Client Focus - Residential or Business

[Dave1320]

Hey Dave,
No problem, this seems relevant to me, hope the OP feels the same. I actually started this sometime last year at $99/year and felt that was to low, so just raised it to $149.95 and I feel it's a good price for the labor. We typically get customers to sign up when their machine comes in for a virus removal as we offer free virus removals when you are on the plan. Once I get the machine cleaned up and get GFI agent/MAV/Unchecky/CryptoPrevent on the machine I rarely have to touch the machines again. It's a win/win. I get recurring revenue and the clients have a computer that just works. The only thing I really have to do manually is approve patches, but that's basically an approval process that works as an approve for all machines at once. Sometimes patches fail, but I just remote to the machine and manually update whatever needs updated. I believe I have about 25 residential clients on this plan at the moment.

This definitely helped me. Thank you for sharing.

 

[gikstar]

Focusing on Residential or Business... guess that depends on whether you have a storefront or not.

We don't have a storefront and don't need one as we focus mainly on business clients and turning them into managed service clients.
We don't advertise, not even on Yelp, on which we keep a 5* rating. So, other than word of mouth, current clients and Yelp, we don't venture into trying to obtain residential clients.

More time is spent on residential clients than on business clients. We like knowing that there is a specific amount of income coming in each month. We also use all the best tools in the industry (as far as we're concerned) with Kaseya, Connectwise,etc.

There is a saying "surround yourself with successful people and you will be successful". Those successful people surround themselves with successful people and when those business clients are your happy managed service clients, you now have foot in the door for additional good managed service clients.

The best thing you can do is find a niche in an industry and go with it, and shoot for obtaining a high percentage of the businesses in that industry.

One industry that can be a money maker is servicing restaurants... those using a POS system. You have to be on-call to get and keep their business because if their POS system is down or if they can't take credit cards for some reason, they're losing $$$. And you wouldn't believe your profit margin if you sell them on upgrading their software (not talking about Microsoft software).
Bars can also be profitable because of the credit card situation, but they may want you to take your fees out in trade - drinks (not a good idea), although taking your fees out in trade with a high-end steak house has it's benefits (if you're not a vegetarian).

 

[PSG-Samuel]

Hello,

Thanks for sharing everyone. A lot of useful information in this thread.

Thanks
Sam

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

We've focused on SMB pretty much from the get-go....our biz is going on 13 years. Prior to that both my colleague and I worked at places that had learned supporting SMB and having MSP packages is where the money was at....I'm talking back in the Windows 95 and Server NT 4 days. Having business clients, specifically "fixed monthly" MSP clients....you get that steady recurring revenue...so each month you have incoming money you can count on.

Also, services and products are high end....hourly rates at 125 and 150/hr +, and big monthly recurring invoices for AV, disaster recovery, mail filtering, DNS management, etc. None of the budget residential stuff that has little profit.

 

[wardoursecure]

Since Nov 2014 my focus has been mainly SME with small being 2 -3 users upto a 50 user firm with a couple of servers etc. Very little residential but a couple of small jobs for existing repeat customers. In fact I ahve stopped advertising in a locally delivered magazine as there was nothing coming in from it.
Hit the ground running with business support and its growing.

 

[sapphirescales]

Residential. But you have to be very picky. I personally target those in the upper income bracket but that aren't so rich they just buy a new one. Small home based businesses are great money. They care more about how fast they can get the computer back than anything. I set my pricing to drive away all the cheapskates that are just looking for how cheap they can get the problem fixed for. I've got the perfect location. I'm located in an upper middle class neighborhood that borders on a poorer area (helps me get rid of cheap older computers I get traded in).

I'm also right next to several middle class neighborhoods and some lower middle class neighborhoods too. It's a great mix. I'd say the 50% of clients spend around $250 to $350. 20% spend less than $250 and the other 30% spend more than $350. Cheap f*ckers hardly ever get their systems fixed. They usually just buy a refurbished unit for $150 - $200 or so and give me their old one. In their minds, it's cheaper than Walmart. The majority of my income comes from upper middle class individuals that want their computers fixed ASAP.

 

[gikstar]

We focus on SMB Managed Service Clients... if it wasn't for the business referrals we get from doing the one-off clients that find us on Yelp, we would just tell them we're too busy for residential customers. Our largest business client has 40 employees and our clients are mostly Dental Offices. We don't have a storefront to deal with so we don't have walk-ins taking up our time.
We love having a steady stream of income and we feel that we are using the best tools there are to service those clients (Connectwise, etc).