As you are writing your computer business plan, you need to think about a very important question: WHO will be benefit from your services?

Many computer business owners make the mistake of chasing after prospects that only need services now and on a short-term basis.  What you should be doing however is marketing to those prospects that will be with you for many years to come and bring you predictable, steady revenue.  This is the core, but potentially $100,000+ difference between transactional-oriented cherry-picking, one-shot-deal customers and long-term, steady, high-paying great clients.

Although many mistakenly use the terms customer and client synonymously, it's a huge oversight because of their enormous differences in long-term potential to your computer business.

They fail to see how working for fly-by-night customers will leave them scrambling to make their next buck and dissatisfied as they move from customer to customer, never establishing solid, mutually-beneficial relationships that can make computer consulting work more rewarding and successful.

Consider the following 4 ways to build a computer business plan around the needs of great clients, rather than one-shot deal customers.

1. Think About Customer and Client Acquisition Costs.  As you are creating your computer business plan, think about the time and money that will go into your marketing campaigns.  Customer or client acquisition costs are simply defined as those time and out-of-pocket expenses that can be directly traced to the acquisition of new customers or clients.  In order to measure this correctly, you need to have controls and techniques in place to help you measure where your customers or clients originate.
2. Track the Origins of Your Customers and Clients.  Tracking where your customers and clients originate is critical to understanding how to get more of the clients that will stick by you long term ... and less of the customers that have no interest in building long-term relationships.  For example, when you send out a postcard or other piece of marketing collateral to a set of leads or prospects, you can send them to a Web site landing page to fill out a form, register for a free seminar or request a free CD.  If you use a special URL and landing page, you easily can count how many clicks you got and how many sign-ups you got.  Then after the campaign, you can measure which percentage of sign-ups got qualified, which ended up becoming customers or clients and finally, how much new and eventual revenue can be traced to these specific new customers or clients from that specific campaign.
3. Measure How Much Time and Money Goes into Seminars and Relationship-Building Events.  You need to know how much time and money goes into the seminars that you hold for your prospects, customers and clients, so you can understand the cost of acquiring a real client... and even more importantly, understand exactly what a really great client is worth to your computer business.  As a simple example, think about what would happen if you invested $1,000 and 16 hours of time (that you value at $100 per hour) planning, marketing and holding a seminar event.  From this, perhaps you got a new customer that spent initially $400.  Then, that same customer might become a steady, high-paying client on a $12,000 per year on-going service contract.  This basically means you spent $2,600 in money and time finding a new client that was worth $12,400 in the first year of your relationship.  The client acquisition cost was $2,600.  But what if you didn't push on-going service contracts, and that client just spent $400 with you once?  Then, that $2,600 cost was certainly not worth the trouble.  The customer vs. client mindset makes all the difference in your computer business plan.
4. Target Clients with Your Marketing Activities.  Unless you have a huge Fortune 1000-sized marketing budget, you have to work smarter when it comes to marketing.  You have to focus on small businesses that are most likely to become steady, high-paying clients.  There's a world of difference in the lifetime profitability potential or lifetime value between customers and clients.  As you design your computer business plan, you can't afford to market to any companies that don't have the potential to become steady, high-paying clients.  The targeting and lead qualification becomes mission critical.