Guest Blog - John from JL IT Consultants - Ask the questions

This week it’s time for another guest blog, from a small business owner – John.

“First of all, I thought of everything I knew about IT\Business and threw it out the window. I was setting JL IT Consultants up as a new business and wanted to start with a clean slate

Much had change after a 10-year break as a business owner I couldn’t handle being an employee any longer, this time I was going to do thinks right. I remember the good old days of selling Servers…. Arr they were the days, this time round I have only sold 3 in 3 years

This business was to focus on the supply and support of Cloud Computing and selling solutions not just Computers

The main things that I needed in this new venture were Marketing, Sales, Accounting Support, and a Supplier that I could consider a Partner not just a supplier of parts, plus I wanted to be an MSP, my aim was to be far more proactive than reactive.

I chose N-Central as my MSP Partner this has worked very well. I was at a total loss re Marketing & Sales (I am a Tech and have the wrong type of brain for it, or so I thought) but Microsoft came to the rescue, I received an email inviting me to a workshop with Luke Debono from incredibleresults at North Ryde, in just a few hours I discovered how to think like a Marketing & Sales person, to talk to clients using who what & why, not tech speak. My sales have sky rocketed by following his advice and also using Microsoft Partner resources such as Modernbiz.

By far my biggest asset is Ingram Micro manly Zoe Pelbart IM’s NSW SME Business Development Manager, Craig Bovaird & Brenton Nicol from IM’s Cloud Team

In summary, don’t be shy to ask the question and listen to their advice, the hard part is finding the correct person to ask, by starting with the people mentioned in this article you won’t go wrong! Microsoft are running more of these workshops for business leaders and I really encourage you to attend.