General Consultant Discussion

I wrapped up a reinstatement today for a customer who owed $45,000 in penalties and back fees. Roughly $12,0000 a year. Here's what I learned: 1. Don't trust Sage to tell you the bottom line quote - the front line sales folks don't have much authority to waive penalties. Mine gave me a quote then renegged initially (though when she talked to the customer directly she came down 5% more than she would have had to if she had just given me the price). 2. The computation Sage is using for reinstatement (as of 7/26/12) is: a. Up to max two years back maintenance (they will however use the current rates to compute this back maintenance) b. Plus 25% penalty c. One year future maintenance d. Can Easy Pay this - either CC or Bank Draft 3. Sage will want to talk to the customer directly - so if you feel the customer is in a situation that justifies a reduction in penalties and back maintenance you are best to meet first with the customer and prepare them on what to discuss with Sage. A reasonable waiver is 0 % penalty. Sage can do this -- it just does not seem possible without the salesperson going to ""their manager"". It appears a further reduction of 0 to 10% would be possible though this seems highly discretionary. My opinion is Sage is top heavy with salespeople who likely have to make some activity report that they somehow served a useful purpose other than sending you an email . Use this to your advantage when you can as Sage will often concede more $$ when talking directly to the customer 4. Avoid having Sage issue a paper quote if the customer isn't really serious. I've learned that the one thing Sage is expert at tracking (they literally never lose track of this) is the number of times they've issued a quote to a customer. Once a quote is committed to paper Sage seems to treat this as if it's the customer's one and only offer... Subsequently if asked to re-quote Sage will almost always say ""well we already quoted xxxx on yy/yy/yy and they refused it "" ... and it seems more difficult to negotiate. 5. Quarter and Year End are the times to negotiate (though this should be rather obvious) 6. If the customer is not someone that I've worked with for a while and/or they don't have a good reason for terminating maintenance originally then I typically don't even bother trying to help them negotiate - I just facilitate the quote process where needed.

Ultimately the deal Sage approved in this situation: - penalty waiver - additional 5% I'm pretty sure we could have gone to 10% given enough time to negotiate. My biggest lesson learned is that Sage doesn't want to deal with the partner as an intermediary - so just use this to your advantage and plan on the final negotiating session (when justified) being with you, your customer and Sage on a conference call.