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As a consultant involved in small business consulting, your clients may sometimes ask you why they need the more powerful or larger network you are recommending. Many may say their networks work great * most of the time.

Selling Small Business Consulting Clients Fear

When clients question your recommendations or are in denial about their needs, you will often have to sell fear. Talk to the small business consulting client about another customer that trusted his own PC-savvy bookkeeper so much that she was able to steal $50K from the company by covering her trails because no one else was paying attention to the network or its activities. Only the most na*ve clients will trust every employee and person that has access to the building.

Security In Small Business Consulting

In real life, small business owners don't typically think about security until an emergency arises. It's your responsibility as a small business consulting expert to inform your prospects and clients about the importance of addressing security issues. Ask them to think about sensitive files including credit card numbers, social security numbers, trade secrets, payroll information and annual employee evaluations.

Client Needs

Small business consulting clients often are not thinking big enough when they question your recommendations for a different network. This is the point at which you should take the client through a thorough initial consultation, needs analysis, IT audit and site evaluation.

Often a small business owner will just ask for file sharing or e-mail, but if you delve deeper, you will discover the client needs more sophisticated technological elements.

If small business consulting clients say they don't need better data security, you need to dig deeper. Find out where they store sensitive information and figure out how to design systems that will work with their particular needs.

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