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 <
plug-discuss@stcaz.net> 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 :)
>>
>>
>
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