Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?
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@scottalanmiller said
Easy differentiation: MSP staff are IT, VAR staff are sales.
But there is no differentiation for the clients because they deal with the same 1 person. Acting as both sales and technical support. That nice guy who does site visits for you and fixes everything? He's also a sales person.
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@Breffni-Potter said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@scottalanmiller said
Easy differentiation: MSP staff are IT, VAR staff are sales.
But there is no differentiation for the clients because they deal with the same 1 person. Acting as both sales and technical support. That nice guy who does site visits for you and fixes everything? He's also a sales person.
That makes them a VAR and a salesperson. If the customer is confused, that's a customer business identification problem, doesn't make MSP and VAR the same thing (or even related.)
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But I've seen that business model in industries other than IT.
As an example, in house AV manager for conference centres and other venues. He has the technical knowledge, skill and capability to pull off everything required but he is also there to sell solutions and services, extra equipment for rental and so on.
Same again with a venue manager, offering flowers or extra this or that as a service.
You don't have to be a "Sales" person by definition to sell things to people and a huge number of MSPs have their tech guys (Who the customer has built up a relationship with and trust) sell and pitch things.
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@Breffni-Potter said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
But I've seen that business model in industries other than IT.
As an example, in house AV manager for conference centres and other venues. He has the technical knowledge, skill and capability to pull off everything required but he is also there to sell solutions and services, extra equipment for rental and so on.
He might be a technical salesman, but he's just a salesman. It's a standard sales model. But once a salesman, you're a salesman. It's just how it is. Understanding that he's a sales guy that might do some technical work too is critical for anyone that "does business" to see. This is a minimum level of "service buying competence" necessary to be a viable end user of services.
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@Breffni-Potter said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
You don't have to be a "Sales" person by definition to sell things to people and a huge number of MSPs have their tech guys (Who the customer has built up a relationship with and trust) sell and pitch things.
Yes, you do. Buy doing so, you become a sales person by definition. It's that simple. If you think you are a tech, but you are out doing sales, you are really a sales person whether you call yourself one or not.
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@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@Breffni-Potter said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
You don't have to be a "Sales" person by definition to sell things to people and a huge number of MSPs have their tech guys (Who the customer has built up a relationship with and trust) sell and pitch things.
Yes, you do. Buy doing so, you become a sales person by definition. It's that simple. If you think you are a tech, but you are out doing sales, you are really a sales person whether you call yourself one or not.
So let's say you sell someone on a VOIP phone system and you've done that once in the past year, are you by definition a sales person?
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@Breffni-Potter said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@Breffni-Potter said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
You don't have to be a "Sales" person by definition to sell things to people and a huge number of MSPs have their tech guys (Who the customer has built up a relationship with and trust) sell and pitch things.
Yes, you do. Buy doing so, you become a sales person by definition. It's that simple. If you think you are a tech, but you are out doing sales, you are really a sales person whether you call yourself one or not.
So let's say you sell someone on a VOIP phone system and you've done that once in the past year, are you by definition a sales person?
If you are getting money from doing that, yes, assuming that you can continue to get compensated for that (you could have sold one and then given up the ability to sell them, that's different, that is "having been" a salesman.) I know tons of people who do full time sales but only pull off selling one or two things a year.
If sales is clouding your compensation, you are a sales person.
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@scottalanmiller said
If you are getting money from doing that, yes.
Then by that definition, every one on this planet is a sales man and everyone works in sales. For me it's too literal and rigid as a definition.
It just feels like saying if you've played the guitar once you are a musician.
If you've cooked a meal once, you are a chef.Does that kind of make sense? Or am I missing the point?
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@Breffni-Potter
I went through this whole thing with @scottalanmiller once. You'll never win.
My argument at the time was that if I scouted out, say, 4 products I thought were the best, and only sold/used those at client sites, there was nothing wrong with that. His take was that is not being an IT consultant, it is being a reseller/salesman.
I still never agreed with him, but I do understand his point.
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@BRRABill said
I still never agreed with him, but I do understand his point.
Let's say I will only ever sell Microsoft Office 2007 from now until I die. I am a salesman, I agree with that as a definition.
But Scott's angle seems to be if you receive compensation by "selling" anything you are a salesman.
Therefore if you have ever sold an old CD to a store, a car, a piece of art, an old games console, clothing, fresh air, you are a sales person.
Therefore, I am going to state that every single person in the world, is a sales person or has been a sales person because at least once everyone has or will sell something.
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IT is almost always both tech and sales, how can it not be? You go to fix stuff, their mouse needs batteries, well you have to sell some batteries I guess.
You sell AV, backup services, cloud services, VOIP, office hardware, monitors, printers, cabling, security devices, the list goes on.
One cannot ONLY be a "fixer" who never sold anything ever. At some point they have to buy/sell something to the end user.That said, what I think Scott is saying is that if the thing you are selling is also compensating you, that makes you a salesman.
If I buy all my hardware from one location because I use their 3% cash back card, that is incentive and makes me a salesman by my earned commissions.
If I sign people up to cloud services via affiliate connections, I'm a sales guy hooking people up.So the big question is, what's the problem with it? If you happen to absolutely love Dell and Crucial and Office365 and this that and other, and they just happen to have affiliate programs, why wouldn't you join? You "sell" those products anyway.
Do you sell it for the commission, or do you sell it anyway and a commission is just a bonus?
I don't see any problem with a little earned commission on selling things you already promote anyway. Just as long as those little commission benefits don't cloud your judgement about clients' needs.
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That was basically my exact argument.
I'm sure @scottalanmiller will chime in to present his side.
