Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?
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@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
So a sales person could be suepr technical, and really know how to implement something. But if they do that for free and only make money from the sale ... they are 100% a salesperson?
Wouldn't that be a VAR?
Correct and correct. People who are compensated through sales are salespeople. Whether they make sales by buying you a drink, showing some cleavage, knowing their product, having a low price, being in the right place at the right time or adding in some incentivized advice... they are sales people.
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@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.
And there IS bias. But we often mention that AND it is always disclosed (everyone knows that we offer the implementation.)
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@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?
You might. But then you are a reseller. We are not, we are consultants. You can't be a serious consultant AND a reseller. You can be ethical, but not good. That's just not reasonable.
Also, nothing is 80%. Nothing is even 40%. So even if the theoretical case were true, it wouldn't be what we wanted to do. But it never comes up when you really consult. Customers just aren't similar enough.
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@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
But I don't see myself as the "reseller" part. I don't resell, I just throw out a link and tell them this is my partner link, if you want to give an extra tip. No pressure.
This is how I read this....
I don't see myself as a reseller. I just resell.
Um... what?
Sure, you are a low pressure salesman, that's great. Lots of places advertise that. Go to local computer shop and they might not pay commission. That guy doesn't care if you buy or not. Zero pressure. He might prefer if you didn't so he doesn't need to check you out because he's lazy. In this case, you directly get the commission. So you are on the upper 50% of sales people, even keeping the pressure low.
Your association of pressure to sales doesn't exist. That's not in any way a determining factor.
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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?
Because it's pay for sales.
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@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
It is correct, we don't know each other, you don't really "know" the consultant you just hired. So do you ask them before any work is done, "if you are on commissions or use affiliates, I can't work with you?"
It's good to ask, but it is required that they tell whether someone asks or not in a situation where it applies.
For example, what if I resold Netgear equipment. I do consulting and I recommend Dell equipment. I need not disclose that I had a bias away from Dell. I probably should, but I don't have to. But if I consult and recommend Netgear, I must disclose that I'm getting paid to make that recommendation. I can explain why I'm not overly biased by that, but I must tell them, every time.
Disclaimer: I do NOT sell Netgear. It's an example.
Ok but what if you're NOT getting paid to "recommend" them? In fact you're not even getting paid to implement them. You're not getting paid if the customer goes and buys the equipment themselves and hands it over to you to install. You're not getting paid (via affiliate) to buy the product yourself and resell it and add it to the invoice (in affiliate programs you can't buy the products for yourself and resell to get the kickback).
So the ONLY way you get paid any bonus for anything is if the client buys the stuff themselves by using your affiliate/partner links, which they are free to not use.You might "think" you are biased toward Netgear but in reality there is a huge chance you'd never get the bonus if they want you to buy the stuff yourself, or they have someone else install, or they run to Costco and get the model there, or from their Staples or OfficeMax accounts, or BestBuy credit, or Newegg Business, or Amazon Prime accounts.
You have no guarantee you'll ever see that affiliate fee come pay day, so how much is it really affecting your consulting?@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
It's the same thing, you don't know them, so find out. Or DON'T find out, and put blind trust that they are objective.
Caveat Emptor is great life advice, but very bad for a consultant to use as their own motto. This suggests the idea that the consultant in question is the enemy of his clients and out to get them, rather than doing their job and working for them. Of course, clients SHOULD question everything and audit their consultants. But consultants should also make customers not have to.
Don't be the consultant that proves why the customer should have been wary. Be the one that rewards their trust.
The assumption is, again, that possibility of some affiliate bonus completely and utterly destroys all objectivity and they could no longer ever hope to provide good advice. It's a pretty big stretch.
The objection is that I don't think I am "out to get my clients" because I affiliate with some of my top recommended, nearly industry standard, vendors.@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
So a sales person could be suepr technical, and really know how to implement something. But if they do that for free and only make money from the sale ... they are 100% a salesperson?
Wouldn't that be a VAR?
Correct and correct. People who are compensated through sales are salespeople. Whether they make sales by buying you a drink, showing some cleavage, knowing their product, having a low price, being in the right place at the right time or adding in some incentivized advice... they are sales people.
The assumption here is that the commission is their SOLE income, commissioned sales is not the sole income of someone who occasionally offers affiliate links. The pressure to upsell/oversell push the highest priced stuff only makes sense when the commission if the main source of income.
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@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
But I don't see myself as the "reseller" part. I don't resell, I just throw out a link and tell them this is my partner link, if you want to give an extra tip. No pressure.
This is how I read this....
I don't see myself as a reseller. I just resell.
Um... what?
I read the term "resell" as that I buy the product myself and resell it to the customer, perhaps with markup. Or that I use white-label products and rebrand it, resell, with markup.
I don't see how an affiliate link is "reselling".
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@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@IRJ 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?:
@Dashrender said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
They have zero say in the final analysis. I don't send them the estimates and invoices, they don't send me anything. If their product happens to be the right solution, then a bonus is there.
Here's a question - Why do you deserve the bonus? You did a job, you were paid for that job - consulting fee. Why do you deserve a bonus for doing that job? Why doesn't the client deserve a discount instead?
Excellent question.
In previous jobs for some residential clients or non-profits I literally gave them extra discount for using the affiliates.
