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Consulting rates vary from business to business. Some people start up their own computer consulting business right out of school. Others have worked in the industry for many years before deciding to head out on their own. The reality is, not all computer consulting businesses are alike and not all consulting rates are alike either - their owners have different skills sets and experience levels.

Some owners of computer consulting businesses have bachelors degrees, some don’t. Some have years of experience, other’s don’t. Some are in their 20’s, some are in their 60’s. Given this disparity, the question that begs to be answered is, “How do I know if customers will pay premium consulting rates for my services?

Qualifications, Experience and Consulting Rates

The simple answer to the question is this: If you have decent people skills and decent technical skills, if you can do the job and be an asset as an IT person for a sweet spot small business, then your age, experience, or education should not hold you back from charging consulting rates at the top of the market.

The flip side of this is also true. If you are starting your business in your 50s or 60s and doing this as a second job or as a change in careers, don’t let that hold you back from setting premium consulting rates. Your age, experience, and whether you have a degree should have absolutely nothing to do with it - your competency is the most important factor.

The Bottom Line on Consulting Rates

The core issue with setting your consulting rate is whether your computer consulting business provides value to the client. Do you provide something that they can’t do themselves? Do you help them to be more productive? Do you help them get more done in a week? Do you help them cut expenses? If your answers are “yes” then you have every right to be charging premium consulting rates for the services you provide.

With the focus on the environment, a hot new career opportunity awaits those with expertise in energy efficiency or environmental topics. Being environmentally friendly is a trend among big business right now. Not only does it make a company look better in their marketing efforts, but it saves them money too. This emphasis on being “green” means that career opportunities for environmental and energy consultants will continue to explode over the next decade or so.

Energy consultants provide expertise and advise companies how to cut costs by becoming more energy efficient. As an energy consultant, you may analyze your clients’ utility bills to track patterns in energy usage. You may also help them devise the most energy efficient means by which to run their factory, heat their office buildings, or run their equipment.

Environmental consulting is a broader area. Environmental consultants may deal with energy consumption, but can also advise businesses on areas where they can cut back on consumption, reduce waste and shrink their overall environmental footprint. Environmental consultants could be specialists in a number of different areas, including waste reduction, natural resource management, wildlife preservation, water pollution, and air or land contamination.

To become an energy and environmental consultant, you should have a degree in engineering or geology. An advanced degree in engineering, geology, or business would put you ahead of your competition at the start. You should also have the ability to communicate with upper level executives and decision makers comfortably, because these are the people you will be dealing with on a day-to-day basis.

To be successful as a consultant, education alone won’t be enough. You’ll need real-world, hands-on experience and a track record that proves you know your stuff. So if you’re aspiring to be the next big environmental consultant for big business, you’ll need to gain some experience working for someone else before breaking out on your own.

If you’re an expert in any area relating to environmental concerns or energy management, and you already have several years experience and a proven track record of improving processes, reducing waste, and saving money, you’re in a great position to start your own consulting business. If your experience lies in a specific area, you may have an added advantage over your competition because you’ll be considered a specialist.

Consider the following things when deciding whether a career in energy or environmental consulting is right for you:
• Are you an adept researcher?
• Do you have relationships with potential clients?
• Are you comfortable both in the field and in a business suit, giving a presentation to a group of senior level executives?
• Are you a problem solver?
• Are you able to take complex information and break it down into easily understandable terminology for laypeople?
• Are you a skilled communicator?
• Do you have specialized knowledge in the energy and/or environmental industries that could help businesses improve their processes, save money, and reduce waste?
• Are you comfortable networking, building up a list of contacts and marketing your own services to organizations?
• Do you constantly stay abreast of new developments in your field?

If you’ve answered yes to most of the above questions, you’re probably very well-suited to independent consulting. Take advantage of your expertise, and start owning your own talent. You’re ready to embark on the hottest new career path in independent consulting!

A tremendous number of people are able to earn sizable supplemental income by having a moonlighting computer consulting business. But even more importantly, by moonlighting, you can figure out if you enjoy computer consulting before you take the plunge into building a full-time computer consulting business.

Learn True Billable Hours

Moonlighting as a computer consultant will also give you an appreciation of true billable hours. What does this mean? For example, let’s say you spend 10 hours working, but you may only be able to bill for 4. Or you spend 10 hours and can only bill 6 or 7 of these 10 hours. That’s the reality. You can read about it until the cows come home. But unless you experience it firsthand, you will not get the full picture.

