General Consultant Discussion

Great way to end the week! Just got this e-mail from our Sage Regional Partner Manager. Does this mean that our RAMs are also selling direct? ""Hi Mike, I have been working with an existing PFW customer and they are migrating to Sage 100. I have demo'd for them Sage 100 & 300 and they chose to go with Sage 100. Since the migration is free there is no revenue to this deal and I am selling them direct some additional modules that they need. Linda Chizek is the customers consultant and she will be calling you to interview you and your services. They are going to need a Sage 100 partner to help them implement Sage 100 Distribution bundle. This is just to give you heads up. I have given her another BP contact as well. Please let me know when you hear from her.

OMG - they demo'd it, sold additional modules and threw you to the clients consultant to be one of two BPs interviewed? What a great RAM! And I bet the clients ""consultant"" will be crawling through the web for other interviewees.

Suggestion: find the Sage Pro and PFW consultants in your area and setup a relationship before Sage starts a race to the bottom.

Hopefully, this is ONLY being sold direct because it's a free migration.

And of course Sage folks are well qualified to do the detailed due diligence and will stand beside you when it won't do what their other product did.

This is disturbing, but not shocking to me. It does raise a tactical/nearly-strategic question for us: - how much can we/do we want to reach out to those other partners? (It is a lot of work to set it up, and the rewards might be few) - do we want to set up our customer-intake system to model what @MarkChinsky is doing with the direct customers of Epicor?

I think if Sage sells the deal they need to do the implementation as well. If all ""business partners"" refused to assist with he implementation then maybe Sage would realize how important it is to get the BP involved on the front end.

Just when I thought unions were a thing of the past! I'd participate, without question. While I can't blame Sage for trying to take the lead on these deals, I don't relish the thought of being interviewed for an implementation, along with a couple competitors. That's the findaccountingsoftware.com model, which sucks.

And another thing... He says ""there is no revenue in this deal"", then proceeds to let you know that he is selling ""additional modules"". I wonder if the new BP will get margin on the maintenance.

This is similar to prospects who buy the software (obviously at a discount) from another reseller and then call other partners about doing the implementation. Part of the justification from the prospect and from Sage is we didn't have to spend any time selling the product. They clearly have no understanding of our model, where we require a paid business process review.

Get used to this. Remember you don't have to offer spend the time going through the software sales cycle and your contract should disclaim all fitness liability. The sales cycle for the services should be alot less. Also don't expect any margin on the,maintenance

I wouldn't have an issue with no margin on any software or maintenance and we are involved as certified consultants, as long as Sage would agree to the following: 1. We have unlimited support cases for certified status. 2. Consultant training is at no charge. 3. Sage encourages paid business process reviews prior to software sales. 4. Implemented customers are aligned with us in some way. 5. We don't have to deal with Sage sales people calling us every week, month and quarter. There are probably other requirements, but just as Sage shows little respect for the channel, I doubt they have any more respect for professional business consultants. As we eventually are forced into the role of consultants only, it opens up the field to recommend any number of ERP solutions. Because all of these projects are paid, we should also be more profitable.

This whole cycle can be broken if you do not give any free consulting time up front. The interaction with the customer is simply handshake and providing some background information. I predict most of the demand here will be from C or D level customers looking for the lowest hourly rate to provide technical consulting with very little opportunity for recurring revenue. The first question that all consultants should ask is ""what's the realistic opportunity for recurring revenue"". When the answer is none or low - then there should be VERY little incentive to take on that customer.

And Sage is pushing VERY hard on this cross-sell and you are going to see quite a few D and F level customers who Sage will push you to make a sale. Be ready to do as Mark says and disclaim all liability in writing and be explicit about whether you will accept returns (a high number of these customers have self-diagnosed, waived any need for advance consulting and expect that if they've diagnosed incorrectly that they'll just return their purchase). I will not allow credit card purchases from these prospects as I don't want to deal with chargebacks, etc.

Thank you all for the comments. I'll definitely avoid the free consulting trap, and I love the idea by @MarkChinsky to disclaim all fitness liability. This really sucks. We're working to maintain tier and now I have the distraction of buttressing up their mystery sale.

This story gets better. Had a teleconference with the consultant this morning. My RAM promised them 7 years of data conversion! Her ""technical"" inside salesperson said ""sure, that can be done with Visual Integrator."" In investigating this further, there appears to be a Data Migrator for Sage 300 (ACCPAC) with canned routines for PFW. My RAM opined ""maybe you can use these in Sage100?"" Ha! I know the MAS90 Data Migrator had routines for Peachtree data. Did they also create routines for PFW data? How have others addressed data conversion for PFW to Sage100? Thanks!

I think the MAS Data Migrator has been dead for several versions. Apparently having to be certified to sell products doesn't apply to Sage employees...and the RAM has already promised the customer a free migration, right? Which means you get to quote Sage a price for creating VI jobs for 7 years of history....

Ha! @PhilMcIntosh! Unfortunately the cost is the customer's to bear. The RAM has backed off on data conversion promise, although she continues to minimize the level of effort. She says ""the Sage ERP Migrator tool developed by Sage migrates data to Sage 300 ERP only, currently. Partners use the Visual Integrator module (which comes as part of the financial bundle) to migrate data. The partner still needs to do the data mapping.

Like the ""currently"" part? I'm sure they're in a rush to update a tool to migrate data from a dead product to a dying one!

I think in another thread recently @ShawnSlavin mentioned having done some PFW conversions already.

I reached out to @ShawnSlavin . Thanks for the recommendation @PhilMcIntosh!