Don't misunderstand me, I literally have 3 affiliates to my name. Amazon, InMotion, and I think VULTR. I signed up BECAUSE I love them, not because of wanting the most kickbacks. I only think of it as free money. But obviously this raises a lot of ethical questions for people.
Again, this isn't about you - this is more - would some stranger think you're taking advantage of them... if they paid you $50 for an opinion, and if they buy a product on your opinion list you get affiliate kickback money - will they be OK with that? it's about what the other guy thinks.. not what you think.
Hell I think the "for Dummy's" series is a horrible name the first time I saw those I thought it would tank.. what the hell do I know? Look around today, there are dozens of 'for Dummy's' books, clearly other people thought the name was catchy, and it worked.
If somebody says my service is $250, but if you buy from Amazon, I will only charge $235 sounds really sketchy to me.
Sketchy, but honest. So not unethical. But certainly weird and/or sketchy.
Sketchy is not a nice feeling to save $20
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@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
But I don't see myself as the "reseller" part. I don't resell, I just throw out a link and tell them this is my partner link, if you want to give an extra tip. No pressure.
This is how I read this....
I don't see myself as a reseller. I just resell.
Um... what?
I read the term "resell" as that I buy the product myself and resell it to the customer, perhaps with markup. Or that I use white-label products and rebrand it, resell, with markup.
I don't see how an affiliate link is "reselling".
Fair enough. It's selling, not reselling, technically. You would be a seller or VAS. But people just call it a reseller when someone does this. It's incorrect, you are correct. Reseller is a sloppy term, but industry standard, whether you resell or just coordinate and get paid for the process. 99% of resellers don't actually resell. That's actually quite uncommon outside of little stores. When IT people say reseller, they don't mean people who buy and resell (but don't rule them out, either.)
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@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
I don't see how an affiliate link is "reselling".
It's basically identical to being a Dell Reseller. If you are a Dell reseller, you are really only an affiliate. Affiliate is the most common reseller model.
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To be fair here, nobody has ever hired me for pure consulting. I have a feeling this is only something larger companies do who are facing huge budget, big ticket items and don't want to be screwed. Projects which may span pages and pages of requirements and require a ton of business intelligence and research.
This leaves me with only one conclusion to all this mess.
On one side you have pure, unadulterated "consulting" which must be absolutely objective and bias free in every way possible. Also, where the consultant or consulting company will not be implementing the solution or selling/reselling/linking to the products.
On the other side, is EVERYTHING else, which must needs be called VAR since they are no longer consulting, but are being paid to implement solutions and fix problems.
Am I on track here? Consulting, and VAR are the only two options? Perhaps "solutions provider" could be thrown in as a synonym?
I don't see any wiggle room for "consulting + implementing" as this breaks the absolute unbias rule, thus it's not consulting, just VAR and biased opinions. Therefore, either someone is consulting, or they are a VAR, with no grey areas.
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@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
To be fair here, nobody has ever hired me for pure consulting. I have a feeling this is only something larger companies do who are facing huge budget, big ticket items and don't want to be screwed.
Nope, we get it from small companies all of the time.
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We have small companies that hire NTG for consulting.
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@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
On one side you have pure, unadulterated "consulting" which must be absolutely objective and bias free in every way possible. Also, where the consultant or consulting company will not be implementing the solution or selling/reselling/linking to the products.
Implementation is part of consulting in most cases. There IS a conflict of interests, but it is not the same as the reselling one because it is a preselected vendor scenario. There is nothing to hide, there is no means of hiding it.
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Those same companies also hire us to implement about 50% of the time. This does not include selling them anything. We always lay out choices for them this is the one we like and here's why. This is a lesser option and this is our least favorite option. They pick they purchase we install/migrate etc.
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@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
Am I on track here? Consulting, and VAR are the only two options? Perhaps "solutions provider" could be thrown in as a synonym?
We actually rarely use consulting as a term. We call ourselves an ITSP. We outsource all the IT functions... which are consulting and implementation.
That's actually a key differentiation... what does an internal IT person do? They tell the business what is needed and they implement it, right? Does the internal IT staff also resell to the company that they work for? Do they use affiliate programs? No, they do not. So it makes for a pretty obvious line as to what is the "IT" tech functions and what is the reseller/VAR functions.
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@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
I don't see any wiggle room for "consulting + implementing" as this breaks the absolute unbias rule, thus it's not consulting...
Many companies hire consultants ONLY for the implementation piece. There is plenty of wiggle room because it is all the same IT function.
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@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
On the other side, is EVERYTHING else, which must needs be called VAR since they are no longer consulting, but are being paid to implement solutions and fix problems.
There is no good term for the "everything else" piece when sales is included. And it is the majority of the market. IT suffers from this. The average company like this, by far, is horrible. They don't really consult, they are outright scams and they have destroyed the IT industry. There are some that are good, but I'm not sure that I've ever met one. We spend our careers cleaning up after them. The "average" and "majority" positions in this realm are not good places.
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There are two base functions in discussion. IT and sales. They are easy to separate because we all know what IT does. And we all know what sales does. It's paying IT folks via sales channels that makes things complex.
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@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
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."This seems quite....intense.
That's what we do, almost exactly. We make it ridiculously obvious. We make them acknowledge that they understand.
In fact, it works the opposite of how you are imagining. Instead of being like "oh, I can't use these guys" they tend to say "awesome, I'm sure everyone else does that too and just doesn't tell me."
