General Consultant Discussion

I'll take ""Surveys that you'll never hear the results of"" for $250 Alex.

Is this implying there are issues with Sage Communications? We could write volumes . . .

We spent hours telling them what to do better at MOTM and all we got was this lousy survey....

Put in a negative review. I had Jennifer Warawa call me after the last survey where I did that. We chatted... and then, surprise: nothing. She was expecting something small for a quick fix, but no I was talking big picture problems. If enough of us hound her on the same things, something may happen. (? Some may say I'm a dreamer... ?).

+1 on Kevin's last line. When enough ""big picture"" problems appear, Sage rearranges the deck chairs (as Wayne describes it).

I'm just looking for Sage to notify the channel in advance of sending customers an email. Most of the time the customer turns around and calls us for explanation and if the email hasn't been shared in 90 Minds we often have no advance notice whatsoever. The change is so simple and inexpensive that the fact it hasn't happened yet speaks volumes.

And all of these e-mails, events, customers calling based on Sage communications should be included in what Jennifer refers to as ""distractions"" that prevent us from selling software. She wants Sage to minimize these ""distractions"" - from BPAC meeting.

Not all partners are focused on selling. Exactly 0% of my job involves selling Sage products (...someone else here does that for us). This fact seems to make me invisible as far as Sage communications are concerned. Value add by partners through support / consulting services to our mutual customers, keeping them happy... apparently this doesn't matter to Sage. Very frustrating.

Perhaps I can share some of my visibility. Selling is definitely a double-edged sword. Sage congratulates you on selling something ""thanks for all you do for Sage"", but they always want more and openly show their disappointment when you estimate a big deal will close by 6/29 (oh, that's today!) and it doesn't happen, because the President of the prospect has a life and decides to take the week before the holiday off without warning.

Remember the good ol' days with Pascal Houlihan? ""Top partners are telling us they want margins cut and we should raise customer prices."" I remember being at a BPAC meeting where I heard from Doug LaBahn: ""Our top Sage CRM partners have told us the pricing is too cheap and we need to raise prices for CRM."" I asked which top partners? Net@Work and Azamba are in the room and I spoke regularly with the next two on the list and none of us were talking about raising prices. That went over well. Yet the next meeting, they trotted out the ""top partners"" line again for some other horrible change. Good times.

There was no sign of the NA President at the BPAC meeting. I guess they learned.

NA? - Not Applicable President?

Blair is a cerebral person, so he probably doesn't want to openly participate in the bs.

One thing I've learned is Sage departments are siloed. Little islands of isolation that rarely have any cross-over of knowledge or experience, issues or resolutions. They do love their surveys though trotting them out when a need exists to prove or disprove a point, but never to find a solution.