Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?
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@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@Dashrender said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@Dashrender said
Then do the even better thing - tell that customer - hey as an FYI, if you buy this chevy, chevy is sending me $20 - just an FYI. Why don't you want to do that?
Because then the client would want that.
Is the argument here just to charge more up front for consulting, and ditch the reseller fees?
If you need that money, then yes! and see - we are right back to what motivates you? Money does, because you want that $20 bucks.
No, the $20 is simply FREE for the taking, so why pass it up?
The only reason to pass it up is for some sense of objective purity only or to appear from the outside as completely unbiased.How many of us when presented with "buy one get one free!" refuse to take the second because we don't want to think the freebe altered our decision? I mean, free is free, it's just there.
Again, bad example - you're taking of the second one doesn't counter someone paying you not to, or someone paying you to use a different product.
A better example would be.. someone paid you to use tide, but cheer was on sale, so you took tide's money and bought cheer with it.
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@Dashrender said
because it's counter to one of your primary business cores - being a consulting company that gives unbiased opinions.
How can you possibly say you're unbiased if your company sells one of the products you're recommending?Well, in theory these sides never meet. But what I am saying is if the consulting side recommends DELL 80 out of 100 times, and the sales side says, holy cow, we sell a lot of DELL, we should get a kickback, then what's the difference?
Yes, the consultant TECHNICALLY doesn't know if they are a reseller on the sales side, but of course it would make sense.
I would think the a consultant should NEVER sell, or have anyone else associated with them selling.
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@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@Dashrender said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
Probably the best idea really. But then again, if they can also hire me to implement, and one of my recommended solutions happens to be affiliate
and Scott has said that this is what NTG struggles with all the time. A huge difference there is that they have consultant, Scott, and they implementors, Gene, etc. Keeping these roles separate enables the consult to remain a bit more unbiased as long as he doesn't know who or what is an affiliate with the company.
So Gene can use all the affiliates he wants from the list?
Well, not Gene, but the company, sure.
Are we saying that people who DO the work and have to buy the solutions can do this but it's only the consultants we have to worry about?
Yes, that was stated above.
I have another direction to go here. Since we all pretty much have stated that full disclosure to the client makes it all ok. As long as they know you might use "partners" or earn commissions, it's cool.
I'm wondering how does this conversation even happen? Where is this information disclosed? How is it stated and yet still appease doubts about bias? Is it from the first minute?
Client: "Hi, I need some consulting, do you do that?"
Me: "Yes, I can help you out, but be aware I might make a finders fee on solutions I recommend, should you use me to implement them."Sounds about right.
This seems quite....intense.
Or throw it in some fine print at the bottom of an agreement on an estimate or something?
LOL fine print - do you read every bit of fine print you ever come across for things you buy use? I don't, I seriously doubt your customer will either - but if they find out later that you got a kick back - come on, let's stop calling it affiliate money and call it what it is.. it's kick back money. .that's exactly how the vendor thinks of it.. it's a kick back for you leading someone to buying their product. thinking of it as a kickback might also make it easier to understand why a PAID consultant shouldn't be getting kick backs on products they are recommending, it taints your recommendation, at least from the outside.
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@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@Dashrender said
and Scott has said that this is what NTG struggles with all the time. A huge difference there is that they have consultant, Scott, and they implementors, Gene, etc. Keeping these roles separate enables the consult to remain a bit more unbiased as long as he doesn't know who or what is an affiliate with the company.
But that is ridiculous from the sales side. (If there IS a sales side.) If you were running the sales department, and 4 out of 5 recommendation is from Company ABC, why wouldn't you want to become a reseller?
For that matter, why not get kickbacks from every possible vendor possible?
If sales is completely removed from the consulting process and recommendations, why shouldn't the implementers who are told "do this stuff" use all the kickbacks they can get? Now that the bias part is removed?
Well, because as Scott mentioned earlier, it's really hard for the owners to not realize how much money they can make on kickbacks and in the end start putting pressure on their consultants to only offer solutions with their kick back partners.
Scale makes a huge difference here too. You as a single person might, MIGHT be able to not allow the kick backs to influence you.. but as a company... the owner isn't a consultant.. he hires consultants... the owner wants to make money.. see above.
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@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@Dashrender said
because it's counter to one of your primary business cores - being a consulting company that gives unbiased opinions.
