For a corporate meeting, I thought this one was better than most. (Although not starting on time, for whatever reason, is one strike against them. There are other vendors who manage to *always* start promptly.) I cut them some slack on the initial opening; to me, it was a legit attempt to signal "we're doing things a bit differently," but executed badly.
As for content, well, they were explaining what this large organization is doing differently this year. Compared to many other years which seemed to say "we'll just try harder and hope competition stays out of the way," (and including too often, "this is how we are cutting your commissions this year") this wasn't bad. No major turnover, but re-orged to support the emphases they laid out first. They shared names and headcounts, which not all vendors do. Unlike past years, I didn't get the sense that they were setting their reps up for failure; it seemed to have a decent amount of reality in their comments and emphasis. I also got the strong sense that Sage is actively recruiting new partners and customers. The ratings on G2 Crowd were a surprise, regardless of their details; that is useful in building confidence.
Yes, they led with everything
but products, but their goal (I think, legitimate) was to tell us what's new in the way they are trying to do business. We'll see plenty more presentations about products later.
Sage, for better or worse, are clearly trying to communicate to the partners that they are trying hard to stay relevant. Except for maybe Intacct and X3, that is a tough challenge because the products are the very definition of "legacy." Hence, we get an All Hands meeting that clearly emphasizes new energy, a series of January "kickoff" meetings emphasizing new, and theme for the year's efforts (Vision 2020),
IMO, they did about as good meeting their goal for the meeting as they could. My $.02
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Jerry Norman
President, 90 Minds
Smartbridge Partners
512.419.1444 x112
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