Have you ever considered what something costs you? Let’s consider a service plan; it doesn’t matter what kind of service plan; it can be for a vehicle, a website, accounting services or even for your computer. Often, we don’t want to pay the cost of a service plan at all, I mean how could anything we have possibly stop working?
Let’s use a computer plan for an example. My Computer Service Tech, Chris is the most amazing person, (he is also a great friend). Often, it seems the only thing I have to do is tell my computer I am calling him and the machine starts doing what it was supposed to. Sometimes though, I really do have to call him in. At first I figured I would save money by just paying him on an hourly basis when I needed him. But that meant that I would wait until I had no choice but call him and then it would take twice as much time and at an hourly rate that could cost me at least $300.00 per visit and even if that was only twice a year. Doing that, I was spending $600.00 a year or more, minimum. Now Chris offers a service plan that he will come do maintenance once a quarter automatically – I just make an appointment and he comes – no extra fees or anything – and it is way less then what I was paying before and it keeps me from throwing my computer out the window.
Just this week my husband came across this issue with one of his clients – the client had purchased a website hosting package before consulting with the one building his website and had chosen the cheapest hosting plan available. The problem was, that the one they had chosen was very limited. The client wanted a blog and they needed the ability to use a contact us page on their website – these are both very basic needs, but the package they had chosen would not support either of those because they wanted a cheap option. It turned out that the option they had chosen because it was cheap was costing them $20 a month or $240 a year. After evaluating all the options, it turned out that the package they needed was $30 a month or $360 but if it was purchased for three years you received a discount. That discount brought it down to a total of $450 for all three years making the monthly cost only $12.50. That made the more expensive plan the cheapest and gave them the options they needed to build a website they could be proud of.
Remember the phrase, “Penny wise and pound foolish?” Every business is obligated to save as much money as possible, but don’t let being frugal stand in the way of your business goals – spend the money required to make your business run as smooth as possible and you will find it growing. You can also make your business go stagnate by not spending the money necessary to keep your technology up to date. Any time you need to analyze which option is not only best for what you need but also the best bang for your buck give us a call we can help.