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Small business development is a make or break activity when starting out as an IT consultant. You need to get your name out there as much as you can. Business won't drop into your lap - you need to use proactive small business development techniques to get things moving.

The foremost method for small business development is reaching out to business organizations. You should try to blanket your entire region. To get this kind of coverage, your small business development takes time.

Plan to get out to 8 to 12 events of all sorts in any given month. To be effective, in your first year of business you should be spending a minimum of 15 to 25% of your time on small business development. If you work a 40 hour week (which is more like a 55 hour week) you should be spending one to two days a week on small business development activities.

Other small business development activities include:

Follow ups

Highly targeted direct mail campaigns

Seminars

Networking

In the first few months, before you have regular clients, you will likely spend 50 - 80% of your time in small business development. You can cut this down once you are on your feet. As your client base improves you can pare your small business develop down to four to six events a month and eventually get down to two to three.

Small business development is more important than your administrative duties and your IT training. You will have plenty of time to take care of those things after you have built up a pool of regular, long-term clients.

The Bottom Line on Small Business Development

Small business development is your job. If it is not most of your job when you first start out then something is wrong. As you get more and more clients your small business development will get progressively less but it should never get to zero. This is the life-blood of your IT consulting business so give it the attention it deserves.

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