5 Profit-Generating Tactics for IT Consultants

Profit-generating tactics Solutions Brief5 profit-generatingtactics for ITconsultantsLearn simple tactics toboost profits for your ITconsultancy businessgotoassist.com

Profit-generating tactics Solutions Brief 2Today, there are more apps, more devices and more distributed clients forIT consultants to support than ever before. But the eternal business strugglecontinues: how to cut costs while gaining new clients and providing superiorsupport to existing clients. The role of the IT consultant is expanding, and not onlymust IT consultants look to new integrated technology tools, but they must amp uptheir business practices.This brief covers 5 simple profit-generating tactics for IT consultants. If applied tobusiness, IT consultants can expect big returns, says TechRepublic. Learn howyou can improve your bottom line with such tactics as targeted marketing, timemanagement and solid accounting skills.Tactic 1. Market your business effectivelyThe easiest way to promote your business is by word of mouth. But in today’smarket, that isn’t enough. The best way for a full-time consultant to market theirbusiness is to attend business conferences and meetings to meet potentialclients. It’s also a good idea to set up a booth at local business expos and handout business cards with social and email contact information. You can even do agiveaway, such as 5 free hours of consulting services. Have everyone fill out a formand drop it in a box. If you get 50 responses, you have 50 potential customers youcan call to drum up business.The importance of business-oriented social media in all of this cannot beoverestimated. More importantly, it isn’t enough to simply have a Facebookpage or send out the occasional tweet. Rather, your presence in social media,like LinkedIn, needs to be personal, authentic, and conversational. Engaging anaudience of potential clients is an art rather than a science, but it is one that takestime and practice. Join LinkedIn groups for networking, or follow businesses that Quickcould potentially use your services. billable tip A calendar year has 2,000 billable hours,Tactic 2. Deal professionally with the billing process based on a 40-hour week and an eight-hourMost consultants dread dealing with billing paperwork; however, it must be billable day. This alsohandled diligently and professionally. Every hour you work, you must get a signed takes into considerationstatement from the clients verifying that you billed those hours and then, once a a two-week vacation. So if you bill $30 anmonth, send invoices to your clients requesting payment. By doing this up front, hour for 2,000 hours, inyou will be sure that you get paid, and you can also cut off any client who has a a year you would makeproblem with your work before you roll up a big invoice. It’s unfortunate, but a lot of $60K gross income.clients have no problem trying to put off paying you if they think they can get awaywith it. By establishing your professionalism at the outset and by billing monthly orweekly, your client will know that you mean business and that your work has value.All of this needs to be backed up with a clear contract, agreed upon and signedat the outset of any project. Scope of work, precise deliverables, and realistictimelines all need to be completely understood by both you and the client.gotoassist.com

Profit-generating tactics Solutions Brief 3Tactic 3. Be realistic about your cash flowYou have to know how much cash you need to keep your business going. Mostbusinesses fail because they don’t have enough cash to fund daily operations.Some business experts say you need at least three months of funds to get abusiness going; others say you need six months of cash in the bank. Everyone’ssituation varies, but it generally makes sense for new consultants to start whilethey still have a full-time job. That way, they won’t have the cash flow pressuresthey’d have if they went out on their own immediately. After you get a feel for whatyou can make, you can decide how much cash you need in the bank before youbreak out on your own.Tactic 4. Set up a routine to help avoid pitfallsAs you may know, consulting can be a lucrative business; however, it does have itspitfalls. The best way to avoid them is to set aside time weekly to review what youhave planned for the next week:• Are there any problems that I need to address with my current clients?• Do I need to make any marketing meetings or calls this week?• Are there any critical lunch meetings I need for the following week?• How is my cash flow looking for this week and for the next four weeks?• What deliverables do I need to make for the next week?Tactic 5. Solicit feedback from your clientsEven though you’ve completed a project, your work isn’t quite done. Follow up with Citrix remains the market share leader . . .clients to ensure that they’re satisfied with the job you did. Asking for feedback by focusing on simple-also demonstrates that you value their business. You might want to ask them to to-use solutions andcomplete an evaluation form, so that you can learn how they perceive your work introducing innovative services that deliver onand what areas you might need to improve upon. You can repurpose these quotes customer needs.into your marketing collateral. IDCThe complete IT consultant toolsetGoToAssist continues to simplify IT support by providing easy, affordable accessto an essential toolset – service desk management, remote support and ITmonitoring – all from one easy-to use interface. Combining critical tools enablesIT departments to be more efficient and effective and save costs. CustomizeGoToAssist to fit your unique business needs — choose one module, two orall three.1. With GoToAssist Service Desk, you can quickly log and track incidents, deliver end-user self-service and manage configuration, changes and releases.2. With GoToAssist Remote Support, you can deliver on-demand support and access unattended servers and workstations.3. And use GoToAssist Monitoring to proactively monitor your entire IT infrastructure, including critical servers and services.gotoassist.com

Profit-generating tactics Solutions Brief 4 Key benefits of integrated IT tools • Reduce IT firefighting, free up time and lower IT support costs. • Gain total visibility into the entire IT support services to accelerate issue resolution. • No more juggling multiple tools and duplicating data entries. • Deliver multiple critical IT support services from one user-interface. • Streamline support workload among team members • Remove the complexity and time in implementing ITIL and ITSM best practices. • Create a beautiful, easy self-service portal – end users can submit and track support requests and view knowledge-base articles. Learn more about delivering multiple IT services from one integrated cloud-based toolset — visit www.gotoassist.com. Resources for achieving business agility For more white papers, case studies and on-demand webinars, visit news.citrixonline.com/resources. For best practices, company announcements and research about modern work styles, please visit the GoTo Blog at blog.citrixonline.com. North America Europe, Middle East & Africa Asia Pacific Citrix Online, LLC Citrix Online, UK Ltd Citrix Online, AUS Pty Ltd 7414 Hollister Avenue Chalfont Park House Level 3, 1 Julius Avenue Goleta, CA 93117 Chalfont Park, Gerrards Cross Riverside Corporate Park U.S.A. Bucks SL9 0DZ North Ryde NSW 2113 T +1 805 690 6400 United Kingdom Australia info@citrixonline.com T +44 (0) 800 011 2120 T +61 2 8870 0870 europe@citrixonline.com asiapac@citrixonline.com About Citrix Citrix is transforming how people, businesses and IT work and collaborate in the cloud era. Its portfolio of GoTo cloud services enable people to work from anywhere with anyone by providing simple-to-use cloud-based collaboration, remote access and IT support solutions for every type of business. Learn more at www.citrix.com and www.citrixonline.com. © 2012 Citrix Online, LLC. All rights reserved. Citrix, GoToAssist, GoToMeeting, GoToMyPC, GoToTraining, GoToWebinar, Podio and ShareFile are trademarks of Citrix Systems, Inc., or a subsidiary thereof, and are or may be registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.1.15.13/B-87581/PDF gotoassist.com

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5 Profit-Generating Tactics for IT Consultants

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