How can you possibly say you're unbiased if your company sells one of the products you're recommending?Well, in theory these sides never meet. But what I am saying is if the consulting side recommends DELL 80 out of 100 times, and the sales side says, holy cow, we sell a lot of DELL, we should get a kickback, then what's the difference?
Yes, the consultant TECHNICALLY doesn't know if they are a reseller on the sales side, but of course it would make sense.
I would think the a consultant should NEVER sell, or have anyone else associated with them selling.
Most places that are Dell partners, they plaster that fact all over the place! so it would be near impossible for the consultant to not know.. and your customers would know too, because of the plasterings... so at that point you stop being real consultants, and instead become VARs for Dell. At best you could become a consultant only dealing in Dell solutions - but really? come on... I worked at an IBM shop.. those sales guys sold shit the customers never needed, I installed systems that were so over built it was ridiculous! Why? because they were IBM partners.
Sure, if you stay small, and stay with affiliate links, then you might, might stay out of the sites of those vendors starting to push you to more higher sales.. but, as you said you reach 80%, then you are probably catching someone's attention at Dell, and they will want to upgrade you to partner status - and you want that to because that means you make 10% more profit on Dell sales...
See it's a downward spiraling death.
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@Dashrender said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
LOL fine print - do you read every bit of fine print you ever come across for things you buy use? I don't, I seriously doubt your customer will either - but if they find out later that you got a kick back - come on, let's stop calling it affiliate money and call it what it is.. it's kick back money. .that's exactly how the vendor thinks of it.. it's a kick back for you leading someone to buying their product. thinking of it as a kickback might also make it easier to understand why a PAID consultant shouldn't be getting kick backs on products they are recommending, it taints your recommendation, at least from the outside.
You are applying false motive here. It's assuming that the only reason I pick a product is BECAUSE I get kickback. This is simply false motive.
I pick a product because it's a good solution. THEN I accept the kickback because it's there for the taking.Cart before the horse.
Since motives are nearly impossible beasts to reveal, I can agree if you want to hire a contractor for purely unbiased, objective recommendations, by all means avoid affiliates and make sure the person you hire won't be implementing. If such pure objective work is so important. If so, enjoy paying your $200/hr fee to basically end up with recommendations for Dell and Microsoft anyway.
In the small-fry world I traffic in, almost nobody wants this. They call me for the actual solution, the implementation, the fix. They call with a budget of $5 dollars and cry when it goes higher. They don't ask for pure, objective, bias-free "recommendations" that they want to bring somewhere else. Especially since "consultants" charge the most, $150/hr, $200/hr and yet don't actually do any work to solve problems, they just recommend things.
People who contact me, they aren't thinking at this level, they just want it done, fast, cheap, now.
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@guyinpv said i
People who contact me, they aren't thinking at this level, they just want it done, fast, cheap, now.
Same here.
And while some will say that's why they are small business and will never grow, it is what it is.
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This seems to be selling yourself short. Scott has articles talking about finding the right clients.
I suppose there's nothing wrong working for these clients you are talking about. These same clients are also the ones that are more likely to fire you if something hickups they don't like or much much worse.
As a few of us have already said... there's nothing wrong working in the method you're mentioning... it's just one of the possible options out there, and depending on what's on the table, there is nothing unethical about it.
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@guyinpv said
Since motives are nearly impossible beasts to reveal, I can agree if you want to hire a contractor for purely unbiased, objective recommendations, by all means avoid affiliates and make sure the person you hire won't be implementing. If such pure objective work is so important. If so, enjoy paying your $200/hr fee to basically end up with recommendations for Dell and Microsoft anyway.
In the small-fry world I traffic in, almost nobody wants this. They call me for the actual solution, the implementation, the fix. They call with a budget of $5 dollars and cry when it goes higher. They don't ask for pure, objective, bias-free "recommendations" that they want to bring somewhere else. Especially since "consultants" charge the most, $150/hr, $200/hr and yet don't actually do any work to solve problems, they just recommend things.
This is what I would like to hear an answer from "the other side" on.
I, personally, do not think I understand what a true consultant delivers. I mean, if I go and ask for a server, correct, how many different types of servers are there?
And if the insinuation is that if a client says "I need a server" and some places sell them a $20K server when they need a $2K server ... well, I have never seen that, and I have never done that. Though, I guess I have seen it because a lot of times I'll come in to help when they've been oversold already. But I would not do that.
