There are a couple of questions that are asked a lot, which are, what are managed services and what does it mean? If I am small or a big business owner what good will managed services do for my business? The trend in the small business computer space has been this push towards managed services over the recent years; everybody wants to jump on this managed services bandwagon. Is this the magic spell that will save your small business practice? Trends are shifting towards software and hardware as services rather than products but what does this mean to the owners of small businesses? Managed service in the small business computer space is really a service offering small business specialists are using to extend a level of service where they can better take care of small business technology needs. It offers a full-time computer help desk or IT department that allows the small business to focus on their business and leave the headaches associated with technology to their trusted solution provider.Clients needs are the most important; his is where our focus should be all the time what the client needs. However, is the market fully aware of what the client needs from a managed services approach to computer support? Do small businesses really want managed services? Everyone in the IT space is jumping on this bandwagon and believe they know what the client needs with managed services but have they forgotten to ask the client. The problem is that today's small business consultants and owners of small business computer shops are too focused on delivering this managed offering but they forget about their clients needs. In conferences the same conversations are always occurring around how to compensate employees, how to bill, what services are offered and many more about how to the deliver the service. Why is this? Are we as computer consultants losing focus on what is important to our business?

Managed services needs to be positioned to small business owners in such a manner it brings real advantage to the small business, the "managed services" terminology is a predictable expense for a small business. Their IT support can now become a consistent expense throughout the course of the year which lets a small business budget the IT support throughout the year. The small business market is made up of four buying groups which are stable, mass target, tipping and tipped. The tipped market is actively looking for a new solution to resolve their pain; these are the 3% of the market that are actively looking to replace their existing services. The tipping group can be tipped over to a new approach to help with their needs; these are the 7% of the small business market that can be persuaded to look into new offerings to healthier their business. The mass target is an approachable group that may not be aware they need a new solution. They are unaware that their IT systems are having challenges or specific areas are not even being looked after; 40% of your potential sales can come from this market. The stable market is not even looking; this is about 50% of today's small occupational marketplace.