Sage 100

What are you doing with customers who ask: Please advise a quote for Sage Web Services and advise what is involved with implementation. Our Web people are conversant with it.

My first inclination is to get them a resource at Sage and step back. My experiences with customers who think they know what they want to do with eBusiness has not been positive but then again I haven't had a lot try to DIY.

@ToddMartin is my go to person for Sage E-biz.

I usually send over the manuals as a first step. Let them review and come back with questions.

Thanks. I'm trying to get them to reach out to either ROI or Website Pipeline since I think their unasked questions (which either of these resources deal with daily) is probably key.

www.4ebm.com is our website that has content about eBusiness. Not much has changed with eBusiness over the years but what was available, we have posted on this site. We work with partners that don't want to deal with eBusiness questions and work with them to get the best solution for the customer. Some cases it isn't eBusiness but solutions like website pipeline. We have also developed our own web services that can be better customized to specific needs.

The driver is usually Shopping cart for B2B and/or B2C. Generally there is already a chosen platform. If one of INSYNCHs, we got here. If not, then WSP, Clearnine, or Ebiz differentiation discussion ensues.

I am pretty much convinced that this approach is both appropriate and does no damage. 1. If they are on annual agreement, Call them to here what they want to do, why, and why now? Verbally outline the several options they could look at. Tell them that anything more than this is a modest consulting engagement. Tell them you'll send 3 options for this. If not on annual agreement, I wouldn't give them much verbal help even. 2. The options, in a 90% boilerplate 1-page outline. range from 1) defining for them realistic options and functionality they need to look for or avoid, etc. links to appropriate solutions, range of budget. 2) Option (1) + review with company + final 2 or 3 options to consider w/budget range. Customer then goes off with vendors on their own. 3) Option (2) + management of and guidance through the demo and selection process. Perhaps also proj mgt fee (~15%) of selected project so you stay through it. 3. If they want to just do DIY, they are welcome to it.

Unfortunately eBusiness/web services is not my specialty and the end user is just looking to buy and not pay for consulting.

My main point of the approach is clarify to customers that our expertise involve consulting. It's nice way of making them go away - the first interview you drop the names of the players and send them off. If you want to register the customer name with them as a lead, you might get a commission. Efficient. More important, don't sell yourself short on what you can bring to the customer's problem without understanding the details of web services. You know the 20k foot level stuff, and you know how to work the pro's and con's from working the vendor experts at WsP, ROI, etc. Building engineers laying out HVAC can't actually hook up plumbing - be the engineer! Plenty of plumbers around who can't help a prospect make a good decision.

In the future I see myself only providing this type of high level suggestions (aka ""you could call x, y or z depending upon how you would like to proceed"") to those users who are on an access/support agreement with me. If they have indicated they want to be ""pay as you go"" then I am working very hard to re-define exactly what pay as you go means. - Payment by CC required in advanced and then 3 day min response time - No reply for adhoc consulting questions (such as above) - Quotes and pricing is a paid engagement (cc in advance) Increasingly I'm referring users to Sage to manage their own accounts. I believe in 2017 the customer experience with Sage will continue to deteriorate enough that it will be a motivating factor to enroll with our agreement. However, if I keep including services for free to those who want to pay as they go then there is zero incentive to enroll in our own plan (aka why buy the cow when you get the milk for free).

We agree completely on all your points, with one small quibble. ""No Reply"" is not as good as emailing a standard email explaining your policy to all questions coming non-agreement users and defining their possible next steps, all of which involve money except (probably) calling Sage. It would also be a good idea to send a note to all your agreement customers discussing your new policy and hence their new value derived from their agreement without any price increase.

As an aside - but somewhat related - when customer calls and asks ""can you just order this"" (usually because it's Bar Code needed for Scanco/Scanforce) or in this case eBusiness Web Services - always ask - will you be installing that yourself or would you like a price for both the product and the installation. It is an unfortunate reality that simply installing another module is not without risks and I have made the mistake of ""volunteering"" to install the solution which turns into ""well we can only install after hours"" so now I'm both installing, doing so after 8pm at night and then taking calls for every unrelated error that the users ask ""hey Wayne, is this error xyz related to you installing PDQ""..... So, would you like installation priced in with that or will you be installing it yourself. If we price it in with the sale it's $200 and if we are asked to stop work later and come in and install it then it will be $400"" (pick your number)

Yep. An amazing number of customers think installation is part of the purchase price. We add license keys for N/C, but nothing more extensive. And we only do that for annual agreement customers.