Sage News and Discussion

Get 20% on referrals to Sage ERP X3 that close within 6 months. Can be both existing and new users. Must meet minimum Sage ERP X3 referral qualification requirements. I am asking Sage PR what those minimum qualifications might be. They did verify that this would be valid for existing Sage customers as well as new ones. Seems like a sweet deal to me given that margins on products we have to work the demo, presales and do the consulting on won't net such a high margin.

It also is a reminder that MAS & accpac are dead and this is the future for new deals.

Is new license commission the same as cash?

This would be cheezy if it was just product / tier related credit..

The previous referral program included tier credit also, which is not specifically indicated with this one, except it is implied by the term ""new license commission"". I'm not sure about the future of Sage 100 ERP and Sage 300 ERP based on this, but it is obvious to me that Sage 500 ERP will be threatened if this push is successful. I wish Sage would be more open about this, because we were considering starting again with 500, since we have all the certs, but if it's going to be dead, that would be a waste of time. We don't run into the type of company that would benefit from X3. Even our 50 - 75 user installations of 200 are happy with their systems, and don't need the X3 functionality. This promotion would only be valuable if we changed our marketing approach and were contacting these types of companies, which doesn't seem worth it for 20%.

500 is dead, don't waste your time

+1 Mark. I would even think about diversifying

I'm sure glad I said ""considering"". That was the original reason we dropped 500 last year. Apparently no one told Linda Cade yet.

Our huge selling point as vars offering our own access agreements is we give pros/cons on solutions. I spend about 20 minutes giving a frank assessment on my opinion of the state of development for portions of MAS. Sage support cannot do this - or they'd likely be fired. This is a huge selling point for us. Of course it means the pay as you go type customer is in jeopardy of leaving us for Sage.

Sage PR said the only requirement to earn commissions is that you must attend a 1 hour seminar on X3. I'm going to sit in on the rollout of this tomorrow to see if any more details come about.

I have to wonder how long the sales cycles are for a product like X3.

Still a 20% commission is not bad. For a long time I've felt Sage was wrong to squeeze new deal commissions because once sold those customers are valuable recurring revenue.

Not dramatically longer than mas90

The reason I asked about the sales cycle is you have a six month window for the close. I have never liked those types of deals - what happens if they close in month seven?

Most X3 VARS will probably offer 25% (or more) and give you a longer time if you just go to them directly with the lead. It saves them from having to wonder if Sage passes the lead to them or a competitor.

So how much of the 20% comes from the Var's margin vs. Sage? That tells you how much more you can get on the side with the Sage VAR to double dip.

MAS90 and X3 deals can easily stretch to 9-12 months these days. It sucks.