What would you like to know about being successful?

I’m on my way to the HTG Summit right now and I’m trying to figure out what else I can talk about during my presentation on Monday. I’m doing one of those lunch and learn things that often become monotone sales pitches while you’re trying to eat or have a business discussion. Since I’ve got nothing to sell that isn’t painfully obvious to everyone in attendance, what would folks like to know about being successful in a services business?

If you have an idea, drop me an email. I’ll develop it.

Here is the problem that is going to be tough to swallow and will leave a lot of the current IT businesses, even very successful ones, out in the cold: when it comes to IT services consumers and businesses want to buy. They don’t want to meet with you, to get to know you and your business and your cats name, what you did on the last vacation or else.

The same things that are critical to closing a high end sale or a high value reoccurring revenue are the the nail in the coffin of a successful services business. If you are signing up someone for a $3K all you can eat support contract you probably want to sit down with them and figure out if they are going to require $10K of network renovation up front. But if they want business / enterprise class email, just how much are you going to mark up that $10 service to make a profit?

We are often asked by our “prospect” partners how much other partners charge for the service. The cookie cutter response and the company policy is to say “We do not track that information, each reseller positions our products in a different way with a different value and identical product can be sold at different rates by different people. Because we do not track this, we don’t have any idea.” – Truth is, I know exactly how much people make because I talk to every even marginally successful partner out there! But it’s not my business to share those conversations or create success stories because, at the end of the day, you are either in it or you aren’t and the relative cost is never the telling part of a person who is going to make money on services as opposed to one that will have it as a loss leader.

Generally, it’s not my business to teach folks this stuff. But for HTG, I’m willing to make an exception. What would you like to hear?