So, isn't it possible that a person in a smaller shop (or independent) really could provide honest advice, help the customer, and also get an incentive?
Really, what the difference as @guyinpv has said between charging $400 to say buy DELL, and just knowing that 9 out of 10 times they need a DELL?
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Or is this really all about semantics?
In that what @guyinpv is describing is a VAR, and there is nothing wrong with that?
I mean, do people not think someone is making money on the hardware? DO people think it all gets passed on for free? Like it costs DELL $250 to make the server, and that is what the client will pay? I think everyone understands markup and its place in business.
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@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
And if the insinuation is that if a client says "I need a server" and some places sell them a $20K server when they need a $2K server ... well, I have never seen that, and I have never done that. Though, I guess I have seen it because a lot of times I'll come in to help when they've been oversold already. But I would not do that.
I have seen that more than one time, personally. Let alone seeing all the threads implying it on SW.
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@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
Or is this really all about semantics?
In that what @guyinpv is describing is a VAR, and there is nothing wrong with that?
I mean, do people not think someone is making money on the hardware? DO people think it all gets passed on for free? Like it costs DELL $250 to make the server, and that is what the client will pay? I think everyone understands markup and its place in business.
That is his issue yes. He is calling it black and white VAR is bad because sales. None of us have ever said that.
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@JaredBusch said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
And if the insinuation is that if a client says "I need a server" and some places sell them a $20K server when they need a $2K server ... well, I have never seen that, and I have never done that. Though, I guess I have seen it because a lot of times I'll come in to help when they've been oversold already. But I would not do that.
I have seen that more than one time, personally. Let alone seeing all the threads implying it on SW.
Yeah, I guess I am naive to think it doesn't happen. Just being here on ML (and of course SW) it seems to happen daily.
But, does that mean there cannot be a legitimate way?
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@JaredBusch said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
Or is this really all about semantics?
In that what @guyinpv is describing is a VAR, and there is nothing wrong with that?
I mean, do people not think someone is making money on the hardware? DO people think it all gets passed on for free? Like it costs DELL $250 to make the server, and that is what the client will pay? I think everyone understands markup and its place in business.
That is his issue yes. He is calling it black and white VAR is bad because sales. None of us have ever said that.
Well, and also that is has to be disclosed.
Which I am not 100% on board with yet.
I mean, when you go to a store, do they have to disclose their profit to you? You shop around, and pick the best price.
Ultimately a client has to choose consultant + salesperson or a VAR, basically. The final price is what they should be looking at.
I think there is a bit of insinuation that a VAR cannot be trusted to make a fair recommendation, or that they only best way is for a consultant to recommend first. I just do not know if I believe that.
I think there are a lot of VARs out there that truly love and believe in the product(s) they sell. For example, maybe a specialized backup place that only sells one brand of backup appliance.
Is it possible the client could have saved money or gotten a better solution? Sure. Shoot we all argue daily about everything. That's IT. But is it also possible that the client really could get a great fit for them at a fair and honest price? I believe that.
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Consulting isn't something you should just give away. You have an investment in the knowledge you already possess. Access to that knowledge shouldn't generally be free.
If you are hired to do Consulting - design a plan or several for the business to choose from, the time spent doing those things should not be free.
But if some guy just walks in and says, hey build me a server and this is what I need it to do, well - in that case, like my friend above, you're now a VAR, weither you really sell anything or not. You're just going to put a solution together based on what he told you he wanted. You're not going to spend extra time making sure it's the right solution for him, why would you? there's no money in you doing that. Just spend as little time giving he what he wants.
Now this is where a sales person differs from an IT person. The sales person who sold my friend doesn't really know IT. He's just been told.. hey, if someone asks for VMWare, well then they also need a SAN. So my friend said he wanted virtualization and was sold a SAN at the same time.
So the question is who's to blame for this SAN being sold to my friend?
Now - you being an IT person, you know you don't need a SAN just because someone asked for one server to run one VM on, so you're solution would be a single server with local storage.
But just because you would do that doesn't mean the sales person was wrong to sell my friend that other solution - he sold what he knew.
Another example: Let's assume you know that RAID 5 is bad.
A customer comes to you and asks you to spec a system - you spec it out with RAID 10 SSD, because as I stated above, you know that RAID 5 is bad.Is this OK?
For a VAR, I say yes it is. Because you weren't paid to find the best solution, you were instead paid to use the knowledge you had to put something together with little to no additional research.
