General Consultant Discussion

Got this invitation from Sage. Not sure what to think of it. Have others received this email? We've got intelwe don't want to miss sharing it with you. Set your appointment by November 15 to receive a free Fitbit Flex. Dear Ronald: Last week Sage invited you participate in a pilot program specially developed for business executives like yourself. Sage is following up on the invitation because the organization believes in the value that the Executive Business Review can bring to your business. After listening to the needs of your peers, Sage created the EBR as a one-on-one conversation designed to deliver what executives like yourself want: Industry insights Intel on the top priorities of your peers Discussion of your own top priorities for 2014 A brief analysis of how Sage can help meet those goals In less than one hour, the Sage EBR will provide intel that can have a significant impact on your business in 2014 and beyond.

Interesting. This seems somehow vaguely familiar - did someone get one of these before? Found this online -- sounds like a sales call to sell more Sage -- http://voicebunny.com/projects/1-sage-erp-executive-business-review-video

Interesting, I thought I received the email as a partner but apparently as a Sage customer probably because our CPA firm uses Sage FAS.

Very interesting. This was the ""foot in the door"" that the now defunct cross sell team within Sage was using to start conversations with the customers of partners with less than 50 customers.

Not sure what to think. I have a little less than 50 active accounts but I don't think our company is listed as a customer under ourselves.

Sage's databases are so screwed up, I just shake my head. You should sign up for the ""free"" consultation just to see what they are trying to do......

Sounds like going to the dentist. Would be an interesting conversation if I don't let on i'm a partner.

You should do it and report back. LOL

i'll do it and let you all know.

I'm sure a low level person reads off a series of script questions, and in the end you should buy SageCRM & X3 to solve all your woes

I disagree Mark - they are building a team of sales professionals who are going to steadily become trusted advisors to the customers. I know you were sort-of making a joke here but I don't think Sage efforts around this initiative should be casually disregarded. Their goal is to build tighter relationships with the customers. Not necessarily to supplant the partners but it is a very possible side effect.

I don't think a remote telecenter can build a relationship as a professional, but let's see what Ron's impression is of the experience and expertise of the person on the other end and should a president or CEO consider them a useful source of advice.

Pure Speculation: What if Sage told partners that they could no longer bill for maintenance and assigned each customer a business representative? I think that might change the interaction level between Sage and customer. Whether this every happens -- or if Sage is even capable of executing -- I have no idea. But I think if I were Sage I'd be looking at this scenario very closely.

One of my long time BusinessWorks customers received this invitation and accepted a meeting with them. He called me to find out what it's really about and invited me to attend the web meeting posing as one of his office staff. I'm very interested to hear Sage's direct message and approach.

Got an appointment for Nov 5. We'll see.

Can we do a go to meeting conference call so we can all listen????

I participated in the Executive Business Review today with our Regional Account Manager, Karen O'Callaghan. She had become aware that I was a partner before the appointment and said she didn't know how I was invited but she went through the Power Point with me so I could see what Sage would be doing with customers. The invitations were targeted to distribution customers of small resellers (not sure if this is the 50 customer size that Peter mentioned). Karen said that if the customer doesn't know who their reseller is and thus doesn't have a relationship with them Sage would sell directly to the customer but this wasn't their intent. The presentation includes asking the customer what they're needs are and what they'd like to accomplish in the coming year. The presentation includes discussion of Sage resources such as the self-service portal with knowledgebase and real time quotes, Sage University courses, Sage City Community, and Sage support center. Discussion of product resources include Sage CRM (a priority), inventory advisor, Sage Intelligence, Sage Payment solutions, fixed asset software, sales tax software, web portal modules, and information on dashboard features. Karen would arrange product specialist demos if needed. She said that if I wanted help selling one of these products she would set up the demos and include me in all meetings. I must not be a small reseller as I am not aware of any of my clients getting one of these invitations. I have approximately 90 listed customers with approximately 50 of them being current on support. She also mentioned Sage coming to various cities to present similar information. In Honolulu in February there will be one day for both partners and customers but she said in larger cities there would be a separate day for customers and partners although partner could come to the customer day also. Hope this helps.

Thanks for the details Ron. Karen is pretty good in my opinion so you are fortunate. Smaller resellers is defined by the fifty or less customers benchmark. Introducing all those Sage resources can be looked at as a positive or negative. I feel - despite many people's gut feelings otherwise - that the Sage model can be (and will be) effective in building trusted advisor relationships over time. It's smart to keep their approach in mind as we conduct business. Ideally find a way to take advantage of what they are doing to supplement our own initiatives.

Mahalo!

I agree Peter. Karen seems good. I also agree that introducing customers to all the resources can go either way depending on the client. I agree about building the trusted advisor role and building Sage into that. I also think working with Sage can prevent future problems. I know CRM is a priority for Sage and for me with small clients I haven't been able to figure out how to get this large complicated CRM software to work for small clients without large resources or expertise. Any ideas would be helpful. thanks.

Well heck ... now you're speaking my language. Shoot me an email or give me a call and I will chew your ear off on Sage CRM strategies (marketing, sales, and implementation).

That call sounded like a giant bait & switch compared to the intro letter. If I was the 'business executive' I thought I'd be getting valuable business insights from the call Instead they got a bunch of powerpoint trying to sell them every single other product sage has in their portfolio. Almost all of which are built around recurring subscription models.

Based on what I've seen, the foot in the door approach has been effective with starting the conversations with the customers. Where those conversations go is dependent upon the skills of the individual making the calls. As a group, resellers should not dismiss these efforts because Sage is going to keep trying and re-working this approach to improve it and build these relationships.

Calling somebody to give them a powerpoint of every add-on option available really isn't relationship building. It's inside tele-sales

It's the foot in the door to start the relationship. Dismiss it all you want.

The fact that the Regional account manager is making the call means that relationship building is very possible. This isn't a telemarketer with a script. The person I talked to was very personable and very knowledgeable and wasn't tied to a script.

It would be nice if Sage would give us a heads up before they embark on relationship building / sales or whatever it is they are doing with the customer I brought to them. It certainly doesn't appear to be a business review.

They've been talking about taking this approach for over a year now. And I've been talking about it in these forums. No one notices until it's happening to them though. (I'm not aiming that at you Doug - it's human nature and I am exactly the same way.)

I think at one point they were advertising something like this (or maybe this exact thing) as part of the Sage support plans.

@PeterWolf I'm probably in denial! :-) How well can one build a relationship to the point of being a trusted consultant when you haven't ever looked them in the eye and shaken their hand? ...... never walked through your warehouse, yet I'm going to recommend an inventory solution.

Wow, @DougHiggs, very freaky as I just said the same thing on your thread. You owe me a coke!!!!

Or in @WayneSchulz case, a Diet Pepsi