If youre new to small business consulting, you may think there is no such thing as a prospect or client being too enthusiastic about jumping headfirst into a major IT project. Enthusiasm is a good thing when it comes to signing your firms small business consulting contract, right? Well, not always.

Manage Clients Optimism

Although hype isnt exactly a sales obstacle, you need to manage client expectations regarding "unjustified" optimism at your earliest opportunity. During small business consulting projects, there is often a need to combat hype with vertical industry software solutions.

Keeping Clients Expectations Realistic

The small business owner or manager may return from a trade show with a gorgeous glossy brochure (and mouse pad) for an industry-specific application. Since your small business consulting client thinks the application is the best software since Lotus 1-2-3, he is ready to open up his firms checkbook -- but wants to run the application by the internal guru and your small business consulting firm, first.

Although the ISVs marketing literature and Web site seem quite professional, upon further investigation you learn this $5,000 per seat package is built on an MS-DOS-based Clipper database engine (circa 1991).

The Bottom Line about Small Business Consulting

While your client might have been impressed initially with the demo at the trade show, you need to overcome the hype surrounding the application and save your client from making a sizable investment in an application that shouldve been retired or supplanted years ago. Otherwise, your prospect or client may end up squandering scarce IT budgetary resources that could be better invested in the network solution that youre recommending.

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