Business questions

[Tractor]

Long post, sorry.

 

So back before the beginning of the year I posted that I was going out on my own instead of working for an employer. Its been about 6 months and I thought I would update you guys and ask for advice since CR is awesome.

 

I started an IT services company and so far I'm not doing to bad. I hit up all the freelance websites and here at Myrtle Beach since its primarily a tourist economy there are tons of things to do for a guy with my skills. The past two months I've nearly entirely replaced my old income when I worked full time. I've been doing IT handyman type of work ie, go here fix this, go here install this, etc and I'm working 10-15 hours per week including the drive time.

 

The problem with this is the pay per hour is great, but its very difficult to get multiple assignments per day due to the nature of field service so one must be careful. Another problem is I'm still working for multiple vendors and I'm not getting the jobs directly with the clients. This isn't a terrible thing, but it mean I'm only barely scratching the surface of the income potential.

 

I'm doing what I'm good at and what I love. I want to get my own clients and I'm completely lost when it comes to the sales/interacting with a buying client. I'm simply not a people person, I'm awkward, nervous, and pretty much an idiot when it comes to that stuff. I like to get presented with a technical problem and be left to solve it. I'd love to find a partner or person who wants to make some cash selling. I'm thinking of putting out a job ad since I see this type of thing posted occasionally anyway. CR's thoughts?

 

My next question is more of how to get general contractor type of work since some of what I do is things like structured cabling, installing camera's, wireless access points, etc. Is there some way to do that that I'm missing?

 

My wife is an expert in sales and people stuff. She doesn't have the technical skill to sharpen a pencil and this type of sales requires a bit of knowledge in things she puts into the realm of magic. Besides she works full time and I really shouldn't have to bother her with this beyond a referral here and there.

 

Thanks guys,

[Geeesammy]

Just keep trudging and find your niche. Not bad for being 6 months in IMO.

 

Rome wasn't built in a day

[cstmg8]

All I heard was, "replaced full time income with 10-15 hrs per week".......... What's the problem?? Lol

On a serious note, have you thought about talking to some local builders/contractors? Most don't have the tech know-how, or resources to install this stuff. You could probably pick up quite a few jobs for people that are updating anyway. It's who you know not what you know.

 

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk

[zeitgeist57]

Sounds like you're doing what you need to organically to grow the business as much as you can handle. Respect for you asking - 6 months in - how you can be working smarter, not harder, at growing your business.

 

Leverage your wife and others, don't be ashamed; you need to have other people be your advocate as much as possible for other jobs. If you're working for a company on one small job, but you know there's a lot of more work this company gives out, maybe ask your contact for higher-up opportunities they give out to other jobbers? Ask them if anyone isn't doing as good of a job as they hoped, and you can clean up the work? Existing clients can be the greatest referral source for new companies/business.

[Otis Nice]

Sign up for Cardone University. Grant Cardone knows his shit.

 

PS - you'll quickly learn you ARE a salesman. You've had to in order to get the business you already have.

 

If you want someone with more than a decades worth of experience and some insight hit me up. I'll more to MB, SC, and work WAY more hours than you so that YOUR business can grow. I'll work 20!

 

...but for real man, invest in YOU.

[10phone2]

I don't know much about your field so take it with a grain of salt(talking out of my ass). Contact local home manufacturers similar to M/I Homes or general office construction companies to see if your services are needed. I bet if you found a development that offered new homes and didn't have all the fancy everything is connected via the internet, you could put together an attractive security and web package.

[Tractor]

Thanks guys, some of this is very useful and then there's the go talk to people part. I really appreciate the comments. I've been working on getting to this point for over 20 years and I finally jumped in and tried it. So far it is growing.

 

Now I'll say I haven't talked to a single person, sold myself to anyone or sold anything at all. All I have done is simply build some great profiles on sites such as WorkMarket.com and I apply for assignments. It was pretty slow at first getting the first few companies to accept my offers, but now that I've built up over 100 assignments I get a lot of the jobs.

 

I have a company that I work with that handles all the Denny's, Applebees, etc in the area. I got to talk to the man in charge of 1099 contractors. I'm also to the point where I know just about everyone working in the dispatch call center.

[Tractor]

When I try to actually talk someone into using my services, I'm way to "nerd", awkward, etc and I really mean that. Its not something I can learn to do easily, but it doesn't mean I'm not going to keep trying. I was raised in a family of people with Asperger's syndrome, paranoia and other fun cluster A disorders and lots of antisocial behavior. Myself I am probably the one in my family that is the least effected and I do have high enough intelligence to know of my weaknesses and I feel very driven to grow.

 

Having said all that and for anyone who understands some of these built in hurdles, you'll know that going out and trying to talk to a person that you have never met and wow them into buying is very difficult and its not going to end well for either person. Its not an excuse this time. My wife has a good laugh at me all the time even in normal social situations like talking to a waitress because she points out my odd body language, facial expressions, tone of voice, and my very odd verbal responses. I've been working on it, but being comfortable isn't likely to happen.

 

I wish I could start every interaction with "I'm a little odd to talk with, but I'll get the job done better than anyone".

[Miller]

If you're that awkward just drop a card at every appointment. A card that points to you and your services, not the consulting firms you're serving. You dont need to speak a word of sales. People will call eventually.

