[blooalien]

> When you tell them what could and will happen they will just shrug it off like you are trying to sell them useless bs.

Exactly. It's that mentality which drove me to small-scale contract IT work for smaller "mom and pop" organizations. Give them a fair price and do good work and most of them are happy to have your services, treat you with respect, and are often more than happy to trade knowledge and services for equivalent exchange of same. This can lead to much "win /win/everybody wins!"

And if you take a contract that plays out in an unsatisfactory way, it's easy to simply turn down further contracts from the one problematic customer. More time to give your loyal customers, or hunt down a better customer to replace the bad one. ;)

[corty]

I think there are 3 stages:

Inexperienced, will buy anything that sounds good and trustworthy, no matter whether snakeoil or real deal, because they don't know better. That is most mom&pop shops.

Burned, will buy/do nothing, because when they were inexperienced they were sold/told crap. Now they trust no-one and also think they can save money.

Experienced, when they had a real disaster in the burned stage, recognized their lack of proper tools and manpower as a reason. Now they try to evaluate suggestions properly through inhouse expertise. Only possible if large enough.

[blooalien]

> Inexperienced, will buy anything that sounds good and trustworthy, no matter whether snakeoil or real deal, because they don't know better. That is most mom&pop shops.

Since switching to contract IT work and coming in much more direct contact with "mom & pop" shops than I did in prior years, I've come to realize that most "mom & pop" shops are far more business savvy than they're often given credit for. They mostly just don't have access to any sort of fair and reasonably priced IT folk who ain't tryin' to scam them outta house and home.

I've found that by offering that fair price and quality work, I can gain a level of loyalty that results in me not even needing to advertise my services to have more than enough work and profit to keep me goin' and happy with my career choice. "Word of mouth" is by far the best advertising you could ever ask for anyhow… Nothin' beats trust for generating "brand loyalty" and return business.

> Experienced, when they had a real disaster in the burned stage, recognized their lack of proper tools and manpower as a reason. Now they try to evaluate suggestions properly through inhouse expertise. Only possible if large enough.

I've come across these folk as well. They also tend to be able to recognize instantly when they're not bein' taken advantage of. This type has always been a good loyal customer type worth putting in a bit of extra effort for, too. Having been "burned" before, they recognize the value of payin' a fair price to an honest hardworkin' tech.

> Burned, will buy/do nothing, because when they were inexperienced they were sold/told crap. Now they trust no-one and also think they can save money.

The saddest example of the three, because they'll continue to suffer because their trust had been abused.