General Consultant Discussion

File this under I BET YOU ALL HAVE SEEN THIS BEFORE. One of my customers that never talks to us called me late Monday afternoon and told me that his sales team was looking at replacing Sage CRM with Salesforce because they couldn't get the reports that they needed. After reviewing specifics with him, the interesting thing is: 1. He can have the reports he wants in Sage CRM. 2. He has been too cheap to ever pick up the phone and call us for assistance so he doesn't have what his team wants. 3. He is sweating buckets because Salesforce is going to be a TON more expensive than Sage CRM. He asked me to put together an estimate for how long the reports would take in Sage CRM. I explained that he hadn't provided enough details to even get a handle on the ballpark estimate. He didn't care for that answer as he needed something to show his team that Salesforce is a waste of money. I hadn't gotten back to him by end of Tuesday and he left me a nasty message saying ""if you are too busy to handle our request, I will need to go to a new partner as the Salesforce deadline is Thursday."" I've been struggling with this cold that's going around so it's true that I've been moving in slow motion but I was thinking about the big picture ... he waited until the last minute to reach out and now he's pissed off at me and ready to ditch me for a different partner. He's no customer of mine. I told him the reports would be $50K to build and asked him to let me know if I can be of further assistance. Fun with consulting.

Typical these days. This is why you need a vibrant business so you can tell customers like this to 'f_ck' off (which I'm sure are the words you used :) )

Well ... I was more diplomatic. I think the quote speaks for me. The good news is if he accepts the quote then we can actually have a good relationship. If he doesn't, I haven't lost a thing.

Then there's the opposite where we respond immediately and the client or prospect puts the project on hold or can't make a decision after claiming it was a priority (finances not an issue). I met with a prospect yesterday that we worked on 5 years ago. Don't know if they are any more ready orgainizationally, but their CPA told them they can't continue with what they have.

Just to finish up the loop here - just got off a call with this guy and it looks like they will be a real live customer soon. They decided to forego the $$$ to switch to Salesforce and want to hear my ideas on how to spruce up their Sage CRM implementation. I think it's a good move for them (SFDC was going to cost them $250K more than Sage CRM over a 5 year period) and am looking forward to helping them out.

That's great news Peter.

@PeterWolf Aren't you glad you listened during Sage Sales Academy?

So is there really anything special about Salesforce? Clearly they have some 'automagical' brand recognition, but have no idea if their actual sauce is anything special versus say SageCRM, Microsoft CRM or Saleslogix

No, Mark, it's the same reason manufacturers contact Epicor first.

@MarkChinsky My honest opinion is that there is nothing special about Salesforce for the SMB market. In fact, you pay a high premium for the name recognition. Here's a quick back of napkin comparison on pricing: SFDC (5 year, single user): $7,500 Sage CRM (5 year with GOLD M&S): $1,789 You *might* be able to get away with the lower version of SFDC which is: $3,900 for 5 years. Still ... is it worth twice the premium? No way.

sfdc gets lots of traction from the very-large set of 3rd parties that are compatible. Especially in the marketing functionality. The 3rd parties are the one doing the selling of their specialties, and pushing sfdc makes their life easier because they know it. salesforce is significantly more expensive than just about anything else. You only go up in price over time, Never down. And it's devilishly hard to end the contract because they are evergreen. IMO they have become the IBM and ACT! of CRM now. Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM. And in the 90's just about all salespeople were familiar with the ACT! interface; now that's true of salesforce. But if you can get into a rational discussion with business and sales managers of a firm, it's not too hard to show them how Sage CRM or SalesLogix is a much better thing for them.