As a pretty new small business computer consulting firm, you might ask what level of technical staff you can put on payroll. Remember don't get too excited yet; you have to be realistic about this.

Of course, there is no denying that it varies by job market, but all things being equal, what kind of technical person will your small business computer consulting firm be able to find Can you get someone that has the wide variety of intermediate to high end technical skills that are needed for larger small business clients if your technical salary budget is only $37,500 a year

The Need for Qualified Help

In an ideal scenario your small business computer consulting clients that have ten to fifty PCs are going to start to have much more sophisticated needs. Generally speaking you cant send someone in whos a glorified screwdriver technician.

More often than not it doesnt work. Your small business computer consulting firm requires fairly high level people.

Know What You Have to Offer

On the downward side, on the demand generation

side, what kind of polished B to B salesperson are you going to be able to find for your small business computer consulting firm if you can only offer a base salary of $27,500 a year

That extra $10,000 will required to be allocated to things like direct mail, having that person go to organization and networking meetings, sponsoring events, doing seminars and things along those lines.

The Bottom Line about Small Business Computer Consulting

Searching for staff with skills for such low salaries is like Fantasy Island for most new small business computer consulting firms. In an ideal scenario its very unlikely to happen. You, as the owner, are the only individual, aside from maybe your spouse or another family member, whos going to be willing to work like a dog at way below market wages while the business is built up.

In case if you've previously delivered your service B2C (Business to Consumer) and now want to switch to B2B (Business to Business), you may think that you're ready to run out there and just get some small business clients. It's not that easy.

Fact remained that if you focus too much on home-based businesses and micro small businesses, you'll have a tough time selling a lot of services. While micro small businesses (under 5-10 employees) are technically defined as small businesses, micro small businesses may not be a good fit for your small business computer consulting company. Why not

The Five Reasons to Avoid Targeting Micro and Home Businesses

1. Lots of consumer grade PC's

2. Pirated software

3. Most importantly reluctance for paying for services. Plenty of micro small businesses want to look for volunteers to help them with their computer problems like someone's niece, brother or friend. In theory you can't compete against free! You'll also have a hard time competing against moonlighters; these people are on someone else's payroll during the day and don't have to fund their own certifications and benefits. They can undercut your price with utmost ease.

4. IT isn't that significant to their company, so they don't need a great response time.

5. Too small to afford a real dedicated server and real network.

These are the five reasons why most computer consulting firms doing really well with services are looking at prospect companies that have at least eight or ten PCs. At that point of time, it becomes really difficult for these companies to continue running a peer-to-peer setup, or wait for the sometimes glacier-like response time of volunteers and moonlighters.

When a small business is big enough

More often than not small businesses with more than 8-10 PC's start to get serious about putting in a real client server network, putting in a real tight back up solution, putting in a real UPS, and a real firewall. In order to implement these things correctly, small business decision makers typically understand that the systems need to be designed by a more sophisticated IT services or network integrator firm.

In other words, it is worth noting that as a small business goes through growth spurts, the stakes go up. And these businesses generally recognize the requirement to use IT more strategically. Furthermore, typically the small businesses have made the decision that IT is actually important to the company, and that they can't afford a lot of downtime. Therefore they need someone to coordinate everything computer-related. These small businesses want someone to take ownership of the whole issue, and that's where your small business computer consulting comes in.

Remember that in small business computer consulting, $100 an hour can be a reasonable and livable rate. The question now arises: Why can setting your rates at $100 an hour make all the difference in the world

It is advisable that you take the $100 an hour and multiply it by 1,500 hours a year. This is depicting a 75% utilization rate; or 75% of a typical forty hour work week as billable time. Now after all this youre at $150,000 a year gross.

Salary and Affordability

Theoretically speaking as a small business computer consulting firm, you will want to take a third of the gross and plow it into sales and marketing. Thats why you can afford a $40,000 base salary for your sales account executive. Therefore, 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.

Whats more, 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

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

Needless to say, in case 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.