We Only Sell the Perfect Combo

We Only Sell the Perfect Combo - Lessons Learned, Episode 38

When I first started working with small businesses, I fell into the trap most of us fall into: I bought and sold whatever worked to get the job done, even though I had very high standards. In other words, I knew that many brands names were superior to copies, but I often sold alternatives to save money for myself and my client.

There's an old saying, "The most expensive equipment is the cheapest to buy." I quickly learned what not to buy. Cheap fans made noise and needed to be replaced - which gobbled up all the profit from selling the fan in the first place. The same is true with cheap hard drives, cheap network switches, and everything else.

Then one day a client (who would become one of my favorite clients for the next fifteen years) said some magical words to me:

"It's not your job to save my money."

He told me to quote him the right thing. Not the most expensive. Not the most over-rated. Not the most profitable for me. The right thing. He explained that if the price exceeded what he thought it should be, or what he was willing to pay, he would ask for alternatives. And if he bought what I recommended, he would know that he bought the right thing for his business.

This is such an important concept. What's right for setting up a network with 150 users is not the same as a network for five employees. "The right" switch will be very different for these clients. And the right server, and the right printers, etc.

Lesson Learned: I always asked myself, "How would I justify that this is the right thing to sell?" The answer is always a combination of price, quality, reliability, warranty, and ease of maintenance (including cost of maintenance).

Having a justification to myself made it very easy for me to go to market with the right quotes, knowing that I was acting in the client's best interest. Luckily, in IT, there tends to be decent margin in the right thing.

When speaking, I sometimes ask people to imaging the perfect network: 

• All the hardware is business class equipment
• All the software is the latest version, fully patched
• Everything has either under a warranty or a maintenance contract
• Everything is maintained on a regular basis, so all the patches, fixes, and updates have been applied. Of course that includes security updates.

Now think about what that means. Nothing is more than three years old. Everything is completely patched and up to date. And nothing breaks. Nothing breaks.

Nothing breaks.

This is truly the promised land of managed IT services. It requires that clients invest in their own networks, and their company's well-being. It requires that we do our job and keep everything patched and up to date. And, in that perfect world, we have a contract for regular maintenance. Note that it also requires that the IT consultant believes in this beautiful vision.

By 2002, that's what I had built with my first IT company, KPEnterprises. All the pieces were in place to figure out how to create that maintenance with a flat monthly fee. But we weren't there yet.

We pushed this perfect model very heavily. We found that it had additional benefits. First, we attracted clients who truly valued their investment in technology. And that means we had fewer and fewer clients who constantly wanted to save money.

Second, we became more profitable. When we're being paid to provide maintenance, we're plenty busy keeping everything up to date. So it's okay that we're not always called out to fix stuff that broke because it was either cheap or unpatched.

Third, there was very little stress inside our company, even as we grew the business. Few or no emergencies means that people are not stressed out, they're not yelling at their employees or mine, and our company runs as smoothly as our clients' networks.

I firmly believe any IT company can do this, whether break/fix or managed services. You have to be committed to principle that there is a "right" thing for each job, each client, each project. You also have to be extremely committed to executing the patch management (and testing backups).

One additional supporting element makes all of this possible: Regular meetings with your clients so you understand when they want and what their company is going through, and they understand your philosophy about system maintenance. And, of course, this means you get to know each other as human beings, and that goes a long ways. 

I call these "client roadmap" meetings and we'll return to them in a future installment.

All comments welcome.

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Episode 38

This Episode is part of the ongoing Lessons Learned series. For all the information, and an index of Lessons Learned episodes, go to the Lessons Learned Page. 

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