Consulting thoughts

[Fred Claus]

My niche is smaller mom and pop businesses, so as such, they don't have a need for more than one or two licenses for most of the products. Since companies like Zoom require a 5 seat minimum for a partner to sell a client, I am out of luck on selling them. Typically I just tell the customer to go to Zoom.us to pick up a license there. Of course I do recommend Webex first since I can sell one license at a time for them. More and more vendors however have minimums leaving me out when it comes to selling them. That is when I had a thought.

My friend is a fee based financial advisor. He charges the client a fee, and then he recommends what would be best for them. It doesn't matter if my friend is a rep for that product or not, if it's best for the client he recommends it. This I think makes him more open to what the client needs instead of what makes him the biggest commission. What about doing that in the Tech world? Here's my thought.

For a flat fee, I would consult with a client and determine their needs. Then I would recommend the products they should look into and provide them with links to where they could go to buy them. After the purchase I would be there to help them provision the software should they need it and even answer questions about how to use it. The fee would be based on how much work they want me to be a part of.

Do you think this would work for my niche of customers?

 

[britechguy]

Well, what you describe has been a service I've offered, but at an hourly rate, and reduced compared to my tech support rate, since the day I opened. From my website:

Buying Research & Advice

• Unless you have very demanding computing needs it's unlikely you need or want a computer with every available bell and whistle
• I can help you to determine what you need based on how you intend to use your computer or other device

Obviously that would extend to "whatever else might be needed." I don't do this (or anything else) for flat fee because one never knows how often or much scope creep is going to rear its ugly head.

 

[Markverhyden]

I've done the same. Also at an hourly rate as @britechguy does. I will only do flat rates when the outcome is highly predictable. In both time and materials. Typically that's only for wiring work where the customer has paid for a site survey so I'm confident of the outcome. Well at least 95% since I don't have x-ray vision.

 

[callthatgirl]

I only offer by the hour help so here is what I do and this might work for you.
Clients want 365, I have 3 options. Buy direct, GoDaddy or my vendor. Each one has a purpose for me and for my clients.

The vendor pays me 10% on each sale quarterly.
GoDaddy and direct I bill $225 for an hour and these jobs usually are 2+ hours.

If I make $6 from one client in one year with my vendor, which can take 37 years to get up to $225.

Making my decision to take the money now, or let it all add up slowly in commission checks down the road.

I want all my clients to manage their own billing and accounts, so it's a per client decision I make.

 

[HCHTech]

The proposed action of charging hourly for recommendations doesn't address the problem you started with of vendors having 5-seat minimums, so I got a little lost on that one - haha. We charge hourly for everything we do, including setting up products on which we might earn a small commission. If you are NOT charging when you setup or configure products that later pay you a commission, then that is the thing that is easiest to fix, IMO.

Our rule is "5-minute phone conversations are free, everything else is billable." Sure, we have occasional exceptions, but by-and-large, that's the way we do it. In 18 years, i can count on one hand the number of folks who have challenged a bill, and I think they would have complained no matter what we did.

 

[nlinecomputers]

How is this a problem? If small business X needs only 3 licenses and the product they NEED only offers a minimum of 5, well it sucks to be them but that’s the cost of doing business. How does that stop you from selling it?

 

[HCHTech]

What he said - Citrix Sharefile (or whatever they are calling it) is one example. Minimum 5 seat purchase @ $50/mo. This is steep for the one-user customer that wants only to send/receive the occasional file securely, but peanuts if it's part of their business model. I don't love that they did this, but they didn't ask my opinion, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[britechguy]

This is steep for the one-user customer that wants only to send/receive the occasional file securely,

And it would be a poor choice for that kind of usage pattern, too. Tool to task. (And task is not just precisely what needs doing, but how often, as well as other "big picture" considerations.)

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Sometimes I use the phrase "Put on your consulting hat!" Yup, consulting is a great way to bring in money, projects, on retainer, whatever.

If you're not at the volume yet where you're selling licenses and starting to build MRR (monthly recurring revenue)....just keep plucking away at it.

Many years ago, my colleague and I started focusing on Microsoft volume licensing, such as for servers...never selling servers with OEM licenses (lots of other reasons for that too, D/R scenarios shine a light on). Started building our status with Microsoft. Fast forward to now, and adding our CSP services....each month we get juicy steady passive MRR.

Same with Untangle...our firewall vendor...nice RMM each month.

And our MSP services...level plans.

Gets pretty nice when >60% of your months goals are hit with passive MRR on the first week of each month.

Don't sell your consulting short either. Flat rates for fixing computers, basic stuff....that's your rate there. IMO consulting should be more, as that's where you're bringing in skills that you've groomed over the years in this trade. This is where you thinking cap can come in, designing projects, migrations, setting clients up in a sweet 365 based setup, etc.

This picture speaks volumes....

 

[britechguy]

This picture speaks volumes....

Indeed. And it also points out how poorly the fact that "knowing what to do" is one of the most precious business assets, in any business, that exists.

One thing that amazed me over my years of employment by others was how consistently American management kept devaluing what used to be called "institutional memory" about what has worked, didn't work, has been tried before, hasn't ever been tried, etc., at every level in an organization. The trend was consistently toward treating "asses in seats" as though they were entirely interchangeable if they had the basic skills for a given position description.

The willful blindness that treats human resources as cogs in a machine runs completely rampant now. Those who've never worked anywhere that the same administrative assistant has been in the position for 20 plus years, and where said person knows exactly who you need to reach out to and when, for virtually all of the folks he or she supports, have no idea of how invaluable such a person is and how much "value added" they bring. The same is true more generally with other positions, too.