A seminar/lecture from a services marketing expert would be an excellent use of a PLUG meeting. Topics to be covered might be: Advertising [best bang for the buck] do's and dont's, salesmanship, selling yourself, business presentations, pricing do's and dont's, building a steady clientel, dealing with various problems from a human/customer/business prespective, geek vs "polished professional consultant" what type of situations each is appropriate for [yes there REALLY are appropriate places for BOTH] bundling hardware & our services, building an ongoing hardware/software support business, how to handle payment problems in such a way so as to build not harm the relationship you have with a customer helping the customer solve their problems can make you even more $, when is it appropriate to bring in other expertise as opposed to doing it yourself, when and how to say no/referring a customer to another provider, building relationships with hardware and software suppliers as a consultant vs as a regular customer/getting discounts because you sold their products/services for them, true excellence vs hype, communicating to a customer in a non technical manner the nature of a problem and the difficulty of solving it, other marketing related topics as we can think of them. Lynn Joseph Sinclair wrote: >I think having an, occasional, presentation on business topics >(especially doing business using Open Source and/or GNU/Linux) would be >a beneficial addition to the PLUG community. I'd certainly attend at >least some of them. > >==Joseph++ > >Bryan.ONeal@asu.edu wrote: > >>We have enough people here we could probably come up with a series of small >>business lectures (After all I do have two business degrees and have no >>problem telling people when their making tax mistakes ;) >> >>In addition I think we have some one on the list who has an MBA from Harvard >>and several people who have successfully run their own business... And >>several other who where less then successful ;) >> >>I know the accounting, some others know HR, some others know law... Could be >>fun... Could flop... But it's an idea :) >> >> > >--------------------------------------------------- >PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us >To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change you mail settings: >http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss > __________________________________________________________________ Switch to Netscape Internet Service. As low as $9.95 a month -- Sign up today at http://isp.netscape.com/register Netscape. Just the Net You Need. New! Netscape Toolbar for Internet Explorer Search from anywhere on the Web and block those annoying pop-ups. Download now at http://channels.netscape.com/ns/search/install.jsp