You need to be the voice of reason when it comes to the IT spending habits of your clients. You may encounter a "use it or lose it" mentality, or your clients may want compress all of their PC-related purchases into a brief window.
This usually happens when the owner of the company may be in a good mood and approachable about technology spending.
Whimsical IT Spending is Not a Good Idea.
Experienced computer consultants know that cost-effective use of small business technology comes about through detailed planning and execution.
Heading down to the warehouse club or local office supply superstore and splurging impulsively on a $20,000 computer shopping spree with a corporate credit card may feel good.
But without proper planning, these sudden tech asset IT spending binges may actually increase your clients’ computer support costs. They also run the risk of undermining a lot of the progress your consulting firm has made toward making your clients’ systems more secure and reliable.
Some of the problems you may run into with your clients and their IT spending are best discussed beforehand. Use the following points to plan out your clients' IT spending plan.
IT Spending Client Discussion Points
Do your clients have written technology budgets and plans for the year?
If so, what happens if they don’t use up their technology budgets during a given year?
What kind of advanced planning goes into how clients acquire PC-related hardware assets?
Do you discuss anticipated support costs (or at least antici-pated support headaches) before recommending new PC purchases?
Do your clients’ major technology purchases usually follow on the heels of a great year or great quarter?
Have any of your clients regretted making a hasty PC hard-ware purchase, because it turned out to be an extremely un-reliable system? or very difficult to support and trouble-shoot?
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