By: Joshua Feinberg
IT consulting services are
offered at different levels and types in almost all the virtual IT businesses you encounter.
Deciding which IT consulting services you should offer is a key consideration when starting your
business.
The IT consulting services you
choose to offer should be driven by three main factors:
What your prospects want
What’s out there in the
marketplace
What your competitors are
offering
IT Consulting Services Your
Prospects Want
Who better than the people who
will use your services to tell you what IT consulting services they want? Start talking to people
that you identify as fitting your sweet spot profile. Ask them questions about their current
computer situation:
What do they use their
computers for?
What’s working well?
What’s not working?
What could they use some help
with?
That’s how you're going to
figure out what they really need and what types of IT consulting services you should be
offering.
IT Consulting Services in the
Marketplace
Another way to figure out what
kind of products and IT consulting services to offer is to read two key trade publications for
small business computer consultants:
Computer Reseller News (CRN)
VAR Business
These two publications will
keep you up to date with just about everything that you need to know about what’s hot in terms of
products and services. Let these publications be your filtering device. Because their focus is on
the business of IT, they will identify the products that are cool and that also have great
potential for you to build value-added IT consulting services into your virtual IT business.
IT Consulting Services
Competitors are Offering
The final way to figure out
what products and IT consulting services to offer is to conduct competitive intelligence.
Basically, you spy on your local market.
Visit web sites
Look at your Chamber of
Commerce Web sites
Visit links for anyone
providing similar kinds of services
Google any type of IT
consulting services for your city, county, province, state, zip code, postal code, area code,
etc...
Once you know the IT consulting
services that competitors are offering, analyze those services to decide the types of IT consulting
services you want to offer, ones you don't want to offer, and ways to improve upon what is
currently offered.
Bottom Line on IT Consulting
Services
Figuring out which IT
consulting services to offer can be daunting. Looking at what competitors offer and what is
available in the marketplace should lead you in the right direction. The best way to decide which
IT consulting services to offer though, is to ask your prospects directly. This way you know you
have a market for whatever you decide to offer.
Article source: http://www.smallbiztechtalk.com/blog/
