General Consultant Discussion

Alright, we're doing this thing. We are launching our End User Conference for Sage CRM this November and I would love to hear some feedback. It's real bare bones at this point but we are quickly fleshing out topics (thanks to customer suggestions) and are signing up people. https://www.azamba.com/conference/ The goal is two-fold: 1) Share ""what"" Sage CRM can do for the customers. Many customers barely scratch the surface on how CRM can help them reach their goals and they end up using it as a glorified rolodex with some task management. It can do a ton more and we want to show case this. 2) Share ""how"" Sage CRM can do the cool things. Same as above but going deeper - we will be showing how to do some of these things so customers can be self-sufficient if they choose. The goal is to have some good ol' fashioned, roll up the sleeves working sessions. The hope is that customers will come away feeling good about their investment in Sage CRM and be energized and engage further - either internally or with their consulting partner. I would also love to get a big turnout so if any of you would like to send your customers but have some reason / reluctance on doing so, please let me know. I'm happy to sign a ""no poaching"" agreement and my team will be instructed to turn inquiries back to their partners. I would also happily set up a ""send two, get in free"" deal or something similar so you can attend with your customers. No idea is off the table for me at this point. I think there is a pent-up demand for this type of conference and want to do what I can to make it successful for all - not just Peter Wolf / Azamba - so throw the ideas at me. If this works, maybe it's possible for 90 Minds to take any lessons and apply it to a massive 90 Minds End User Conference? I would happily roll this in to that if it comes to be. I know I first mentioned it last year and several awesome folks volunteered to knock around some ideas with me. I appreciate everyone's patience - it's taken me a *lot* longer than I thought to get this far. It's taken me a lot longer than I thought to get this far. I have to say I'm more than kind of excited for this to materialize. I'm already getting great reception with our clients. We'll see how it all winds up - it certainly is starting nicely! Also - big thanks to @WayneSchulz who, as usual, went out of his way and helped me work through many ideas earlier this year and came up with some great suggestions that were very useful in our planning discussions. @SageCRM @Sage100Routine

Very cool! I know this is something you've been wanting to do for a while. Good luck!

We don't do SageCRM but I can tell you from what I saw in the NAV world, anybody that wants to do a conference that actually educates people versus being nothing but a giant Salesfest, is going to do well. People are tried of conferences being nothing more than an excuse to drink cheap alcohol and mingle with industry friends and process emails during long salesly powerpoint sessions.

Yay! This is the event you said would be partner friendly too, right? And that we could invite our clients, or suggest they go. My client base is tiny, but there's such a need for an event like this. Edited: I missed the More button and you answered my question there.

I hope it's a huge success! Just curious, what venue?

@RobertWood - Thanks - yes I'm excited to finally launch this bad boy. @MarkChinsky - that's kind of my thought too. Too many sales focused conferences and not enough usage conferences these days. @RhondaMcNamara - Yep - that is my hope. I'm looking for suggestions on how to make this work for partners so please let me know if you have any suggestions. @PaulZiliak - We are still investigating. If you have any suggestions for decent venues, I'm all ears. We are thinking somewhere by O'Hare. The biggest challenge I have right now is that I have a decent number of clients saying ""that sounds great and we will send 2 - 3 people"" but no real commitment. So I'm struggling with setting the size. Part of me says I should just get a room limited to 30 people and sell it out. The other part says I'm going to a lot of effort to pull this together so I would like to benefit as many people as possible so I should give it a bit more time to get some real commitment and assess final turnout / get an appropriate room. People will want to know the venue though to plan, budget, and commit so I think I need to go with the first approach: pick a size and lock down the details.

If you survey your Chicago-area customers and ask them for validation on your location choice(s) (O'Hare / Downtown / Naperville, et.) you'll get some good data. Doing so also gives you a great touch point - to encourage their participation in what should be an awesome conference.

Will you have a mobile business for sales-type people segment? xkzero would love to join.

Have you located a karaoke bar yet? @DougHiggs and I might attend.

@PaulZiliak - most of our customers will be traveling in from other areas - we only have a handful of local clients. This is CRM focused so I'm not sure how to loop in xkZero products? I'm open to discussing with you. @JeffSchwenk - No Karaoke on the docket. :(

You still have several months to get it done!!!! BTW, Peter are putting on your church flannel shirt or just wearing an office one for the event?

@PeterWolf CRM is all about sales so I'd think anything complimentary to sales would be interesting - remote order processing is often a hot topic with anyone who does a lot of trade shows, etc. I also think how to setup and ""use that free license"" might be an interesting topic.

A good idea to have one of your best adopting customers give a session and show how they use the software. The Epicor users group is filled with power end users showing how they use the solution.

@JeffSchwenk - I will do what I can. If you can bring a few customers, I can have a special Karaoke night out for ""Friends of Jeff"". @WayneSchulz - We considered that topic (about the free license) we decided to focus on businesses that are already using Sage CRM. This is intended to stay away from the ""why you should buy CRM"" or use your free license and more focused on ""you have Sage CRM so start using it better"" types of topics. That might be the wrong move but I decided the conference should really be training focused and not sales focused. I am happy to do a webinar for those folks who want to know more about using the free license. @MarkChinsky - Wayne suggested that too and we think it's a great idea from a lot of angles including getting users to participate deeper. Do you have any other winning ideas from the Epicor user group?

Make sure you record all screens and audio from meaningful sessions. You can recycle the content for website and youtube listings for additional SEO and prospect traffic establishing Azamba as the goto guru's for Sage CRM

Maybe a dumb question ... are there any partners interested in letting their customers know about a Sage CRM technical conference? Not a Sage sponsored salesy conference ... a real, roll up the sleeves and learn some stuff conference? We are going to a lot of effort to put this on so if you are even marginally interested, I would love to know and discuss a way to make it rewarding for you and your customers.

1. Yes 2. My reward is when a customer comes back and says ""that was a great conference - thank you for making us aware of it

We plan to get the word out to our customers.

I've spread the word already!

Thanks all! For any of you sharing with your customers, would you like to ""resell"" the ticket and make a margin or would you like to attend yourself with your customers? What would you like to see about this conference to make this more partner-friendly?

I do not want to make money reselling tickets. I want detailed info so I can pass along the information and the customer can decide whether it's something they're interested in. The worst thing that I could do is tell a customer to attend and learn about XX and they come back and say that XX wasn't on the agenda. So a detailed idea of sessions. Otherwise I'm not sure how to promote it other than as a general SageCRM conference.

We would not either. We'd either tell our few little clients the we recommend it or go with them.

Thanks to you both. We are soliciting session ideas from early sign-ups and customers. Our plan is to finalize hotel and to drop at least a few session titles in the agenda area by early June.

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