Products and Services Your Computer Repair Business Can Sell
Products and Services Your Computer Repair Business Can Sell
Welcome to Call That Girl’s Guide to starting a computer repair and support business blog series. If you found a blog out of order, you can start with the first blog by clicking here How to start a computer repair business. Each blog will lead you to the next one until you reach the final blog.
In this series I will give tips, examples and information about how to start a computer repair business that I learned on my own initially and then later on through the help of online technical resources & friends.
I will also offer advice on what type of computer repair business to start, business and legal information, remote support, products and services you can sell, tools your computer repair business might need, a guide to pricing, a list of resources, and marketing advice.
At this point, I will discuss how your computer repair business can make money off products and services. When I started out, I didn’t even think of selling anything outside of my core services, ever! Please keep in mind that I went out of the gate with guns blazing and didn’t know what I was doing at all. Even my competition wouldn’t be friendly with me, I was the lone ranger.
Yes, there I was the lone rangerette and didn’t know what I was doing, had no experience but knew I was probably not going to make it off break/fix labor rates. When you first start out, the dream of having 10 clients a week as I discussed, can take awhile. But in time, I did figure out what I needed to make more money and that is offer more services and products. Believe it or not, the first service/product I sold was prepay support tickets (see story below). Soon after I found other products to sell by needing to have something to offer my clients. My first product was Malware prevention and detection software. Then as time went on I added more and more. Now after 7 years, I have it fine tuned to just these 3+ more services and my prepay tickets.
- Prepay Tickets
- GFI daily monitoring
- Online Backup
- Office 365 Consulting/Project work
TIP! If you decide not to resell a product, check into affiliate programs. If you sell to the client, some companies offer you a commission on each sale (some companies call it reselling though, even though you don’t do the billing). I know a few companies that do it now, SOS online backup does, as well as AppRiver (for Office 365).
Products & Services you can sell
- Antivirus/Malware Protection:
- Of course you want to consider the fastest selling product, an antivirus/malware product. I started off back in the day reselling SuperAntiSpyware (SAS) and Malwarebytes (MBAM). I sold SAS for $25 for 3 computers (yes, times have changed!) and I sold MBAM for $39. Then as times changed, I started selling a package for MBAM and Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) for $79 and that included free virus removals for a year. Renewal was $49. My “warranty” program worked well as long as you trained the users how to use the products. I’m not joking, this sold well and we make a nice profit on it. Many techs think that these types of warranty programs do not work, but trust me, they do.
- GFI. If you are not familiar with GFI, please check out their services here http://www.gfi.com/ I have a white label remote support partner who managed my GFI sales and monitoring. When I closed my stores I opted to not do the management of GFI, but wanted to of course have the best service out there for my clients. This GFI replaced MBAM and MSE after May of 2014 and we have seen nothing but great sales.
- Off the shelf products such as Norton, McAfee, Avast, Eset, Kaspersky, etc. These products are all available for techs to buy at a lower price, and then you can create a retail sale price that offers you some profit. Many techs who sell these also sell a protection plan for even more money to have a more robust service.
- Online backup – I have sold as an affiliate seller for Mozy in the past and now I resell SOS. I earn a 20% commission off each sale. I sell the installation of the product for $69 to the client. The client pays for the SOS with their own credit card. We do not do any managing of the services after installation. We do charge if the client opts to call us over an SOS issue. Our labor can be 15-30 minutes, but we decided to have one price to cover it all in case it goes longer and to make it easier to manage in our ticket system.
- Acronis backup – This is a product that I am not currently marketing, but am considering for 2015 to offer to businesses. I tried in the past and many didn’t want it. It’s funny how we can try something once, see no interest, then get one client who is hyped about it and then I put it back on the consideration plate. Again, remember…I am telling you about my experiences and failures here, so keep that in mind when reading. If Acronis is configured right, it can save time and money for the client, even though they have to invest initially to get it setup
- Computer hardware parts – Selling hardware was never something I had interest in. But you might. If you have a mobile business, of course keeping some items in your vehicle for a quick sale is recommended. External hard drives, network cords, hard drives, ram, etc. If you have an office, same deal…quick sale stuff is great to have on hand. If you have a store, then you need to decide more in depth what you want to sell. If you are a fully functioning store/shop, then having everything you can sell on hand is important for your repairs, or clients coming in and buying the parts and taking them home and doing it themselves. I have seen both types of sales and that is the difference between Shop vs Store. To me, stores sell parts, shops do the work and don’t sell parts individually.
- Software reselling – I don’t resell any software. Early on I decided that I didn’t want to monkey around with reselling, I would rather charge for labor to help the clients buy the products. So here is an example: Client calls and wants Office 365 home installed, I quote them 1 hour of time (could be less) and then I charge $109 to help them buy it, install it, configure it and send them on their way. I quote an hour because of tech glitches that can arise, but a usual install is 30 minutes or less. Now yes, I could also sell them a version I paid for and then also charge for the labor, but many of my clients are one time break/fix and I just didn’t want to have the responsibility. Again, this is not normal…many techs want the sale from the software and want to manage it all. It’s your choice!
