Backups....You tell customers that word over and over again yet you still find people out there that do not backup their data properly. How many times have you told a customer about backing up their files? Sometimes you go as far as giving them a flash drive and explain how to use it or demonstrate it for them only to have them come back to you about lost data. I actually think people do not realize that it can happen to them. I can't count the amount of times I have had customers lose their data due to hardware damage and either they can't recover it or it's cost a small fortune to recover it. For that reason alone you need to get your customers on an online backup program. Yes, I know of the "great concern" about online backups and security/protection and [+]

Paradigm Shifts for Techs: Managed Services Part 1 by Derek R. Iannelli, IT Strategist, Progressive Integrations, Inc., When I ‘closed’ my first M&S agreement (maintenance & support), I thought I finally figured it out, and if I could sell enough of them, our business would making the American Dream come true. That was 10 years ago. Until this past year, I still had the same thoughts regarding M&S agreements until our economy started to affect our clients too. Instead of the fluidity or automatic renewal agreements (essentially blocks of hours for them to use whatever way they wanted), I noticed a change in our maintenance appointments first. They started to turn them down because they wanted to save their hours. What ended up happening, no matter what type of convincing argument I had, was it inevitably turned into a B/F (break-fix, one-shot, one-kill) [+]