How do you find the perfect network support client? I've been asked by a consulting company that I work with to come up with a list of attributes for the perfect client. I guess this is possible. Lawyers have been trying to find perfect clients for years. That's rather amusing, because lawyers happen to be at the top of my list as the most horrible clients, but that's another article. So what do we look for as technical people?

Fundamentally, you have to find clients with lots of work and who pay on time. Beyond that, there's many hidden forces involved. The "lots of work" variable should include productive work. Work as a resuilt of upgrading machines, tweaking database performance and streamilining security. Not work reviving NT4.0 workstations, reformatting 266mhz doorstops and desperately bringing SQL 6.5 databases back to life. The clients we want understand the importance of upgrading their environment. They see the value in moving forward, not in paying a consultant hourly rates to move monitors from one desktop to another.

This brings me to clients who pay on time. If a client doesn't like to part with money, that's a bad sign. If you have to give presentations on why upgrading from Windows '95 is a good thing, run the other direction very fast. The best clients are the ones that you develop a relationship to the point where if you recommend something, they buy it and in turn you can ensure them that you will never recommend anything that they don't need.

That's about it. Simple, huh? By the way, if anyone knows any clients that fit this category, let me know... they seem awfully difficult to find.