General Consultant Discussion

Sage Session LA Agenda

Interesting - Will be waiting for feedback. Agenda doesn't appear to location specific so it probably the master template for all events.

I just sent an e-mail (below) to my sales reps/managers with recommendations for the next events, since the one in LA seems last minute and relatively unorganized. Not everyone may agree with my #2 recommendation and I may not spend that kind of money, but it's easier than the process of contacting customers, having them want to or remember to go to the site to sign up, etc. Obviously the Sessions event on Tuesday is upon us without much lead time or time for us to sufficiently contact our customers about attending. Here are some suggestions, which may help for the other events coming up: 1.Provide the channel with templates for e-mailing to our customers with links to the agenda and registration. I came up with a couple formats, but it would be much easier to take a template which could be co-branded and send it. All of this the Sessions planning, providing materials, etc. are marketing functions, so I feel like that function has not performed the way I would expect. 2.Provide a mechanism for the channel to purchase ""tickets"" to be distributed to customers (probably electronically). I have no problem investing the $29 per person if the mechanism is in place. This would be more efficient and goes a long way in terms of customer relations. $2,900 for 100 tickets would be a valuable investment in my customers. 3.Give us and the customers more notice on the events and the detailed agenda. This was not enough time or sufficient information. Rob Larsh just responded, saying they sent out templates. I never received anything and specifically asked Kerry about this 3 weeks ago - he did not tell me about them.

Will someone actually be attending LA to give feedback? @MoiraGoggin @JohnHoyt @ShannonSadowsky ? I suspect we'll skip this year rather than fly somewhere for one frenzied day and no learning.

The templates were part of a Sage Sell News Flash sent 1/10/2018. I told Rob that I have 3 Sage sales people - Rob, Kerry and Jim - that should be specifically pointing out the availability of these materials. This was one item within many on that News Flash, so one would have to be looking for it - I missed it. Rob is always quick to cover for Sage. I don't remember him every saying to me - ""Yes, Sage screwed up and I apologize."" For those that have Sessions coming up, here is the link to the materials: http://mysagesell.com/portal/archives/playbook/sage-sessions-2018-partner-event-playbook

Sage is really concerned about the low numbers of customer registrations for LA - Rob called me yesterday and so did Kerry. For the most part 90 Minds members, my firm included, do not have the resources in place to jump when Sage finally gives us the details on Sessions. We are supporting, selling and running our businesses. If they want the attendance, then they should provide a list of who it is being sent to, we can correct it, and they send out a co-branded mailing.

@RhondaMcNamara Yes, I will report back. My expectations are not high.

Yes, SageSell has had a Sessions playbook. It has some of what John is asking for but much of it seemed very generic. I was remarking this morning that attendance will probably be 200 consultants/isvs/sponsors/Sage and 50 customers.

Perhaps they should hand out oxygen masks for the customers - logoed, of course.

If you're watching Sage closely you know they have been advertising for an event person to push a 3 x ROI and trend away from a general conference strategy to one that mostly includes the revenue share (endorsed) products. I think this is Sage becoming more focused on a better ROI from their events.

For the traditional Summit conferences, for all of our customers that attended, we had huge ROI, which translated to ROI for Sage. I'm not sure they know how to measure it. Of course, when you give it away for $99, that could be an issue. If Sage delivered value, customers are more than willing to pay $399 - $599.

@RhondaMcNamara there are several of us attending, and recommend we adopt reporting using #sagesession for this and future sessions. Important note, rain is predicted for Monday and Tuesday in LA. Sage can tout being the cloudy solution.

What did you think? I'm anxious to hear what everyone has to say about yesterday's LA Sage Session.

I'd guess around 300 people +/- 50. It was better than I expected. Definitely a Customer conference. A more complete review will follow

Isn't today Valentine's Day and not St. Patrick's Day???

I was pleased and impressed with how everything came together and the quality of the sessions. We had a number of customers that attended - some that we specifically invited and others who attended on their own. Sage was well-represented by management, sales, and technical resources. Preliminary responses from our customers has been that they were happy with it and got a lot out of it. As for the exhibitors, these were the major ISVs and endorsed products that we always visited at Summit, so we and the customers could concentrate on those. I don't mean to imply anything bad about the smaller solutions that used to exhibit, but this complement was appropriate for a single day event. Sage now has until April to tweak this, which I am sure they will. Really no glitches, so it will probably be related to sessions that were not as popular as others. I am planning to send out e-mails to our customers that could not attend encouraging them to consider other cities as this rolls out. I think some of them will like the idea of traveling to other locations.

We did have one customer who is on 300 that complained to our 300 consultant (who was unable to attend) that the conference was all about 50, 100 and X3 and Sage seems to be pushing everyone to the cloud. This 300 customer is one of those that had PFW and was directed to 300 in a free migration years ago, because that was what Sage thought was appropriate then. If he had listened to Nancy Harris's explanation of the new naming and the cloud term, he would have understood what this is about. I analyzed the sessions and of the total of 25, 18 were either 300-specific, common functions across product lines or general business sessions. There was a specific session on Sage 300cloud - The Road Ahead. The customer could also have visited any of the common function booths to review what they offered (e-Commerce, Payments, HRMS, Document Management, AP Automation, Sales Tax and Fixed Assets). I told the consultant I would bring up this ""impression"" the customer had to Sage, but I did not agree with the assessment and the customer simply did not take full advantage of the day.

Hi @RhondaMcNamara RKL had a few attendees to the Sage LA conference. Let me know what information you need and I can definitely check in with our attendees. :-)

The more feedback and information the better. Thanks for the comments!!!