Professional Services Question for Everyone

As per my employers price list, $1,000.00 per 8 hour day plus travel expenses.  I built that expense into my proposal and buried it.

The most recent install I did was Papercut.  The customer requested an onsite expert to do the install.  My IT Support suggested they could complete the install remotely and  we did the install over three sessions with www.gotomeeting.com The control of the PC desktop was handed back and forth between the clients IT Manager and my expert.

If I brought the expert in it would have been a disaster.  In the first meeting, the print server was under provisioned and crashed the entire organization for a few minutes.  We had to reschedule.  That would have been $1k down the drain.  The second meeting the IT  Manager thought it would be Ok to use a VM server with only 2 GB RAM.  The app stalled and performed poorly. We had to reschedule.  Another $1k down the drain.  The third meeting with a properly provisioned fresh server as originally requested was complete in two hours.  My total internal support cost was $500.00.  The IT expert actually did most of the install from his home office located hundreds of miles away with zero travel expense cost. Extra gross profit for me because I budgeted $1,500.00 ... priceless!

very interesting...actually a great policy. thanx for this~

I think there may be some confusion with the question.  Not everyone, particularly smaller dealers, are selling professional services or blocks of time. Solutions are treated like copier accessories with a commission bump on the solution software.  As for professional services.....we give a lot of that away.  I can charge what I want for it and I get a percentage of what I charge but for the most part myself and my counterparts are on our own with solutions.  We learn it and support it ourselves.