- Computers – Again, selling computers is something I didn’t get into. I know many techs do in their stores and it’s great for them. I will let you know that you need to make this decision on your own and figure out in your budget what you need to get your store rolling with inventory.
- Additional products (routers, monitors, refurbished, etc.) – More “store” stuff here. If you are opening a store, you will need to figure out what equipment and inventory you need to make the store profitable in that area. If you need help, Technibble.com is a technical resource forum and you can browse the forums, create an account, ask for help and ask more detailed questions to this group. I have been a member for 5 years now and it’s invaluable (free membership btw).
- Office 365 – While you might not have enough experience to support Office 365 yet, you will need to get your hands dirty with this one gang. Office 365 is not only the hottest thing out there, it can all be done remotely. I’m doing a lot of Office 365 work right now and many others are as well. What you need to know to support Office 365 for businesses is: Basics of Microsoft Outlook, SharePoint, OneDrive, Lync and Office 2013. You can resell Office 365 yourself, or use a vendor like I do. I like the support and billing to be done through AppRiver. Support is key for me with doing Office 365, I am busy and don’t have time to call Microsoft if there is a problem and they offer 24 hour support, so my clients can call in when there is an issue before calling me.
- Prepay Tickets – In time though, I quickly learned that I wanted and needed to make more money to make it. I remember the first time I started to think outside the box. I had a client call in often for weird small problems and thought, “If I sold him a block of 3 hours and only track the time used…he might buy that”. I sold him my first prepay ticket for $225. I was insane with happiness! After that, I started asking all of my clients to buy the tickets. Some did, some didn’t. Now it’s just part of our sales, prepay tickets. My prices have all since been raised, a four hour prepay is $450, and I sell them often. How it works – I sell a 4 hour ticket for $450, each hour can have 4 calls of 15 each, clients call in for a 15 minute repair and I track in their ticket, 15 min. That actually equals $28 (4 hours divided by 16). The client wins by not paying my regular price and I win and don’t have to do the admin work and collect credit card, client agreement, etc.
Who buys these? Usually busy home clients with many computers and kids, or mostly…business clients.
To read my next blog click here –> Tools You Need to Start Your Computer Repair Business
Call That Girl’s eBooks and Training Videos
Welcome to my eBooks and Videos sales page. Below you will find everything I sell and support as well as some free information at the bottom.
Lisa’s eBooks, all 5 eBooks $39
The Remote Support Guide (Best seller!)
- A step by step guide to setting up your business to have a successful remote support business
- Tips and information on how to service your clients remotely
- How to increase your daily sales with new services, prepay tickets and daily monitoring plans
- Includes templates for email booking appointments, client & project agreement forms, terms and conditions, small business proposal, pricing guidelines and scheduling appointment forms.
The Manual of Operations
- This is an old document but many still like using it for a template
- 40 page Word document
- Delivered as a Microsoft Word Template, easy for “cut and pasting” your business name into the document
- Standard operating procedures
- Employee conditions for employment
- Job descriptions
- Human Resources policies
- Much more…
The Social Media Guide
- 29 page workbook style (outdated but have valuable info!)
- Great tips and tricks that I learned the hard way
- Easy to understand steps on how to push out social media messages
- Newsletters, blogging and WordPress information
- Toolkit information you will need and other things you will need to use social media
- A social media to do list
- How to do a social media blast
The Guide to Microsoft Exchange Migrations
- 22 page PDF
- Step by step instructions on how to do a migration without tools with screenshots
- Learning how to back up current mailboxes, calendars and contacts
- Learn how to update the DNS for migration
- Importing mail/calendars and contacts into new server
- Aftercare lists
- How to sell administrative support tickets
How to Start a Computer Repair Business
- Get all the free blogs in a 48 page PDF
- Conversational Style Guide
$199
Created just for technicians! Outlook is a program that contains a lot of data, lots of moving parts and offers 100’s of features which are all guaranteed to break at some point. As well, it’s the program most used with the Office 365 Business Plans. These videos will train you how to properly prepare, repair and learn Outlook in a 360 view.
What you get with your purchase
- 7 videos
- 4 hours of intense training ~each made in short videos so you can stop & practice
- Access to Lisa’s private Facebook group
SEO/Google Ranking Services
Get found today! So many technician friends I know have great websites up, but not many have good SEO to help them get found. My services help you get found by creating content in your website using your location and your services. I have a starter set for $450 and buy as you like “next level” for $175. No contracts, no monthly fees, just buy as you want.
Click here to learn more and get found on the internet! If you can’t be found, you can’t be called right?
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Need to Hire Me? Below is a list of tech to tech services I provide. Contact me below.
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Category: How to Start a Computer Repair Business
About the Author (Author Profile)
Lisa Hendrickson is the owner of Call That Girl. She is an Outlook Expert and Microsoft 365 Consultant.Subscribe
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