What Constitutes Non-Billable Hours?

What takes up those non-billable hours? The other responsibilities of running a business. These include:

· Marketing

· Business Development

· Paperwork

· Organization

· Billing and Collections

· Accounting

Until you experience owning a computer consulting business firsthand, it’s very difficult for you to know whether you’re really going to enjoy it, and whether you’re really cut out for small business computer consulting.

The Benefits to Moonlighting

But the number one benefit of moonlighting while you still have a day job is there’s no pressure on you. If you don’t like computer consulting, oh well, no big deal. But the moonlighting experience gives you a great way to put your toe in the water without making a huge commitment. Plus, you don’t have to bet your family’s financial well-being on the whole thing.

Telemarketing still possesses the punch it did before the FCC’s do-not call registry, according to Texas marketing agencies. As a matter of fact, those same Texas marketing consulting firms will gladly tell you that telemarketing can produce double digit conversion rates as opposed to the single digit rates provided by direct response and other forms of marketing you may employ.

However, to see those kinds of incredible success rates, you must know how to use telemarketing correctly. Austin Texas marketing agencies teach businesses like yours that when employed the right way, telemarketing will boost customer loyalty, generate leads, and increase sales.

The FCC’s do-not call registry frightens most businesses away from telemarketing. For those is doesn’t scare away, it becomes the first obstacle that must be overcome before starting a telemarketing campaign. Texas marketing agencies, Austin consulting firms, and business involved in telemarketing pay to consult the FCC’s do-not call registry. They must consult the registry and scrub their databases clean of do-not call numbers every three months to insure they do not call any consumer listed.

However, using qualified leads gives you one way to avoid consulting the FCC’s do-not call registry of not-interested-no-matter-what Texas consumers. Qualified leads refer to consumers who show interest in the product you sell and consent to a phone call from your company or representative.

Trade shows, direct response mailings, and websites generate qualified leads for you. Austin Texas marketing agencies use practices such as free giveaways, free information, and give free consulting services to generate these leads.

Once you finish consulting the FCC on who can’t be called and compile a legal list of qualified consumers to contact, you want to create a script that sells. Austin Texas marketing consultants and any marketing agency use scripts that determines the length of each call, delivers a consistent message in every call made, and gives the salesperson the tools to deal with any situation or question that arises while in the call.

A precise script that is to the point, overcomes all objections, listens to the prospect, and responds with confidence becomes the script that sells the double digit percentage conversion rates discussed earlier.

Austin Texas marketing consulting agencies emphasize the importance of well-trained telemarketers who possess the skill and motivation to sell. Companies that employ commission-based telemarketers achieve a higher conversion rate than those that pay hourly no matter how may sales the telemarketer makes, if any.

If a telemarketer only receives pay if they sell, they’re going to care if the consumer on the other line buys. They maintain a vested interest. Consulting with an Austin Texas marketing agency or consultant to properly train and motivate your telemarketers gives you the weaponry for sales success.

Naturally, the best form of telemarketing comes from qualified leads gained through other marketing strategies. Consulting with an Austin Texas marketing agency or consultant can help you start a complete marketing strategy using direct response marketing, trade shows, and advertisements that will lead you into a successful telemarketing program and increased sales.

Organizing an educational event such as a seminar or conference is a great way to get out of the office and network with prospective clients and promote your small business within your community. However, a traditional event marketing format presents some challenges to small business owners, including the costs of putting on an event, creating buzz (”Not another breakfast speaker series”), being able to offer attendees value, etc. So how can your small business take advantage of the benefits of educational event marketing while minimizing some of the risks and pressures associated with putting on a successful seminar or conference?

Two of the main challenges associated with event marketing include presenting an interesting topic/speaker and creating a format that holds the attention of attendees. To attract prospects to an educational seminar or conference and, more importantly, to make the experience memorable, your small business will need to present a format that offers the following:

* Variety - different presenters (with different styles) make the seminar experience more interesting and adds value
* Engagement - having attendees become part of the process is a great way to create a memorable experience
* Value - What’s in it for your prospects? Will it be worth their time? Will they be able to learn something that can help them solve a problem?