But, if they had paid you to consult on the best design for that system, it might have shows that since SSDs don't suffer the same problems as Winchester drives that you could have saved that customer a bundle by using RAID 5 instead of RAID 10.
And this is the risk that a customer takes every day when they don't pay for consulting when building out a project.
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@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@JaredBusch said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
Or is this really all about semantics?
In that what @guyinpv is describing is a VAR, and there is nothing wrong with that?
I mean, do people not think someone is making money on the hardware? DO people think it all gets passed on for free? Like it costs DELL $250 to make the server, and that is what the client will pay? I think everyone understands markup and its place in business.
That is his issue yes. He is calling it black and white VAR is bad because sales. None of us have ever said that.
Well, and also that is has to be disclosed.
Which I am not 100% on board with yet.
I mean, when you go to a store, do they have to disclose their profit to you? You shop around, and pick the best price.
Ultimately a client has to choose consultant + salesperson or a VAR, basically. The final price is what they should be looking at.
I think there is a bit of insinuation that a VAR cannot be trusted to make a fair recommendation, or that they only best way is for a consultant to recommend first. I just do not know if I believe that.
I think there are a lot of VARs out there that truly love and believe in the product(s) they sell. For example, maybe a specialized backup place that only sells one brand of backup appliance.
Is it possible the client could have saved money or gotten a better solution? Sure. Shoot we all argue daily about everything. That's IT. But is it also possible that the client really could get a great fit for them at a fair and honest price? I believe that.
A fundamental part of consulting is being lost - when you CALL yourself a consultant - it's that you are being PAID to provide an unbiased opinion. When you walk into a best buy, you don't get an unbiased opinion, you don't get any opinion at all. You just see a price on the shelf. The kids who work there are definitely not experts at what they are selling, heck, they barely know more than the average consumer, if they even do. There advise is worthless, or at least only has value within the product lines of what they sell. But like the car sales person, assuming commissions, they want to sell you the highest commissions items in the place.
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@Dashrender said
Another example: Let's assume you know that RAID 5 is bad.
A customer comes to you and asks you to spec a system - you spec it out with RAID 10 SSD, because as I stated above, you know that RAID 5 is bad.Is this OK?
For a VAR, I say yes it is. Because you weren't paid to find the best solution, you were instead paid to use the knowledge you had to put something together with little to no additional research.
But, if they had paid you to consult on the best design for that system, it might have shows that since SSDs don't suffer the same problems as Winchester drives that you could have saved that customer a bundle by using RAID 5 instead of RAID 10.
And this is the risk that a customer takes every day when they don't pay for consulting when building out a project.
But why is it inconceivable that a VAR could also recommend the best solution?
In that situation, I'd recommend SSDs in a RAID5. Just like how I built my own systems. Why would I do anything I knew wasn't the best?
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@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
I, personally, do not think I understand what a true consultant delivers. I mean, if I go and ask for a server, correct, how many different types of servers are there?
You do not hire a consultant if you know you need a server. you go to the vendor or VAR.
You go to a consultant to determine the best server for your needs.
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@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
I think there is a bit of insinuation that a VAR cannot be trusted to make a fair recommendation, or that they only best way is for a consultant to recommend first. I just do not know if I believe that.
I think there are a lot of VARs out there that truly love and believe in the product(s) they sell. For example, maybe a specialized backup place that only sells one brand of backup appliance.
Is it possible the client could have saved money or gotten a better solution? Sure. Shoot we all argue daily about everything. That's IT. But is it also possible that the client really could get a great fit for them at a fair and honest price? I believe that.
No one ever said that a company can't get a great product at an honest price from a VAR - we've said it time and time again, VARs are not unethical. We say this because we know that VARs have one job - to sell you a product/service at the highest price they possibly can. And you as someone buying from a VAR should know that that is what a VARs job is. And as long as you know that, which granted is mostly on you, the buyer, to know. Not the VAR to expressly advertise.
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@Dashrender said
But like the car sales person, assuming commissions, they want to sell you the highest commissions items in the place.
OK, so let's take a specialized car salesman. My mom is disabled, so I have some experience with customized vans and whatnot. Now, these guys are still salesman, but I honestly believe most of them are in this line of work because they care, and are really looking to get the handicapped person the best possible vehicle for them.
So, this customized van salesman is ... a VAR?
