General Consultant Discussion

Maybe I just attract the lookers and tire kickers but I've seen an influx in the casual customer (aka - don't need support burt want to come back every so often for a freebie) asking for all sorts of tech questions and quotes on upgrades. I find that my ""win"" rate on these is fairly low and ultimately the conclusion I'm coming to is that our ""go forward"" model (for VARS who want to make any real money) is: a. We don't give free quotes to customers not under OUR plan b. If you want a written quote and aren't on plan it's $ 750 (pick a number) c. If you ""just want an idea"" then our minimum fee for non-support customer projects starts at $ 7,500 (pick a number) This thinking kicked off by a call from a customer who left our plan - did a lot of self-support and picking up third party products, used Blytheco , now are back on my phone asking to talk about ""Wayne Schulz Consulting"". I'm slightly foreshadowing that this conversation (based on my history with the customer) will be a 45 minute BS session about their products, trials and tribulations -- and will end in a request for me to provide them an upgrade quote. <STOP> Now I don't know about all of you but I'm increasingly finding these upgrade quotes (and BS sessions) are not one and done items that take 5 minutes. I also find the casual customer makes a terribly upgrade quote customer. They simply shop you around or have previously shown that they're not really serious. They're fishing around for some free technical advice in the guise of a ""quote"" ....

LOL, Here is a waste of time from one of my real time chats this morning. BTW, that phone number he gave me was a NAV Var in TX so we are on his 'shopping list' of var prices. [10:37 AM] Aleli Geraldino: Navision 5 issues [10:37 AM] Aleli Geraldino has joined the chat. [10:38 AM] Aleli Geraldino: Hi Good morning. [10:38 AM] Mark Chinsky has joined the chat. [10:38 AM] Mark Chinsky: Hi [10:38 AM] Aleli Geraldino: I'm Aleli from Packers Plus Energy [10:38 AM] Mark Chinsky: How are you. [10:38 AM] Aleli Geraldino: Good [10:38 AM] Aleli Geraldino: and how are u [10:38 AM] Mark Chinsky: Very good. How may I help you? [10:38 AM] Aleli Geraldino: I have received an issue from one of our Nav 5 users. [10:39 AM] Aleli Geraldino: He sent us an email reporting this issue [10:39 AM] Aleli Geraldino: I am having troubles with my NAV, whenever I go to do a re-class journal and move down to the next line for the next part number the top line always disappears and I cannot register it. If I am to go onto someone else's NAV and look at the re-class journal the one that disappears on me is on their NAV.I was wondering if you could look into this for me and see why I cannot use the re-class function in my NAV. Thank you, [10:42 AM] Mark Chinsky: We provide help desk services that should be able to assist. We can sell our services either in prepaid blocks of time (5 hours minimum) at $185USD/hr, or in a 3 incident block at $500 [10:43 AM] Aleli Geraldino: If I phone in your hotline [10:43 AM] Aleli Geraldino: does it cost me too? [10:44 AM] Mark Chinsky: Yes. We are a for profit Microsoft Dynamics NAV Partner who specializes in Implementation, Support & Service [10:44 AM] Aleli Geraldino: Oh ok! [10:44 AM] Aleli Geraldino: Hold on a sec [10:45 AM] Aleli Geraldino: i'll be back [10:46 AM] Mark Chinsky: ok [10:46 AM] Mark Chinsky: thanks [10:48 AM] Aleli Geraldino is currently viewing http://navision-support.net/. [10:50 AM] Aleli Geraldino: Hey Mark [10:51 AM] Mark Chinsky: yes [10:51 AM] Aleli Geraldino: What's your support hotline number? [10:52 AM] Aleli Geraldino: 1 877 385 8971 [10:52 AM] Aleli Geraldino: is this the right nuber? [10:52 AM] Mark Chinsky: direct front desk dispatch is 732-970-1450. Toll Free 866.677.6290 [10:53 AM] Aleli Geraldino: ok thank you!! [10:53 AM] Mark Chinsky: BTW, where did you get that other number? That isn't ours. Did we have a typo on our website? [10:53 AM] Aleli Geraldino has left.

This has been my exact experience with chat. I would not say that you can't pull some deals out but there are 100x more where this guy came from. You're far more likely to get chapped lips first from kissing the toads hoping to find a prince.