A New Seminar Format

Instead of following a standard seminar blueprint i.e. one speaker talking “to” the audience, try mixing it up to create excitement and a lasting impression. Paul McMahon, a friend and colleague, introduced me to an excellent event marketing concept that could work for any small business. His one-day “roadshow” format blends an educational seminar with a mini trade show, creating a informative and engaging event for attendees.

To illustrate how this new format might look in practice, I did some research and mocked up a 1/2 day event itinerary that could be used for my small business, Intersection Consulting:

* 8:30am - Complimentary Continental Breakfast
* 9:00am - How to use online marketing to grow your small business (Mark Smiciklas, Small Business Marketing Consultant)
* 9:30am - What is search engine optimization and how does it work? (Jordan Smith, Web Developer and Designer)
* 10:00am - Employee benefit options for small business (Rachel Jones, Small Business Benefits Consultant)
* 10:30am - Coffee Break
* 10:45am - Ask the Expert (Our presenters will be available to help address some of your small business challenges - feel free to drop by their table to ask questions or find out more about their services)
* 11:30am - Closing Remarks

Enlisting 2 strategic partners (offering services/products that compliment your target market) will help you minimize costs while facilitating diversity of content. By investing your time and providing a computer/projector for event presentations, the approximate marketing cost, based on 30 attendees, would be less than $300.00 per company. I know my target market would pay $30.00 each to attend this type of educational event, would yours?

Setting consulting fees and hourly rates for a new consultant can be a challenging process. If you set the hourly rate too high, you won’t get business, set the hourly rate to low and you’ll not make money.

There are several factors that determine the correct hourly rate for flat consulting fee. The most important is quite simply, how much do you need? There is a formula for setting this rate and you’ll be surprised how closely the result parallels what others charge.

X = hourly consulting rate

To find X

X=y+H+M+P+F

How do we find X?

First we need to define a few constants. We’ll start with our base rate which is Y.

A= is the salary you desire
B= the number of hours you can realistically bill in one year.

To define the base rate (Y) A/B
So for example if you desire a salary of $80,000 per year and you can bill 1500 hours as an IT consultant you are left e rate of $53 per hour. This is not your base rate, you still have one more calculation.

Next we have to add in the self employment tax. This is the tax for Social Security and Medicare for a self employed or small business owner. This rate is 15.3% Add this to the $53 (53 * .153)

Now we have a base hourly rate (Y) of $61.

At this point many independent consultants set their rate and hang up the shingle. This is why many of them are out of business within a year or two. You must consider all of the other things you’ll need that your employer paid on your behalf, and money to grow your business.

H = Health insurance costs

The first and most costly is health insurance. If you have a family of four you can count on at least $500 per month. Health insurance for self employed can be very expensive. Check with several brokers do get the best price and then divide the total yearly cost by the number of hours you will bill. Taking a rate of $500 per month, or $6,000 per year, at 1500 hours your rate will need to increase by $4 per hour to cover health insurance.

M= Marketing and sales costs

For an independent consultant your business is only as strong as your next engagement. We recommend a minimum of 5% of your first year estimated sales to keep the pump primed. $2.6 would be our hourly rate at this salary.

P= Professional fees.

This is the cost for your accountant, attorney fees, answering service, and any other monthly or quarterly fees you’ll need to pay throughout the course of the year. We’ll use a figure of $2400 for this example, so P= $1.6 ($2400/1500 hours)

F=Fudge factor.

The fudge factor is the small things that are going to come up from time to time. Stamps to mail out invoices, a one time cost for your accounting software (QuickBooks, or Microsoft money) and the dozens of other items that pop up from time to time. As your business grows the F factor will have other expenses like rent, and overhead for non-billing employees, extracted and divided by the number of employees and the number of hours worked. For now just use your best guess. If you need starting point $200 per month is not unreasonable. F=$1.6

In this article, we’ll explore the two schools of thought on whether computer consulting firms should resell products.

Pure Computer Consulting Firms Defined

Some consulting firms want to be pure consulting firms. They believe that they are never going to make a penny off product margin and that there are potential conflicts when reselling products. So these kinds of consulting firms don’t choose to resell hardware, software, or peripherals. As consultants, these companies will help clients decide exactly what to buy, what the specs should be, and show them where they can buy the recommended products.

