Sage News and Discussion

So ... got this today. The President's Circle trip to Miami was replaced by this. I really don't need to comment except to ask ... do you think Pascal sits in his corner office and says to himself ""how much abuse can I heap on the best partners before they cry out for mercy""? (Wasn't the Marquis de Sade French?) Apart from the Spirit and Community Awards winners, the winners are the top sales dogs, right? I wonder what books on sales motivation he has read?

At least last time (which was early 2010 - don't ask me how I can win two years in a row and the events are two and a half years apart ...), there were some business development exercises that were interesting and it was a destination that my wife was interested in attending. Unless I'm completely missing something ... this is a dinner and a guided tour of a music studio. And ... if someone can explain the math between the events, I would love to hear that. I'm fairly certain that they skipped a ceremony during the last two years. Sneaky sneaky.

The part I like the most is you even get ""Ground transportation to...

When he says ""Partenaires commerciaux ne valent plus rien mais je tiens ce qu'elles continuent faire de moi l'argent."" it just sounds so much better because it's spoken in a French accent.

No. No it doesn't. There is a reason the bad guys in so many films have French accents.

Peter - at least the Marquis had interesting activities.

Damn! Look on the bright side - It appears that the award is valued at less than $600 so you don't have to worry about an outrageous 1099 surprise!!!!!!!

But, wait, Studio B is the one where Elvis recorded.

Presidents events seemed as if they've been on a downward spiral (winding down?) since 2010. At that one Sue Swenson didn't even bother to show -- and none of the Sage folks thought to mention why the CEO of North America couldn't make the awards gala.

Taking the Sage viewpoint: 1. Most of these Presidents circle award winners are selling maintenance 2. We could sell that direct - without having to incent There are definitely exceptions like @JohnHoyt and others who are selling new deals. .02

Does it seriously say %First_Name% at %Company%?

One step up from ""Dear Friend"" ...

Glad, I eased out of the Sage world long ago. Back in the 90's when I was partner of the year and going to Presidents Circle it was all expense paid trips to the Caymen Islands at the Weston Hotel etc. Another was the Phoenecian. One year my son was a newborn so I had to give away my spot to one of my sales guys :(

BTW, Epicor had one of their conference back in october I went to and we all went to the Grand Ol' Opry, We had the whole facility as a group to ourselves and they had about 8 tops talents playing that night. The year before they rented out the entire Harry Potter exhibit at Universal right after it opened for the night...They still know how to do things in style

It kinda reminds me when soon after I joined epartners I got to go to my first Great Plains event in Fargo and while I was eating the 'gourmet' mini-hot dogs they were serving for dinner, thinking how much better Sage treated it's partners. Too bad Sage has gone from one of the most partner friendly companies to hands down the most unfriendly one in just a matter of a few years. I still say it all dates back to the decision to go with 'whats his name' from Peachtree as CEO instead of David Butler

I agree. Butler really connected with the partners.

@MarkChinsky and @JeffSchwenk The market is also a hugely different place now than back then. It's stagnant and most (not all) partners make tier with maintenance.

True. But in order to make tier, you DO have minimum new deals and module sales to make. Maintenance doesn't count toward tier. However, maintenance is where you maintain your cash flow. At least this is the case at my end of the boat. And yes the market is mature, but this is when you really should be defining your place in the market with innovations to the core product, not just 3rd party add ons. Look at the idea web site. End users are BEGGING for innovation and product improvement. Give them a reason to stay on maintenance.........

@WayneSchulz - @JeffSchwenk is right. Maintenance doesn't count towards tier. I saw you post something similar and wanted to comment but got distracted. The President Circle winners aren't going there because they sold M&S - it's new accounts.

Do you have any info on what Sage counts? Are the million dollar club winners making it on new license sales? Would be interested in what Sage provides as guidelines since I'm now a little removed from tracking that for myself.

Studio A....popular show ""Hee Haw""...how the French view Americans?

Ahh ... the million dollar winners do probably include M&S, you are right. The top sales guys are new products. I wasn't considering that group. Sorry for that.

I wonder if Pascal ever actually carried a bag? Or actually supervised line salespeople to an office quota? I doubt it. I'm not a really big proponent of quarterly specials and such for incenting sales (I think they mainly just change the timing, if that). As a ""recovering engineer"" I personally don't get turned on by sales contests. But I've managed in an environment with them, and I once co-sponsored several sales contests involving my product. These contests carry a significant emotional draw that is easy to miss if an executive isn't paying attention. One of the hard things about selling through a channel is getting the salespeople's attention on your product. If they don't really know about you, they won't push (or even suggest) it. If there are competing products that are more ""interesting"" to them, they'll push them. Sales contests do seem to help focus sales attention on the vendor and the product, for many salespeople. Sage watering these down means that they probably don't have any effect at all, meaning the ROI for even these lame events is likely negative. And the way Sage has handled the downsized awards all plays into the narrative that Sage doesn't care about its channel, or even, that it is in decline. Not exactly inspired leadership. Sage Group, plc is looking for a new chairman. It will be interesting to see what that person is like, and whether the winds change with him. If they do, I suspect it it will be too late. We're talking about emotional draws and decisions regarding what products a partner firm stresses. A ""bad taste"" emotion is tough to erase. And the firms that are most capable of winning contests have many viable options. The executive stupidity I've seen play out here since October is consistent, and depressing. I'm changing my mind about why we saw the executive exodus starting last May -- they figured out what Pascal was about, and didn't want to play in his sandbox.

