subject: How IT Contractors Can Make Heaps More Money [print this page] Great Idea Great Idea
You have a great idea or an area of business knowledge that would be very useful to major companies.
What IT folk normally do is:-
1) Spend ages developing the software for this great new idea
or
2) Go and speak to likely customers to sell the idea to them
Mistake
The first is normally a great mistake. There must be a huge number of unused lines of code across the world that came about this way. What the major IT companies do is to try to sell the idea to a customer who might want to buy it first. This is called "proving the concept". If they can't find someone who would want to buy it, then it is not worth building is the argument.
Of course, this first customer is given it at a cut price or even given it free, provide that they sign up for X number of years to pay for the running of it.
Better still
The second is better but you don't have the marketing capability, or the credibility to pull it off especially if this is a major project.
So what do you do?
The steps are:-
1) Examine what you have to offer
2) Look around for major supplier companies that don't have this capability
3) If no one has this capability, that's good. However, if Bigco's rivals have this capability and they don't, that would work too - especially if you can convince them to get into that market.
Close, but No Cigar
I did this once before with CMG, and met them several times, but I couldn't quite convince them that it was a lucrative enough market to get into.
It was very close though and I had several meetings with their senior people.
What I should have done was have a Marketing person on tow.
I can think of quite a few mistakes or omissions that I made then, which may have made a major difference in selling the idea.
For instance, I knew the market, and who wanted to buy this type of system, but I didn't even give them the names of these potential customers.
I didn't want to give such information away too early, but this might have made all the difference.
The Solution?
So, what's the solution?
I once went to meet a guy from a senior fixer company in IT. Having a drink with him after the talk, he said that if he had a database of IT guys with ideas, and a database of marketing people, then he would make a mint. The marketing capability is one that pretty much all IT people lack.
However, if IT people were more organized, and had a trade association, then they might be able to have access to this sort of facility and advice centrally.AS they haven't, then it might be worth investing a little bit of money in getting marketing advice, or even taking the marketing person in tow. Check out IT Contractor Mortgage and IT contractors.
How IT Contractors Can Make Heaps More Money
By: John MichelCane
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