In addition add 8 hours to get yourself up to speed. I had someone from DSD handle this who was an expert.
My observation :
- Customer wants a “demo” aka free needs analysis done live in front of them.
- IF you know their requirements you’ll probably prep 8-10 hours just to perform the initial consult
- expect 3-5 straggler “ can you check on this” questions
- now hopefully they knew the price beforehand because you quote it and someone mentions “doing this in Excel”
- so all told you’re 10-12 hours into a pre-sales ( which I found Sage no help with ) for a project that may have 25% chance of closing ( ymmv )
BTW, remove Fixed Assets and substitute Sage Intelligence for my experience with SI as well except I rarely close SI consulting because I’m forced to do it during the “free demo”
And, yes, all of this is ymmv depending on the customer and your relationship with them. I’d say every one of my FA or SI incoming inquiries go this way.
Much faster to pay someone to demo for an hour where they can answer every question up front than spend hours preparing.
Spoiler: in probably 50-75% of my cases the customer “no decisioned” and came back 6-9 months later wanting to start over.
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Wayne Schulz - Schulz Consulting - 860-516-8990
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