[Tractor]

If you're that awkward just drop a card at every appointment. A card that points to you and your services, not the consulting firms you're serving. You dont need to speak a word of sales. People will call eventually.

 

There's non compete requirements that make this risky however I'm getting around it by keeping an eye on what the client has on site, and listening, then going back later to get my own relationship.

[Otis Nice]

 

Now I'll say I haven't talked to a single person, sold myself to anyone or sold anything at all.

 

Uhhh....

 

All I have done is simply build some great profiles on sites such as WorkMarket.com and I apply for assignments. It was pretty slow at first getting the first few companies to accept my offers, but now that I've built up over 100 assignments I get a lot of the jobs.

 

....yeah. That's sales bruh. You ARE selling. Your view of "sales" may be misconstrued. You can't be successful without selling yourself/your brand/your services.

 

I have a company that I work with that handles all the Denny's, Applebees, etc in the area. I got to talk to the man in charge of 1099 contractors. I'm also to the point where I know just about everyone working in the dispatch call center.

 

You had to sell yourself to that company. That's sales.

 

After reading your response I highly recommend my aforementioned suggestion.

[Tractor]

I understand what your saying, but any selling didn't happen the way your thinking. I will say I'm good at the marketing side, ie promotional material, thinking of ways to get in front of the clients, etc but I totally fail on the interaction part. I'm a little better on the phone, but not good.

 

With the restaurant company I didn't "talk" to the person I simply happened to be on the phone with them a couple times about issues at sites and they said they like how I'm working for them and that they'd give me more work. I totally didn't do anything to cause this beyond simply doing a good job for them. Even when I worked as an employee I was always told by bosses that they didn't like me at first, but totally glad they hired me because I am excellent at getting things done and doing what others aren't willing to do.

[Tractor]

Thanks for the responses guys. I know I have a long way to go and I won't give up. I'm still at the very bottom but I'm paying my bills and if I get this to where I have an employee or two I'll be where I'd like to be.

 

I've met my first major goals of getting the business making profit by doing the contract field service work and I like most of what I'm doing.

The next steps involve getting my own clients and getting residual income for things like PC, printer, and network infrastructure maintenance contracts. Once I've done this awhile and have built up the cash flow the company can expand vs paying my personal bills it should be

business as usual for the most part as I continue to build the company. I know this can work and I've proved it can work, but the sales part is something I've totally never been involved in on any level. It would be great to find someone who can help on that side and put my skills to work. I have a few people in mind that I'm going to talk to, but in the end it still might end up being my problem, and I'm gonna hit it hard.

[El Karacho1647545492]

Might be a little late to the party, but I do account management (95%) and sales (5%) for a formerly small (25 employees) now large (900+) regional MSP.

 

 

You represent our greatest competition; cheap, break/fix, on call labor that is good enough for most businesses needs.

 

 

I'd be happy to chat by phone and tell you a bit about my job and the client-facing side of things. I'm the one who hears all the complaints about service delivery, about response times, about costs, etc. I can shed a bit of light on what most clients are really interested in.

 

 

One initial piece of advice I'll give you is to verticalize quickly. It's very useful to become known as "the IT guy for _______" because peers in certain businesses will ALWAYS be looking for ways to reduce their IT costs. We work primarily with attorneys because our old CEO was a cop for 20 years and had a lot of relationships.

[Tractor]

I do a lot of work for large MSP's who get accounts in my area and don't have techs. One of the bigger problems for IT support is that it has out grown the lone "IT GUY" for a lot of the work. There's just to much now if your trying to support a complete office unless you can get clients to package everything in with you and buy hardware and software that you deploy to all your clients.

 

I'm really strong in troubleshooting, Windows, and MS servers and all the related MS systems within servers. I can handle networking below enterprise level, but I'm not an expert. Then there's the differences in how the gear works such as Cisco, Palo Alto, Sonicwall, HP, etc.

 

I hear the complaints too as the guy walking in the door. The large MSP's get hit for slow response times, oversea's tech support centers, and being generally annoying. Clients are always pretty happy to see a tech walk in the door though.

 

Perfect example yesterday, I swapped out a router in a bank, it crapped out there network and made intermittent disconnections system wide. Tech support had me checking wiring, power switches, etc totally unrelated to anything I touched and never mind the fact that all that stuff was working fine before the swap. I spend hours on the line with tech support constantly for this type of KISS stuff and its almost never the solution.

It isn't really I complaint though, I get paid huge for wasting everyone's time/money.

 

Might be a little late to the party, but I do account management (95%) and sales (5%) for a formerly small (25 employees) now large (900+) regional MSP.

 

 

You represent our greatest competition; cheap, break/fix, on call labor that is good enough for most businesses needs.

 

 

I'd be happy to chat by phone and tell you a bit about my job and the client-facing side of things. I'm the one who hears all the complaints about service delivery, about response times, about costs, etc. I can shed a bit of light on what most clients are really interested in.

 

 

One initial piece of advice I'll give you is to verticalize quickly. It's very useful to become known as "the IT guy for _______" because peers in certain businesses will ALWAYS be looking for ways to reduce their IT costs. We work primarily with attorneys because our old CEO was a cop for 20 years and had a lot of relationships.