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@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
That was basically my exact argument.
I'm sure @scottalanmiller will chime in to present his side.
grabs popcorn
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@dafyre said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
That was basically my exact argument.
I'm sure @scottalanmiller will chime in to present his side.
grabs popcorn
Welcome to the show, been here all day! I think I'm on my 3rd bag. Grabs another -
@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
That was basically my exact argument.
I'm sure @scottalanmiller will chime in to present his side.
But I don't see why there is an "argument" at all? What is the argument? Are there tech people who refuse to be labeled as sales people? Is somebody trying to be a tech while never selling anything?
Technical people have to present tools and options to clients who then buy stuff. Sometimes there could be commission, maybe not, why does it matter? Who cares if IT people are also sales or sales people are also IT?Quite frankly, I don't understand why there is an argument about these definitions in the first place. The whole world is in sales. If you do "work", that means other people pay you for stuff, therefore you are in sales, you have to sell your services first and foremost.
All the richest people on earth do sales. Commission-based sales jobs are probably in 3rd of 4th place for highest paying careers of any type.
Are people offended at being labeled salesman? I just don't get why this is an argument. Or is this just going round in circles for funzies?
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@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
Are people offended at being labeled salesman? I just don't get why this is an argument. Or is this just going round in circles for funzies?
Yes. By labeling someone as sales, you are automatically calling them a liar and a charlatan (at best.) Of course they're going back and forth for funzies at this point
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@travisdh1 said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
Are people offended at being labeled salesman? I just don't get why this is an argument. Or is this just going round in circles for funzies?
Yes. By labeling someone as sales, you are automatically calling them a liar and a charlatan (at best.) Of course they're going back and forth for funzies at this point
Or they think they are being called a door-to-door salesman of vacuums and world's best multi-purpose cleaner! Or pushy car salesman "oh you like red cars, please sign here to prove you are interested in looking at all my red cars..."
Or MLM programs "Hi my name is Bill.........hi, my name is John, let me ask you, do you have health problems? Because I've been using this elixir for 49 hours and I can tell you, I've never felt better! You can make money too by joining my......."Pushy sales people are evil, but at the end of day, everybody has to sell something.
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@guyinpv said
But I don't see why there is an "argument" at all? What is the argument?
Quite frankly, I don't understand why there is an argument about these definitions in the first place. The whole world is in sales. If you do "work", that means other people pay you for stuff, therefore you are in sales, you have to sell your services first and foremost.As I said earlier.
If you cook food once in your life, are you a chef?
If you play an instrument once, are you a musician?
The really GOOD sales guys, the guys who do a lot for us, sales is their career, their profession, something they do practice and hone like a good tech.How could you compare someone who bakes a cake once to a "baker" who does it day in, day out as their main profession?
That's why I'm getting hung up on the definition because it's wrong to label someone an X based on something they do little of.
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@guyinpv said
Pushy sales people are evil, but at the end of day, everybody has to sell something.
Pushy sales people are just bad sales people who don't know their craft. They've found a trick that works and they stick with it, one trick ponies.
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@Breffni-Potter said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@guyinpv said
But I don't see why there is an "argument" at all? What is the argument?
Quite frankly, I don't understand why there is an argument about these definitions in the first place. The whole world is in sales. If you do "work", that means other people pay you for stuff, therefore you are in sales, you have to sell your services first and foremost.As I said earlier.
If you cook food once in your life, are you a chef?
If you play an instrument once, are you a musician?
The really GOOD sales guys, the guys who do a lot for us, sales is their career, their profession, something they do practice and hone like a good tech.How could you compare someone who bakes a cake once to a "baker" who does it day in, day out as their main profession?
That's why I'm getting hung up on the definition because it's wrong to label someone an X based on something they do little of.
I don't think your analogy is great though, because nobody cooks just once. I don't think there is any such thing as an IT person who never has to sell someone something, or recommend a solution, or sold something just a few times in their whole career.
If you do technology work, you pretty much have to sell things. Unless you are a tech whose only job is to sit in the back room and like apply scratch protectors to cell phones all day or something. Maybe he doesn't have to sell anything. But any other general purpose tech is going to recommend solutions. They will have to "sell" it one way or another. How does this fix the issue? How does it add value? Increase productivity? Solve a problem? Reduce overall costs? Mitigate risks? These are all selling points, not "features" or requirements.
Speaking of mechanics, they rarely "sell". Usually it's like, "the belt thingy is broke, here is the belt thingy we replace it with on our shelves, costs $x". They typically don't have much to sell, the work is done.
When I replace my tires it's like "we have 3 options, little bear, medium bear, and big bear, which do you want?" I already NEED the tires, the sales are done, I'm just given choices so I can feel like I have a choice in the first place. It's like, you're on death row, you gunna die, but hey we don't want to be pushy so you have three options, firing squad, injection, or watching Hollywood actors discuss politics.
But with IT work, it's like, we really believe you need this, not because you need it, but because we think it will help. Oh and there are 3,683 different providers of said thing.
In this case they don't have an absolute need, we have to "sell" them the benefits of it.
People don't "need" backups, unless they experience data loss.
People don't "need" the extra RAM. They don't "need" a battery backup.
We don't "need" car insurance. Or health insurance, or air conditioning.All those things have to be "sold" to people. It's also why the best sales people don't sell tires or do mechanics. The best sales people sell stuff that people don't actually "need".
I think IT people often have to sell stuff that is very important, or acts as insurance, but isn't absolutely needed. Upgrades aren't needed, more power isn't needed, better software isn't needed. We have to sell it to them.
