed to you on a silver platter, consider buying my Computer Repair Business In-A-Box. Cold calling is one of the many marketing systems I include in the package.

But don’t believe everything you hear! The truth is, poor economic conditions are the BEST time for small business owners and start-ups to get in on the game and leapfrog their competition! While huge corporations are stuck with mind-boggling overhead and klunky business models to manage, fresh start-ups use nimble business strategies and innovation to become the next big thing in their industry.

The same is true for the computer consulting industry. If you implement frugal operating practices and aggressively innovate, you can outgrow your competition and end up in a better position when times are good. My Computer Repair Business In-A-Box clients are experiencing tremendous growth right now during this recession.

The key is to ‘recession-proof’ your business. When it comes to computer consulting, there are 4 important steps to take to stabilize your income and build predictable wealth and market dominance.

Here Are 4 Steps You Can Put In Action Today:

1. Focus on accessibility. Successful companies are moving their focus away from making their products moresophisticated, and are instead focusing on adding more value and affordability. In a down economy, people are looking to either save money or get MORE for their money. It’s no coincidence that inexpensive netbooks are outselling their more expensive competitors. Study the graph to the right to learn more about 3 important movements that are going on right now in the computer consulting industry. Companies are adding more value to inexpensive products and reducing the price on their premium products. This is putting pressure on the middle market and squeezing them out of their market share.

So start thinking of ways you can add more value to your product while keeping your prices affordable to people with a tight income. You could bundle your services together, offer free upgrades, provide flat rate pricing (instead of hourly fees), etc. Making your computer consulting more affordable to low-income families will allow you to jump into an untapped market and dominate. Plus, if you build a loyal client following now with this low-income market, just imagine how profitable they will be when the economy picks up, they start making more money, and go to you for all their computer work!

2. Establish recurring income. The single fastest way to ‘recession-proof’ your computer consulting business is to capture reliable, recurring revenue streams to sure up your expenses and save you when business is slow. The easiest way to do this is to take your existing services and package them into proactive monthly maintenance plans. Managed services is a cash cow market, as is emerging cloud computing opportunities. Start looking into these markets and put together a monthly plan of your own that you could offer small businesses and home users in your area. Clients will contract to pay you monthly for unlimited support, scheduled backups and audits, and included upgrades. It’s a win-win because it guarantees you business (even if your client’s systems are healthy) and it gives your clients peace of mind that they never have to worry about their system going down or a catastrophe occurring that could have been prevented.

If you also provide web design (which some computer consultants do), web hosting and online email marketing software plans are a great way to establish recurring monthly income.

3. Go lean. To grow your business and build market share you have to be a lean, mean operating machine. That means cutting corners with expenses as much as you can. Make sure you are documenting EVERY PENNY you are spending on your business. You’ll find things like eating out, going over on your cell phone minutes, printing on paper when you could go digital, and wasting unnecessary electricity can all add up to a dollar amount that could ultimately break you. Imagine what you could do with an extra $400/month in advertising to get new clients. Do that every month for 2 years and you are talking about tens of thousands of dollars in extra business (not including the word-of-mouth these new clients will generate for you). Positive growth happens exponentially.

4. Learn to multiply by dividing. Most computer consultants are one-man-bands, but the fastest way to more money is to partner strategically. If you take a small slice of a much bigger pie you’ll make out in the end. It’s very easy to partner strategically with other companies when the economy is tight, because everyone is hungry for new money-making opportunities. Don’t be afraid to work together with someone locally. When you help others make money, you make money too!

The bottom line is…

Successful companies know that the best time to get ahead is to innovate when their competition is tightening their belts and closing their wallets. Now is the time to think creatively and act on it. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. You can get your company quickly off the ground and running with my Computer Repair Business In-A-Box.