Purchasing Agents Are Almost Pure

A variation on this scenario includes becoming the purchasing agent for clients. In this case, your firm does the purchasing for clients and your firm bills clients for a couple of hours for that function. Your firm gets and reviews quotes, places orders, tracks orders, and carries the purchase through to completion. Both of these (the referral role and purchase agent role) are more of a pure consulting model.

Hybrid Consulting Firms Are another Option

With a hybrid-consulting model, your consulting business resells some products. A lot of computer resellers do what’s known as white box PC reselling; selling what’s known as PC clones. A computer reseller offering white box systems is typically selling non-branded desktops, non-branded servers and in some very limited cases, non-branded notebooks (called white books).

To Resell or Not to Resell in Consulting Firms?

The strategic decision of whether to resell or not depends on where you want to be spending the bulk of your time. Do you want your firm to try to pick up some incremental profit off of product sales? Or do you want most of your consulting firm’s income to come from pure consulting dollars? Regardless, if you really want to be in a strong sales position for your consulting business, you really should not be leading off with a product sale.

Are Products Sales a Good “Foot in the Door?”

Now many new computer consulting business owners wonder: Should you sell inexpensive PCs, cheap software and cheap peripherals to get a foot in the door to sell the consulting services? The answer in most cases is no.

Why not? Because then, all of a sudden you’ve shown customers that you want to be their commodity broker. Will customers hire their commodity broker for consulting? Not likely. They’ve got your firm pegged as the cheap, low-cost source.

If you want to resell products, resell products to people that you have consulting relationships with. And make sure your consulting firm makes an ample profit margin for the time, capital, space, staff and overhead that you must devote to reselling products.

A big question when starting out is comparable to the chicken and the egg dilemma. Do you get computer consulting training first and then look for clients? Or do you look for clients and then get the relevant training. In this article, you’ll learn why it’s best to do them both at the same time.

How About Both?

When guiding owners of new computer consulting firms, my general preference is to do both client recruitment and skills development at the same time. You shouldn’t take six months off to do computer consulting training because six months later, how are you going to pay the bills? You need paying clients to survive and thrive in the computer consulting business.

On the other hand, if you let six months to a year go by and you’re not keeping your technical skills sharp, at some point you’re not going to be able to take on the high-end projects anymore. You’re not going to bid with confidence on certain kinds of small business accounts.

The Ideal Scenario

Here’s the way most small business IT consulting firms and most computer resellers generally balance this perpetual challenge of computer consulting training versus obtaining clients. Some spend a couple of days a month or a couple of weeks a year going to formal classroom training.

In addition, most consulting firms have “lab systems” (for testing and computer consulting training) in their offices so these firms can work with basic, entry-level server hardware. These lab systems can be used to do informal, self-guided computer consulting training on a continual basis.

Consider a Program

You can belong to many different programs that allow you to get you copies of software for your own internal use and training. If your firm is a Microsoft Certified Partner  http://members.microsoft.com/partner/), your company gets a certain amount of software for your internal use. Lots of vendor partners do the exact same thing as part of their annual program membership fee.

This evaluation software is a great way to keep your technical skills sharp. Because you’re running the programs internally, you and your staff are getting very proficient on the software before you go out and set it up in the field.

Have you ever wanted to become a computer consultant, but you weren’t sure if you could cut it? Do you have a basic understanding of computer-systems, strong problem-solving skills, and a desire to help other people? If so, then you already possess the main abilities and traits that you need to become a computer consultant.

In this article, we’ll look at the business opportunities for computer consultants, the reasons why there will almost always be a strong need for good computer consultants, and what it takes for you to achieve success if you want to become a computer consultant.

Become a Computer Consultant and Your Income Can Soar

In a traditional corporate IT job, your earnings potential and career advancement possibilities are ultimately constrained by many things that are simply beyond your control. This often includes lazy or incompetent peers, ineffective management, or a seniority system that rewards obsolete employees and punishes newer, more aggressive go-getters.

When you become a computer consultant, these annoyances are largely a moot point. If you don’t like your “peers”, go find better partners and subcontractors to associate with.

If one of your “bosses” (i.e. a major client) is losing respect and running their company into the ground, you can go look for a new client to replace the problem client.

And forget about ever being unappreciated. No client is going to pay you or your consulting firm $100 an hour (or more) for your services if they don’t value your expertise! And even though your clients generally won’t clap for you, your bank account will.

So in sharp contrast to a traditional computer-related job, when you become a computer consultant your income potential can soar, because YOU are in control of YOUR future.

