Sage News and Discussion

Tier Postings I don't want anyone to be under the false impression that Sage has fixed their order procedures and no longer has issues. I've been hounding sales operations since early June regarding sales where tier has not been posted. Nothing has happened and the list has been growing. I now sent the list to actual channel sales managers to see how fast they can get this resolved. I also sent them a margin amount that we never were paid on since March. My reminder to them is the more time I spend chasing these things down, the less time I spend on new sales.

Let us know when this gets resolved.

My Atlanta-based sales rep e-mailed today to tell me that a report showed I had $369 in sales the past 5 months, and that we need a really strong finish to FY17. I responded that we have over $30K and some of that has not been posted. Sage needs a couple new positions: Chief Internal Communications Officer and Chief Tier Posting Officer.

Good luck with that! Does the Sage year end 9/30? Is 10/1 when they are going to change tier levels?

9/30 is the FYE for Sage and the measurement for tier going into 10/1. Whatever you achieve by 9/30 is what your tier will be until 9/30/2018 - it cannot go down. It can go up, however. (Unless you are at Diamond - no place to go.)

Update: Missing tier items posted as of the Saturday night posting! Yay!

My e-mail this weekend to Sales Operations (Larry, Tim) with copies up the field sales chain. Let's see if I get responses. On August 18th I finally had postings for sales completed from May through July appear on the Tier Dashboard. As we go into the last month of the year, can you make sure the postings are timely, so we do not encounter the issues we had a year ago? As for the tier postings for C line upgrades, I also request that these indicate which customer. Last year tracking these was a nightmare, because there were no names associated with the postings. These upgrades are starting to close as of last week, but I see we already have ones that have not posted on the Dashboard.

Late September Update Follow up e-mail to Larry: Attached is my latest analysis of what has and has not posted to the Tier Dashboard, which is the only way I know these have been posted to Tier. I generally wait until after Saturday night, when I understand major updates occur. I'm beginning to not think that is the case. I know it's a busy time, but it is also critically important that I see these posted, and not experience what I did last year at this time. I have highlighted 4 specific items, the latest of which posted to the customer records last Tuesday. These total over $14K, so I would like to see them in my numbers. Please let me know what to expect and when. Automatic reply message from Larry: I am currently out of the office volunteering at the Invictus Games. I will check email as time permits. No, I didn't throw anything and didn't even swear, because this is what I have come to expect. It's almost laughable.

Yes Larry is volunteering for the Invictus games. He promised to follow up on my issues when he returned as well. He has our back.

Maybe I'd be happier just doing NetSuite . . .

Next month's ERP Insider Series is on NetSuite, that may help you decide :).

Yes, I'm in!

No additional VALID postings as of today. 2 incorrect postings appeared, however. One was a 100c posting for $1,000 for a customer that was already posted in August for $1,500, and another that was supposed to be posted in August for $1,500 and now appears at $1,000. All the other old sales are still sitting in limbo. I am working with a prospect where the CFO is afraid his staff who are used to QB are not capable of understanding Sage 100 and that is his reason for not purchasing this week. That characteristic appears to be true with the Atlanta sales ops people. I just sent another e-mail to Larry Sunderlin and Tim Finch with all the details, plus the errors. I told them I hoped someone would be working diligently on this through Saturday night to make sure on October 1 my tier level remains intact.

On another front (dealing with Sage is just one big battlefield), I sent an e-mail to Sage regarding a 100c customer that had their renewal increase by 15%, rather than the maximum 10% stipulated in the EULA. Since then we have had addtional customers contacting us about incorrect renewals, including one that stopped their ACH transfer. I explained that me fielding these questions was eating into my time to sell their software. Rob Larsh and Kerry Gardner reacted immediately, although no real solutions. Scott Ehmen and Dianna Lane did not even acknowledge the e-mail. Perhaps they are in hiding.

One of the bottlenecks with tier posting is there is ONE person this all goes through - Linda Pressel. That has never changed and I'm not sure she has any assistance.

