What happens after you have your IT service contracts? Are you scared that your customers are going to stump you or you won't be able to provide the response time you promised?

IT Service Contracts: Confidence Comes with Experience

Just start offering and selling your services. Go slowly until you build up that confidence level. Confidence is not going to come through training; it's not going to come from reading a report or preparing a very well-thought-out template. It's going to come from actually starting to sell these IT service contracts and going out and servicing them.

Start with relatively small accounts and then ease into larger accounts. That doesn't mean you should totally dismiss the idea of taking on a much bigger one if it falls in your lap, but just be aware that the ideal way to do this is to start with accounts that are on the small side of being able to afford that kind of service.

IT Service Contracts Require Advance Preparation

Without managing the sales call process and taking them from sales call to IT audit, you're not going to get to the service contract. You need to have something concrete to propose and take them in that direction.

Otherwise you're just going to be in reactive fire extinguisher mode, where they'll call you when there's a problem but there's no recurring long-term relationship. The maintenance contract is what binds the two of you together like a marriage.

IT Service Contracts Will Make Your Business Profitable

It's very difficult to make a go of IT services when you're just waiting for the phone to ring or you're just doing a couple hours here and a couple hours there. It's a lot easier to find the right kinds of clients that need long-term hand-holding, long-term oversight and long-term assurances an outsourced IT department provides. They know you are going to take care of long-term projects and upgrades; be the intermediary with the phone companies and ISPs and web hosts and specialty application developers; and deal with anything and everything that relates to IT.

Then they also, of course, want the peace of mind that you're going to be there to bail them out of an emergency. The big thing that really holds this all together is your IT service contracts.

The Bottom Line about IT Service Contracts

Without the IT service contracts, you will be keeping your fingers crossed that customers will kep calling and that you're going to have that long-term relationship. The service agreement is what virtually guarantees that long-term relationship. That's just why IT service contracts are so vitally important.

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