Business Opportunities for Computer Consultants

The market for those that want to become a computer consultant is diverse and still growing.

Because virtually every company and organization needs some kind of IT-help, whether it be from internal employees, outsourced computer consultants, or some combination of the two, the choice to become a computer consultant can put you on track for a winning career and a very successful, highly-profitable services business.

Now you may be thinking, “why would I want to become a computer consultant”, when there are already so many people doing it? And that’s a perfectly natural question.

However, competition is actually a good thing for computer consultants. Because if there were no other computer consultants out there in profitable businesses, you’d have to wonder whether the computer consultant industry was viable and profitable.

Think about it… would you really want to be in an industry where no one else has ever been able to have a profitable, sustainable business?

The fact is that many computer consultant businesses are horribly run and have huge customer satisfaction problems. Those problems are your opportunity though. As long as you can provide a cost-effective solution to what small businesses need, your computer consultant business can be very successful.

Also remember that as technology changes, even more opportunities are created. Could a computer consultant make a living 10 years ago by blocking SPAM or cleaning up spyware? Of course not. These problems were miniscule compared to today’s epidemics. Today these are mainstream problems that plague virtually every small company and scream out for the need for more computer consultants.

What other industry do you know that is continually creating more potential clients?

Skills You Need to Become a Computer Consultant

As you begin to investigate further into how to become a computer consultant, start by listing your own computer-related current skills. Are you the person all your friends and family consult when they have a computer problem? Are you the one everyone turns to in your office for help on computer problems?

Most likely, you already have many marketable skills you will need to become a computer consultant.

Don’t think you have to be an expert in every portion and every detail of all aspects of using and repairing a computer. That is not true.

With the scope and diversification of the industry, it would be impossible to become that knowledgeable. By finding qualified computer consultants to partner with and subcontract work to, your computer consultant business can easily plug most common skills gaps that you may encounter in the field.

Many of my Non-immigrant readers are getting excited to start their own business. Here are some questions I get asked.

I am currently on pending adjustment of status and have a work permit. Can I start my business? What are the requirements? Can I start a business in my home country? Can my relative in my home country become my business partner? I want to start my business, but I don’t know where to start.

I can relate to my reader’s feelings, as many of my clients have been there. First, I wish I had answer to all these questions, but I do not. However from my experience I can say that following step by step method has worked for my clients in establishing their business. It can be very challenging to make a decision with a mind confused with too many questions.

Here are the SEVEN simple steps to get you started:

STEP-1 Your first reaction will be to feel low, afraid and think of what is NOT possible. It is your responsibility to acknowledge your best friend and that is YOU. Its OK to have such a fear because you are getting out of your comfort zone.

STEP-2 You might think that you are in the accounting or software consulting or data entry or coaching business, but actually as an entrepreneur you are marketing yourself as an accountant, Software consultant or a Coach. Hence you must always be willing to learn continuously and become a better and smart marketer. Be prepared for becoming a student of marketing.

STEP-3 Write down 5 skills that you feel, you know and you are good at. Write down the names of people with whom you interacted closely in your jobs and against their name, write down the compliments you received from them. Review the compliments received. These are your core strength as perceived by OTHERS and build your business around them.

STEP-4 When you start your business, you may have questions related to Immigration Law, Corporate Law, Landlord tenants Law, international law and your state law. Hence you will be required to consult with all these lawyers for your specific case. It may be expensive to hire each of these lawyers in the initial stage of your business. Hence you can consider hiring legal services that offer access to lawyers specialized in all areas of law. Ensure that you get access to experienced attorneys at affordable cost. If it is a membership based service, if you are not happy, you also must be in a position to cancel anytime.

STEP-5 Even if you do your own bookkeeping initially, you must consider hiring an accountant to do your taxes and receive timely consultation. There are business consulting services that offer unlimited access to experienced business consultants specialized in accounting, marketing, sales, management and funding. You must shop around for such services and hire the one that suits your needs.

STEP-6 Now that your head and heart are totally committed to your business, consider doing small projects for individual clients. You can also consider registering in elance.com or Guru.com and start offering your services as freelancer.

STEP-7 Having invested your strengths and made your initial income as a freelancer, you now have the choice to do more of what you did or add more services or create a bundle of services. This way you can gradually expand build your enterprise with PEACE of MIND.