I wonder if those quarterly incentives work for anyone? Maybe it's different on the ERP side but on the CRM side, it's usually a strategic investment. A $10 off coupon (sarcasm there) isn't the main motivator.

I just met with an orphan today and didn't pay a pretty picture of Sage to them. Then I wanted to be 'open kimono' with them when they asked about phone support contracts, and I mentioned that since they renewed recently they were forced to buy into a 5 support call deal. They were like, no we werent. I told them to pull out their renewal and low and behold they were bumped to Silver and they never noticed it...Nice sales strategy by sage.

Yep. We have two choices: 1) get out in front of the clients with renewals (as Wayne repeatedly advocates) and let them know what they are getting and paying for or 2) let the clients just pay the invoices or not and ignore the issue and all the subsequent pain in the butt calls from the renewals team of vultures. I choose option 2. I get next to nothing on M&S and it's not a factor in my business model. If Sage wants to keep most of the margin, they can do most of the work. Apparently, taking care of customers and keeping them happy with their investment is not a valued partner activity. Grumble grumble.

@Peter, your choice is interesting to me. Does your CRM support particularly care about whether your customer is on maintenance? Regarding quarterly incentives. I think they are useful as exclamation points in a marketing message, encouraging customers to check out the feature. But mostly the $$ involved to a customer (not the %, the $$) are not enough to change a decision to buy. It only changes the timing. Hence, I think it actually leaves money on the table. We only use them if we think we need an extra lever to force a decision -- and half the time the customer willingly ignores it and buys later. The contests though can effective with one type of salesperson: the highly competitive one. Not all of us employ those types, but they do provide a signifcant % of new deals.

An Open Letter to Sage Stockholders: Here are Peter's posts from a year ago - here are his recent posts - this is what Pascal has done to Sage Spirit - Tom Miller is the only one still ""excited""; the rest of us are now ""agitated"" - sell your stock while you can!

@JerryNorman - don't get me wrong - I still want customers to remain on M&S. Primarily this is because CRM actual still gets some R&D dollars and there are advancements each year that customers can greatly benefit from. But Sage has removed almost all incentive to go out of my way to explain it, recommend it and promote it. Instead I use that time to pursue opportunities that are beneficial and profitable. Sage can spend their money chasing the renewals. As Mark hinted above, most customers will renew blindly without reading what they are signing. Another motivator for clients to stay current is they can't get new licenses if they are off plan. That's a huge concern for CRM customers since CRM done right will typically creep through an organization one department at a time.

@PeterWolf Once Sage puts expiring keys into the software they won't need me or you to explain anything.

Sorry, I'm a late arrival to this discussion. M&S counts for more than just the Million Dollar Club (which we're in). It also counts for many of the PC metrics which are for total sales. Wayne said that ""most of these PC award winners are selling maintenance"". Well, that's certainly true, and it's also true for Sage. About 70% of their total revenues are from M&S. Why is it so high, you ask? Well, it's so high because Sage has clearly lost its technology edge. They are a software distributor, not a publisher. Any company that spends 20% - 25% of its EBIT on shareholder dividends is just a ""me too"" company, because they clearly are taking their R&D money and propping up their share price with it. So, do I feel embarrassed about making PC because 67% of our Sage revenues are M&S? Hell no!

My President's Circle experience was in Cancun at the Ritz. The Camcorder we found in our beach bag was a very pleasant surprise and I still use it. Sitting down and talking with Nina in a casual atmosphere was priceless (until she left) and networking with leaders in the channel was very motivating. This is a joke.... Sorry to be on topic.

One management element out of this we can all take home: be sure we're measuring the right things. My take on the history of these awards is that they grew out of the turn-of-century need to boost customer sales. However, the awards continued even as partner sizes grew and the motivating effect on the people selling declined. Add to that the steady rise of M&S as % of total, and then partners branching to multiple lines. Eventually the awards kept going to mostly the same, large partners (I don't understand what motivation Blytheco has win -- they are simple large). Now Sage finds itself admitting that the share of its revenue from M&S is too big, and they can't move the sales dial because of it. Then they effectively say that they think partners don't affect renewal rates! So, tell me again just why they were rewarding M&S revenue in the awards?? Why bother with that as criteria at all? How come they didn't have awards for highest cross-selling performance, since that is so important to them? Further, they used to have the trips focused on a week spent mingling the elite performers. Why? I imagine originally it was because ""everybody did it"" (true), but after a couple, the SOTA/Sage execs discovered that they learned from the partners, partners learned that they could expand their thinking from the other partners, and the partners developed more emotional attachment to the execs and company, which helps get through rough patches later. So they forgot all that, because they weren't measuring the right thing or focusing on the desired outcomes: new sales, cross-sales, and expanded learning and commitment between partners and Sage. As Kless says, ""effectiveness before efficiency: measure the right things."" It's been a reminder to me about whether I'm focused on the right measurements.