General Consultant Discussion

@Businessofconsulting How many of you are getting e-mails like this from customers who are 3+ years off maintenance... Given that their investment over the past few years has been next to 0, how do you approach? GARY, I AM CONCERNED THAT MICROSOFT IS PHASING OUT ALL SUPPORT, UPDATES AND PATCHES AS THEY RELATE TO WINDOWS XP. AS YOU MAY BE AWARE, WE OPERATE MAS200, VER 4.2, ON WINDOWS SERVER 2003R2 BASED ON XP. DO I HAVE ANY CAUSE FOR CONCERN? IF SO, AND owner DOES NOT WANT TO BRING US UP TO MAS200 VERSION 4.3 OR HIGHER, WOULD YOU SUGGEST ""BLOWING UP"" MAS200 AND MOVING TO SAY QUICKBOOKS MULTIUSER OR SOMETHING OF THAT NATURE AND PERHAPS MOVE US TO THE CLOUD. ANY FEEDBACK AND THOUGHTS WOULD BE GREATLY APPRECIATED.

How do you respond when they bring up QB??? XP isn't going away tomorrow or the next day. If they want to continue with it, that is a business decision that they need to make. The doomsday clock is ticking, who knows how long it will be before it strikes zero. They should be more concerned that they are making a decent backup. I they are that penny wise about staying with v4.2, they are probably at great risk of their server crashing at some point and REALLY be needing their backup....

Ummm.... @JeffSchwenk if they haven't upgraded PCs, servers, or ERP software, what makes you think they've maintained their backups?

In all seriousness, @GaryFeldman, do they have specific issues with MAS 200?

@RobertWood - Exactly my point. An installation of this nature is probably on thin ice for Backups, server integrity, etc. A disaster just waiting to happen.

These are basically invitations to do a free unpaid needs assessment to justify their continued non-payment of Sage maintenance. They've also laid a nice trap for you to reply that ""no there's no problem continuing to use XP"" which if they have PCI or other security obligations may be problematic. I answer these in much the same way I answer the ""should we drop Sage maintenance"" and I recommend they stay current. What they decide to do is up to them but I've been burned enough previously by cheapskates who later call Sage and tell them that I recommended dropping maintenance, etc.

What's difficult to accept -- but we all probably should -- is that a large number of off-plan customers are not really worth our time. Margins with publishers have eroded. Unless there is a lot of ongoing consulting work with the customer what pays for our free (and most valuable ) analysis time? It's one reason I don't get tied up with companies who won't go on my support plan. They become like stray cats - you feed them once and from then on they keep showing up on your doorstep looking for more free handouts.

This customer probably bought MAS90 when quickbooks couldn't handle the users or complexity of what they want. If they are super cheap, they aren't going to spend the money to get current and not your cost of services and the required hardware to do so. I think this may be why Sage came up with the subscription pricing, to save these small low end clients from leaving all together. As to backup and disaster recovery...

@MarkChinsky is 100% correct in that they went to MAS 200 when QB couldn't meet their business requirements. @WayneSchultz

Fat finger @WayneSchulz - Although they are frugal... they were really struggling and almost ""asked permission"" to go off maintenance. At the time there were no reinstatement penalties and I told them you could always pay the back maintenance when the business turns around. I never recommend, and I doubt they would say that I recommended them to go off maintenance. @RobertWood and @JeffSchwenk - It has been years since I went there, but at the time... they did have a tape backup system and a reasonably competent IT outsourced company helping them. Now I concur that the risk of backup is higher than the risk of problem with Sage that this group couldn't handle. With respect to XP, the issue is going to be workstation support. Is online activation required to activate XP or Server 2003? If so, Microsoft won't activate in case of a rebuild.

All this is good, but as currently framed, the owner will only grudgingly upgrade, at best. Maybe try changing the frame. Get the owner/CEO/COO focused on operational reporting (non-period, non-financial) that he isn't now getting. Show some sample, canned dashboards (Sage Intell or BizNet) as bait. If he wants to start exploring how he can get daily/weekly data like that, then you focus the the Vision to that. Propose a small project to just identify what they can do to achieve this, and the upgrade, and more, comes out of that. Your investment in that is maybe 20 minutes to pull together the visuals, and 30 minutes on the phone with him if he bites. In the phone call, you aim for a verbal agreement to the Vision project, complete with the price to do it. 80% chance you don't hear anything after the email with the dashboard lures. But it's 95% chance you will waste a lot of time if just talk upgrade and compatibility.

Thank you for the response Jerry as approach is what we are looking for. This is not some off plan orphan calling us out of the blue looking for a free upgrade, but a customer we have had a good relationship in the past potentially looking to come back or leave. The person who wrote the e-mail was not there in the good old days, but came after the hard times.

In theory this is all great however in practice that most companies are heads down doing daily work. Until there's a major source of pain they pretty much nod their head to whatever you suggest and move along in their day to day. In the ""good old days"" this source of pain was usually growth. Companies acquiring or being acquired. How many of us have customers who use Purchase Order like a typewriter to issue a PO ? How many Sage users have accurate inventory to all dimensions - qty, pricing, demand? I'm probably completely incompetent and inept. However I've been in situations where I demonstrate a feature like Paperless Office or Bank Reconciliation Import or ACH for AP. They just nod and until there's pain they pretty much go about their day. Owners nod and are a little more attentive to BI type stuff. There still needs to be pain to get them to sign a check. .02

I don't disagree with you at all. Notice I had pretty low probabilities of success in my narrative. Said differently, my approach is fishing for a different type of pain than is expressed through the accounting dept or IT. If you don't drop the lure in the water you won't find any fish. Changing lures sometimes helps. That's all.

My partner Jeff has been saying for years (basically since 2000), ""unless the prospect is in EXCRUCIATING pain, they aren't going to pull the trigger"". Now if you are based in silicon valley, or the oil & gas fields of Texas, you experience might be different, but the rest of us living in this 'slow motion' economy typically only see serious projects when the pain is excruciating

And these are now more often than not what I'd term ""Just In Time"" projects. The customer who has deferred fixing that mission critical report until 6 hours before they absolutely positively must have accurate numbers for the board meeting.

I think we're on the same page here. I'm just saying that some of us, by talking only to the Controller or his/her assistant, is not seeing signs of pain felt elsewhere in the organization. It doesn't hurt to fish there. In any selling expedition, you're always looking for the 10% who can qualify. Most don't bite.

Or we can just pull up our rods and go home... @MarkChinsky - Coming from the north I always thought the south was slow, but business is brisk here or we live in different worlds.

Over the past couple years of my 90 Minds membership I've developed the distinct sense that members' customer bases have different characteristics. Now, my customer base is pretty small, and I need to change that. But Wayne's and Mark's are quite different, even from each other. I think that is important to keep in mind as we all find our ways to The Future. Wayne did (and still does) a lot of trial and error experimentation to find approaches to customers that works for his situation. Some of his results apply to all of us, some to some. Mark has a large firm, with many customers larger than most of us have. I love the diversity here. I am constantly asking myself, ""Could that work for me? How?"" So please take any of my comments on sales and customer behavior from that perspective. I do try to be explicit when we've made something work vs. just trying it out. I still maintain that most Sage 100 customers are drastically underutilizing the potential of their system. Some will figure it out and many never will until something changes in their world. This cartoon has been true for a long time. (I first came across it in my first high-tech sales job 30+ yrs ago). It doesn't mean the salesman in it is going to quit.