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| IT Certifications: What Types of Support Do Your Clients Need? |
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Thursday, September 6, 2007
What Specific Tasks Will Your Clients Need Help With? These sweet spot clients are looking for help with popular desktop applications like Microsoft Office, Intuit QuickBooks, and Interact ACT! and help doing hardware upgrades. They need help setting up shared folder backup software and keeping their antivirus and firewall software up-to-date. These small businesses need help synching up their PDAs with ACT! and Microsoft Outlook. And they definitely need help with their networks. Micro Small Businesses Have Different Needs Micro small business space with fewer than 10 PCs, the peer-to-peer end, don't bother spending a lot of money on certification. In fact, IT certifications are often perceived as a negative-small business owners feel like they're paying for someone who's overqualified for the job. IT Certifications Are More Important to "Real" IT Managers When you start selling to a real IT manager, in a much larger small business (50+ systems) you'll find a more sophisticated IT buyer. At this point, IT certifications start to become extremely important. At this level, a "real" seasoned IT manager knows exactly what the different levels of IT certifications are. At this level, there's a very good chance the buyers you're selling to are certified and they'll typically look for deeply niched experts-as opposed to virtual IT generalists. An in-house IT manager often handles the generalist work in-house. So this kind of larger small business doesn't need a virtual IT department-they are looking for someone to fill in their own skill gaps. For example, if this client has a Microsoft Exchange Server installation, the IT manager may bring in a consulting firm skilled in doing forms development or hooking up a Java-based application to something that's based in a Microsoft Exchange Server Message Store. Or the IT manager may be looking for a Microsoft SQL Server developer or someone with strong Microsoft Visual Basic development skills. The Bottom Line about IT Certifications The sweet spot clients are a very different type of opportunity than where most small business computer consulting firms focus. At least at the outset, put most of your energy into the 10 to 50 PC space which is just big enough to need fairly sophisticated solutions, but not nearly large enough to justify putting a "real" highly-skilled IT person on payroll. Copyright Notice: Copyright MMI-MMVI, Computer Consulting 101. All Worldwide Rights Reserved. {Attention Publishers: Live hyperlink in author resource box required for copyright compliance} About The Author: Joshua Feinberg, co-founder of Computer Consulting 101, helps computer consulting business owners get more steady, high-paying clients. Learn how you can too. Sign-up now for your free access to field-tested, proven computer consulting secrets at Computer Consulting 101. Make Extra Money By Taking Paid Surveys Online So many households these days face a challenging economic dilemma. How can we generate some additional income yet still allow time for the kids and the general responsibilities of home management? In the days before the internet many found the solution to this with home mailing and assembly opportunities. Today, however, the net has brought us the unique part time job of taking paid surveys online. By taking paid surveys online you are providing customer experience information to companies seeking to improve their products and services. In exchange for your time you receive compensation and a chance to help your fellow consumers by guiding merchants with your input. The exploding popularity of taking paid surveys online has created an onslaught of interest in these types of opportunities. Because of this many prospective survey takers feel compelled to subscribe to a referral service to secure a relationship with the right survey company. It can get a little sticky here because most of the referral agencies that offer paid surveys online are fee based and typically there is no guarantee that one will secure any real employment once your subscription is paid. It helps to work with a service whose reputation has been thoroughly researched or has been recommended to you by a friend or other reliable source. Once connected with the right company you should start to receive legitimate survey work. You'll receive your assignments by email and you should expect to spend about fifteen minutes or so completing paid surveys online. Compensation varies and you'll receive your fee either by check or PayPal transfer. Obviously anyone seeking genuine scheduling flexibility and decent spare income would be hard pressed to find a better opportunity than taking paid surveys online. Perhaps the biggest challenge is finding the right company work with. After that, all you need is an internet connected computer and some enthusiastic consumer energy. Good luck finding a great part time job taking computer surveys online. My site provides listings of paid surveys companies database The Internet: The Perfect Business Tool Copyright © Robbie Fanucchi http://www.RJFanucchi.com If you own a current business, or wish to start a business, the internet serves as the perfect tool to increase customer traffic. Why? Consider this statistic. There are literally 10 million hosts and millions of domain names on the internet today.The good news is it is still growing. Internet traffic is expected to double annually for the next five years. Sixty percent of that traffic will be customers looking for product, the rest will be business users. Unbelievable, right? This translates into millions of customers at your disposal. No other business tool can provide such a massive customer base. Now is a great opportunity to get in on the Internet business craze. However, where do you start? If you are like me, this whole Internet thing can be a little intimidating, and there are thousands of so called gurus giving all sorts of advice. I tried lots of product claiming to make me an overnight success in Internet Marketing. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as overnight success, which I learned the hard way. I was fortunate enough to discover a tool that definitely pointed me in the right direction. The e-book, Dotcomology, is full of advice on how to get an Internet business up and running. Some people are paying over a $100 dollars to receive the same information that is contained in Dotcomology. Stone Evans, the author, has made Dotcomology free to the public. Stone is a successful home business entrepreneur who has decided to share his secrets to the world. Lucky for me, I discovered Dotcomology and it proved instrumental in navigating my way through the confusing realm of Internet marketing. Before reading Dotcomology, my only internet experience was limited to answering e-mails and web surfing. Weeks later I had my own money-making website. I learned how to promote it through autoresponders and google adwords. I learned how to get traffic to my website by submitting articles on the web and creating my own blog. I learned how to take advantage of solo e-zine advertising. The helpful content found in Stone's Dotcomology helped me to accomplish all this in little time. It took some work. There is no such thing as overnight success in any business. Internet businesses are no different. However, with a little determination it is well within anyone's reach. There is nothing that should hold you back from taking advantage of the Internet as the perfect business tool. There is simply no other way to have millions of potential customers at your disposal. Remember, Internet traffic is predicted to double annually for the next five years. Just think of the opportunities this opens. About the author: Robbie Fanucchi's website is dedicated to finding the best home business ideas and opportunities: http://www.RJFanucchi.com Learn the science of making money online: Free DOTCOMOLOGY e-book Follow 3 easy steps and I will build you a website that is 100 percent ready to take orders and start pulling in massive residual profits… |
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