Sage 100

Ran into my first customer who had a fairly sizable number of custom Crystal reports relying on the old Inventory data tables (about 10 reports of varying complexity). Naturally this is also a D level customer who has already had me quote the upgrade 4 times (never responding any time). It puts you into a corner when they want a price to upgrade the reports yet you have very low confidence that they will use you for the work. I'll be damned if I'm converting them on spec only to turn around and get an ROR that the customer found a cheaper VAR who will convert the reports hourly (happened to me about 2 yrs ago and that customer tried to come back because I guess cheaper wasn't better). Not sure how I got lucky with the other upgrades I've done so far and haven't had to toy with quoting complete re-writes on the custom reports.

And I've gotten a little wiser - rather than quote $ x,xxx for converting all the reports and then invariably the customer wants just one (always the most complex) I told them $x,xxx for the first report then $ xxx for each additional. At some point I feel like I've started to learn all the tricks that people try to pull....but only if you let them.

A couple of thoughts based on our similar experiences, some for your benefit, some for other readers. - treat the report upgrade pricing as if it was a sort of insurance quote. You know some will be low, and some high, but you win overall. Even so, it makes sense to approach the report complexity in a low/med/high context. We had good look with presenting their list of reports to them grouped by h/m/l complexity, and quoted a total for the bunch. We then told them that the price would come down more by removing an H report than a L report, but we never defined the per-report price for any because ""the mix actually defines our cost."" - Remember how Kless preaches to handle discounts. Just because he customer removes 1/3 of the items during negotiation, there is no reason for you to reduce the price by 1/3. Your offer with high for the 1st, and lower for the next ones is similar to that approach. In nearly any tech work, the actual technical tinkering is half or less of the total time spent on the project. - If you can structure the proposal in 3-levels you can beat the the price shopping. The base level might be really cheap, but you could take 2 weeks to convert them after the upgrade, with customer review required within 2 days of each release or they take it as is. The higher level is tied with a sandbox testing and training step, and they get more flex in responses. - We also get good mileage out the 3-level approach to upgrades with complex parts that could be easily shopped by mixing the report upgrade options with the other combinations of enhanced deliverables, responsiveness and flexibility so they can't really pull them apart from each other. It might not appropriate for this customer because it's so erratic, and it might not be appropriate for all your upgrade work. But for these where parts of the problem are competitive pricing, I've found creative use of the 3-level proposal completely removes the problem. The anchor price is low enough to be not obviously higher than competitors, and customers tend to focus on choosing between the 3 offers rather than on whether your offer is too high competitively. That part is really remarkable. I think we've had only 1 upgrade at the base price in the last 18 months. Have you thought about adding something to your pricing about multiple quoting for the same upgrade base? In other words, the first quote from v4.1 is free. But the next one will take $500 evaluation fee, with half applied to the eventual upgrade. We don't do it, but our small base doesn't tend to generate the quantity of frivolous upgrade requests that yours apparently does.

I understand your concern with spending a lot of time research and quoting D customers. I think you need to first decide if you even want to keep the customer first. If need to have a base quality level of service you will always provide and determine if the customer is worth that. If not, cut them and move on. If you are going to keep them, then make the investment, take the risk and move on. Either way, don't spend the emotional energy in frustration or worry. If they suck, they aren't worth the energy. Invest that energy into your family instead. (Can't promise the kids, especially if they are teenagers, will appreciate it any more than the D customer though.) @WayneSchulz I like your idea of quoting a cost per report, however, I'm always concerned that all reports are not create equal. You might get a lulu that takes 20 hours to recreate in Crystal. On the other hand, @JerryNorman makes a good point at approaching them like insurance. Price them all at $xxx and play the odds. At CS2, we list which reports are included in the project. If they don't want them all, they can flag which they don't want and we move the price (some). Our biggest factor is how many reports are moving from the old framework to the new.

Thanks Shawn - this is a customer I would not mind losing for a myriad of reasons which we've all seen. I am also keenly aware that customers like to play the pricing game. If I have 10 reports to convert and one is a doozy (30 hours) and the rest are 30 minutes -- and I say $500 per report. Guess which report they are going to ask me to convert and ""Forget the rest""..... (BTDT).. Also this customer previously asked for an upgrade quote 3x and never responded. That's a huge reason why I'm unwilling to spend R&D time trying to convert the report in advance (which I most definitely would do for customers I wanted to keep). Also the original quote for upgrade was to use MASCRCW to automatically convert and no custom conversions were included. The customer over the course of asking for ""Re-quotes"" gradually attempted to inch themselves up toward having the reports all part of the upgrade. Not a customer I'm afraid of losing. It's actually more likely that I'd spend 20 hours testing the report conversion then either not hear back (again) or they'd find another VAR.

Maybe you shouldn't quote a per report fee. Quote 10 reports for $5,000. If they want to take 2 easy ones off, drop the price by XXX. If they want to drop the big report, drop it by YYY. When they realize that 10 reports at xxx doesn't equal $5,000, tell them there is a base cost in working on the first several reports; it's an economy of scale thing. Regarding the frequent re-quotes, our second quote is NEVER the same or cheaper than our first quote. Either there a newer version out or our calendar is tighter (or I'm just pissed-off at being strung out - there's a fee for that too!). They will recognize the need to move; by either starting the project or finding another reseller.

Some of those reports aren't easily rewritable either. Inventory Beginning Balances aren't easy to get to as @AlnoorCassim and I discovered last week.

Upgrades should be prepaid. If it's a big one, with sandbox then go live, divide the prepaid in 2. But one of the conditions for the final conversion is that all the payment is made. If they want to hold some back, fine --- but the total price just went up. Shawn's most recent post is what I was trying to say -- except his is actually intelligible.

@ShawnSlavin - agreed. Did all those things with this 4 requests for upgrade quote. Would ideally like to get to a point where your first upgrade quote FROM a version (say 4.3) is at no cost if you're on maintenance. But all quotes after that are $1,500 (pick a $$). And yeah that only really gets enforced for the customer you're hoping to lose.