Thursday, 9/28 my e-mail to Larry and Tim - Sales Ops: ""I do not want to open up my Tier Dashboard on 10/1 and see that I am now at Gold, since I have the sales to maintain Platinum. Hopefully someone will be diligently working on this through Saturday night to make sure."" They were working yesterday, but apparently not diligently enough. This is last year all over again.

Jennifer Warawa has an article on LinkedIn ""The Magic Energy of Teamwork"" written on 9/30: ""The buzz and energy in Sage's Lawrenceville, Georgia office today is impossible to miss. There are cheers as orders come in, high fives as deals close and a sense of camaraderie as everyone works together as one team to get every possible deal over the finish line."" Maybe it would have helped if I had been there . . .

Same picture applies - the downsizing will come anyway...

Our tier was finally updated this morning. Yay!

@ThereseLogeais Yay! Just enough was posted on 9/30 to get me back to tier. Now they'll probably tell me that the additional sales will not make any difference, so they will go into October, which is what they did last year, except they went into January because it took so long.

When do the Presidential Circus winner announcements come out?? Wonder if there will be any new names.

@JeffSchwenk I'm sure they know at this point, even if all sales were not posted. Of course, I'm sure that never happens with the big guys, just us lowly people who are primarily consultants.

Are they even having the circus this year? Based on last year's categories that it was a worldwide event, will Sage 100/300 winners even be invited inside the tent.

We can hold our own CEO Circle and issue awards, although ours will not necessarily be for sales achievements. We can call it . . . Meeting of the Minds and have it March 1 - 4, 2018. I'm sure it will be a much more popular event than the other CEO Circle, especially with the second annual Karaoke night!

@JohnHoyt don't encourage @JeffSchwenk.

Now that @DougHiggs is alledgedly buying the Tequila, I'm not sure anyone can stop this.

My last e-mail went out today detailing what is still wrong with my account. I doubt anything will happen this week, since all the salespeople are at the FY 2018 Sales Pow Wow in Atlanta. I wonder if one of the topics will be ""How to Help Your Partners Sell More""? I'll sell more, if they promise to post it to tier AND get the commission right. That may be asking too much of the strained resources in Atlanta. They could outsource it to Irvine, since they work 3 hours later.

Perhaps they are all in Atlanta to hear first hand who is getting the shoe to the back of the behind this week. It IS time for the annual round of musical chairs. I wonder how many chairs will be removed...

Make it simple - remove ALL the chairs and start over. Prove value to the organization, the channel and the customers.

Mmmmm. No chairs. Meetings might be shorter and product rollouts might be quicker and more reliable.

I think the majority of them are scared to death and dreading the meeting. After all, they really don't know what the final tally is. Who knows where things get posted, if at all. Hmmm . . . accounting software, is it?

Or perhaps, the non returners are singled out before the meeting so they can pack their personal items and leave the building before the ""winners"" finish with the meeting. After all, someone has to be held accountable.....

On 9/24 I posted on this discussion ""Maybe I'd be happier just doing NetSuite . . ."" After attending the NetSuite presentation by Jim and Brett of NEO3 today, I'm may seriously consider it. Great presentation @JimRosenberg and @BrettLyder !

Links up for the recording of NetSuite presentation - see Helpful Links section on Socialcast.

No, our account is still not fixed. One of the final corrections involves an addition of 2 users to 100c where they charged the customer the up-front fee only and did not charge the annual subscription. They also only posted tier for the up-front fee. Corrections to the customer account and tier are in process. So in addiiton to transactions simply not being posted, there is the potential that transactions are posted incorrectly. Audit all sales to make sure they are correct.

Your company makes what again??

Sales Operations had a session at BPAC. We refrained from throwing anything physical. What I concluded from that presentation was they have no central database to track any of this. It depends on e-mails, SmartSheet and Excel, plus people knowing what they are doing and remembering things. That's my SCARY thought on Halloween!

November 2, 2017 partner notification: The October promotional tier credits did not get entered into our system in October; however, we are addressing this now and the dashboard should be updated by November 7, 2017. Please reach out to your partner representative with any questions you may have.

Yippee! (I'm not holding my breath.)

I'll make a note to hold off on any complaints until November 8, 2017.