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[S600]Small Business Setting Up

by Joshua Feinberg, Jos

Take the $100 an hour and multiply it by 1,500 hours a year. This is reflecting a 75% utilization rate; or 75% of a typical forty hour work week as billable time. Now you're at $150,000 a year gross.

Salary and Affordability

As a small business computer consulting firm, you will want to take a third of the gross and plow it into sales and marketing. Therefore you can afford a $40,000 base salary for your sales account executive. So, of that one third of your gross small business computer consulting income, $40,000 can go to the base salary and $10,000 can go to related marketing expenses.

Additionally, one third will take care of taxes, insurance and overhead items for the most part, and you have a third of it or $50,000 left to pay a technical staff salary.

Surpassing $100 an Hour

You may be considering exceeding a rate of $100 an hour for your small business computer consulting firm. At that point, you can hit what we call the not-so-imaginary-hourly-billing-rate ceiling.

Needless to say, if your small business computer consulting clients are paying $110 to $125 an hour, it gets even easier to be able to afford really bright, motivated, highly qualified sales and technical staff.

Higher Rates Equal Bigger Businesses

However, if you want to charge above $100 an hour in your small business computer consulting firm, you'll almost always need to move above and beyond sweet spot small business clients into really large small businesses, medium size businesses and enterprise-sized accounts that require a different business model and technical skill set.

Once you do that, you're going to be operating under a completely different type of business model. And you will need even more polished and seasoned salespeople to be able to handle those accounts.

Here are seven guidelines that will help you set up or revise your niche:

1. Every product, service or small business either appeals to or has the potential to appeal to a concise definable group of people in a concise definable marketplace. There are no exceptions. You must be able to portray a clear snapshot of your product or service to your target market. If you cannot (or will not) do this, you will have a hard time breaking out from competition.

2. A niche market has common needs and interests. This means that a niche market is not just a small group of people in a defined geographic area.

3. YOU are not typical. What you want or how you see your market is irrelevant. Sorry! Only the market (not you) decides.

4. Never confuse a Mission Statement with a niche position. The hard truth is that any Mission Statement not founded upon a true niche is usually just so many words.

5. Never set your niche in stone. Your niche must be able to evolve, grow and change. If it does not, you will not or do not have a true niche. What you may have is a trench- a grave with no ends!

6. Never fall in love with your niche. This is much more difficult than you might imagine when you first consider it. If your chosen niche is not working and you are unable to get a handle on how to fix it, get a divorce! Be ready to RE-niche at any time.

7. Be 100% certain that you can deliver on your stated position every time with every customer or prospect. If you say you provide a free written estimate, provide it in a clear professional way, not scrawled on the back of a lunch bag.

Overall, you need to consider what business you are really in or intend to start. You need to be darned good at something. Sounds simplistic? Consider the following examples:

IBM apparently lost track of what business they were really in. They stumbled badly until they re-niched and recast themselves as selling business solutions rather than just computer hardware.

Kinkos started out as a tremendously successful copy shop filled with do-it-yourself photocopy machines. They evolved into being your branch office and teamed up with FedEx to expand their services to small businesses and entrepreneurs.

These and many other examples show that successful niching requires an initial laser-beam focus as well as the ability to change and evolve in these fast-moving times. You need to decide not just what you are going to do or offer as well as what you are not going to do or offer.

Say it clearly and say it often: THIS is what we do. THESE are our services. When you get sick of hearing it and seeing it, then and only then will you be even close to scratching the surface to reach your target audience.

If you have the idea that one or two or even several ads will bring immediate results, you are seriously mistaken. Insert the word constant into your thinking because constant exposure is what your business - but only after you have clearly defined your own niche and your own target market.

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Both Joshua Feinberg & Robert Schumacher are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.

Joshua Feinberg has sinced written about articles on various topics from Adwords, Business Plan and Information Technology. . Joshua Feinberg's top article generates over 1000000 views. to your Favourites.

Robert Schumacher has sinced written about articles on various topics from Internet Marketing, Business Plan and Brain. Bob Schumacher books and articles give entrepreneurs a clear coffee-shop English perspective on how to steer their business or profession into the top 20% who achieve 80% of the business and profits. Visit. Robert Schumacher's top article generates over 9900 views. to your Favourites.