90p Admin

MOTM Sage Presentations We discussed how we going to attempt to control the crowd, so as to not have any ""confrontations"" as in past years, but I don't remember any specific action. My suggestion is there should be a 90 Minds moderator that keeps order. I have a number of complaints about Sage, primarily with Sales Ops, but there are still some members who appear to have a vendetta against Sage no matter what they try to do to improve the product. There is definitely a plan and roadmap for Sage 100, and they are delivering on that. And they have a strategy for ""the cloud"" and connected cloud apps. I see that as positive, but I'm not sure everyone sees it through my rose-colored glasses. I don't expect the Sage people attending to think they won't have difficult questions to answer and they will be prepared for those, I'm sure. I should point out that in the over 2 years I have served on the BPAC, we have had some heated discussions (including Steve Blythe), but nothing close to some of the difficult situations we have had at past MOTM's. I would like to either get opinions here this week and/or discuss briefly at our meeting next Wednesday.

We talked this over @JohnHoyt, I think we covered it in the last Board meeting too. Jeff has started a thread for Sage questions and we'll use this to source from to get the ball rolling or to fill in as needed. Jim and I will be moderating. No one leaves in tears, Jerry promised.

There is still a lot of resentment for how Sage is handling the customer and partner interactions - See the latest thread on the all hands meeting. Sage could really improve in the communications arena. I just posted a question regarding responding to web site queries. IMHO, it is non existent. I posted the interactions as questions. It may help the situation if we give them a heads up of the general nature of our hard hitting questions ahead of time.

About ""tears."" This year will be quite different from my first at MOTM: the Sage people ""selling"" their product concept will not field people, like Debbie, directed to push the company line. This year we have people who are at least complicit in the decision making, partially responsible for the things they propose and defend. Also, I'm pretty sure they already have heard rumors that we can be a tough crowd. Remember the Summit experience where they did a ""redo"" of Sage 100 Road Ahead? I did not let their VP get away with making statements that were internally-illogical. I don't expect that anybody here will let a new attempt of that to slide by either next week. But I don't think that will be the challenge next week. Sage has been pretty clear about will and won't be in Sage 100. The emotion this year will be over the constant disconnect between what management claims is going on and what we actually see with ourselves in our interactions with website, KB, sales and support staff, and customers. Following Jeff's cue, we might give them a heads up that our most difficult questions will be the area of sales ops execution: orders, renewals, stepping on customers, quota reporting, etc.

Do you want candid answers or canned answers? On the one hand: I don't have an issue making a 'guest' at our event comfortable. On the other hand: We have promoted to our membership Sage VIPS and a Town Hall. The 'bloodbath', as Rob Larsh described the last Town Hall, was the fault of Sage. They tried to avoid the Town Hall, made a presentation during the time, and left a very short window for questions. The Sage people didn't have answers, and then ended up having Diane Coffman who wasn't on the Q&A panel cover their #@s. Those were the days of Pastel Pascal that liked to blur everything. We have new Sage team, they are providing a three part program and I think that they'll have act together this time. We'll make sure no bowls of rotten vegetables are brought into the event. At the same time, I'd like our members to have an option to politely ask the tough questions and we will make sure the dialog remains civil.

I think we want well thought out responses. I don't think putting them in a defensive spot with hard hitting questions is any more conducive than a canned response which is what we will get if don't give them a general heads up. Your and Jim's job as moderators is to control the mob as well as NOT letting Sage off the hook with canned responses. I certainly don't want a session that we can easily get by listening to a partner call. Sage does a crappy job of communicating, both to the channel and to the end user. This is their 4th or 5th year of Sage leadership presenting. They certainly are aware of the crowd. I really don't want to hear ANOTHER iteration of ""we know there have been some missteps and we want to do better"" We are supposed to be their partner, not their lackey.

Moderators are key. I have full confidence that you 2 can defuse anything too uncomfortable. It is also the **key** part of making a presenter feel like he is welcome and valued as opposed to a sacrificial lamb. As part of our prepping them, I think it's entirely reasonable to point out the things that drive our audience nuts. - ""we know there have been some missteps and we want to do better"" -- remind them most of the people who present to us don't come back the next year, much less the year after. - They already acknowledge that there is a trust problem. What are we most distrustful about? Commissions on done deals changing: renewals. Direct Sage mucking with customers and not including us. Gaslighting us about what is really going on with Sage 100 development; if they don't know when they'll fix something, they need to tell us what they expect us to do in the meantime. (I think they've mostly fixed this problem with JC in framework, etc.) - Giving us answers that assume we don't know what the competition is doing. Promoting Sage Live as a replacement for Sage 100 (they stopped doing that finally). Their ""100 cloud"" initiative is close to this. We know they can't do anything about it, so we would appreciate recognition from them that this can be confusing, and we'd like an honest exploration of how we can realistically deal with it. John's presentation in the last call was reasonable, but too subtle for many to understand in that short time. Bottom line: the pitchforks tend to come out when the presenters talk like we're ignorant rubes who will swallow whatever they tell us is true. Presenters who manage to talk about their material **and** openly include the parts they are unsure about or know will be difficult are repaid with respectful understanding. There is an opportunity for Sage this time that hasn't been before: our expectations are low. If they talk like Pascal's minions did they won't meet even those low expectations. If they approach us like true partners who want to understand what Sage is really doing and why, and who can respectfully answer honest questions (and ""I don't know"" is a legit answer) then they will exceed expectations by probably quite a bit. And our moderators are the key line of defense against things going off the rails. I am modestly optimistic about all this this year.