By day I'm a consultant working with a popular line of accounting software called Sage MAS 90.
My company web site is http://www.s-consult.com and we provide training, consulting and troubleshooting for all versions of Sage MAS 90 and MAS 200 to customers located throughout the United States.
I live in Glastonbury with my two kids (aged 9) who bring special meaning to the concept that "all kids are cute when they're somebody else's".
In my spare time I love hiking, disco dancing, macrame, ping pong, and watching paint dry.
The thoughts and commentary on this page are my own and not anyone else's but shouldn't that be obvious?
Here we are posing on the final day of Sage's Presidents Circle held in Phoenix AZ at the Arizona Biltmore Resort & Spa (January 25-27, 2010).
Tom Miller ran the channel for 20-ish at Great Plains then Microsoft. He's over at Sage now and has things well in hand. This was a final meeting before we all went our separate ways.
Hyperactive children and those with attention-deficit disorders can now queue jump at theme parks because they cannot cope with the stress of waiting.
Tourist boards are offering the privilege so that they can skip the queue with their friends.
Teachers have criticised the scheme, saying that it undermines their efforts to encourage patience and it would be better for children with ADHD, attention deficit and hyperactive disorder, to learn how to wait.
Children with ADHD, which was recognised as a psychiatric condition 15 years ago, are given passes in most theme parks in the UK and many abroad if they can prove that they have the condition.
The end of the year represents a time when we should all start to come into the busier time of our business.
The last half of the year is traditionally when companies are upgrading their accounting systems or thinking of starting projects that are intended to improve their reporting.
Now is the time when you should review the rates you’re charging to clients and consider changes – in advance of the busier and hopefully more billable year end. Since all of our costs tend to rise from year to year – it is only fair that your rates should rise as well.
With that in mind, I have several suggestions about billing that have worked exceptionally well for me (aka clients don’t complain or question).
Implement these today and I’d be surprised if you could not start increasing your bottom line $20,000 or more next year. I’ve implemented these tips myself each of the last several years. I don’t recommend you make a big deal out of it or spend days writing an apologetic letter about how the economy sucks and you’re “forced” to make a “small” adjustment to rates.
Just “man or woman up” and get in there and adjust your billing practices. In this economy there’s no room for bashful billers. Here’s my four tips that will work for you – because they’ve worked for me!
I've received the question "How do I convert clients to a support plan instead of hourly billing" several times during the Sage Insights 2009 conference. Outside the conference I've also received several email inquiries.
Rather than repeat myself (and run the risk of forgetting something) - here's my mega answer to the question along with actual examples of agreements that I use (feel free to re-use them though I take no responsibility for their content and do not provide any warranty or guarantee that they will do anything for you other than serve as an interesting starting point to form your own agreement. Do not call if you are sued, a client leaves or have your family dis-own you after using any of these forms - everything is provided as-is and I make no claims these are legal in your state or will produce any results whatsoever).
Here's the way that I converted my entire client base to prepaid annual phone support plans (we do NOT accept any new clients not on a prepaid plan). I do not claim that this will work for you or will produce any results whatsoever. In case you've missed the point above - use this information along with your own good judgement to craft a plan that works for you.
I do prepaid annual support (exclusively) for several reasons:
People paying hourly were constantly negotiating answers that they deemed "quick questions" and arguing that since it only took a few seconds for us to answer their question that they did not expect to get a bill.
Allows me to reserve more time for paying clients who are seeking a long term relationship.
There's less of a billing and recordkeeping task with a prepaid annual plan
It properly assigns a value to the knowledge (and the speed with which we respond to questions)
In my opinion the biggest success factor for implementing a new way of billing for support is ..... you have to start it immediately for all NEW clients (be it new deals or orphans).
These people will join a plan. I guarantee you.
KEY POINT: IF you give a client the option of:
Stay as-is (aka - pay in 1/4 hr increments only when they call and then dispute 75% as "quick questions)
Go on plan with a prepaid annual agreement that covers all questions at a fair price
Guess which one they choose?
Offering the plan is a CHANGE in the way you do business. It's not just another option. If you offer "stay as is" (aka - client continues disputing the bulk of the calls as "quick questions" and therefore shouldn't be billed - then you will get nowhere).
And
you cannot offer any exceptions.
You must absolutely be prepared for clients to try to negotiate you to hourly.
I guarantee they will try. And when they do I
immediately apologize and tell those new customers/orphans that we
don't bill that way and our plan is the only method we offer.
I will (and do) walk away from support opportunities that don't want to go on plan.
YES- WE WALK AWAY FROM CLIENTS WHO DO NOT AGREE TO OUR PLAN TERMS.
I would guesstimate I walk away from 2 in 5 (and those two would have been lousy clients anyhow).
Here's
the agreement that I use -- and I think I've had a client ever refer to
it exactly zero times in the last five years (in other words I think
the plan is pretty clear and fair):
I
also re-designed what "pay as you go" means to Schulz Consulting...
You'll hear clients say "we just want to stay pay as you go"...
What the clients WANT pay-as-you-go to mean
---
1/10th of hr billing
at your best rate,
respond within an hour
don't bill for quick questions (these are the 90% of their calls that start "hey, quick questions"
YOU CAN RE-DEFINE PAY AS YOU GO. PROVIDE CLIENTS WITH YOUR DEFINITION. THERE'S NO LAW THAT SAY'S PAY AS YOU GO MEANS STAY AS IS. USE A NEW DEFINITION.
My definition (which I provide anyone
wanting to go that way -- and we only offer it for clients coming OFF
our unlimited plan) -- basically a $375 per incident pre-paid fee (an
incident is 1 hour max) with minimum on-site of $1,000 half day or
$2,000 full day. I'm not sure I have that document here but I'll send
it to anyone who requests it -- wayne@s-consult.com.
UPDATE: I've uploaded the Pay As You Go plan that I provide to clients wanting to leave my unlimited plan and just pay for what they use. A copy is below. Note that we do NOT provide pay as you go to any client who was not already on our unlimited plan. This pay as you go (aka Bronze) is only for existing clients looking to downgrade their level of service. The plan is NOT offered to new clients or those never on a support plan with us.
You could use the pay as you go as your base level plan.
The current school of thought is to offer three options -
usually leaving the middle option as what you want people to pick.
For me
the middle is my $2,800 unlimited phone support which I've included
above. I think I'm probably low on the number because I don't have
people trying to negotiate it or complaining about the $$.....so your
number probably could be higher.
Renewal rates are amazingly high. If people drop they usually are
companies that found us on the Internet and had a crisis so they joined
our plan for the year and then they went on their way (or found someone
in their local area).
Do not get hung up on whether people will call too much/little. You
can always start invoicing them (assuming the calls are billable and in a gray area)
or telling them you have to go on-site (which we always bill for).
My
memory is that for the first two years that I moved clients to support
I did not force everyone to do so. Rather I had my plan together.
Implemented it for every new clients. Converted some existing clients
to the plan (only a couple).
Rule of thumb is given "stay as we are" - the client will chose to
stay unless the alternative is obviously cheaper or has a bigger
advantage. They will always do the math so expect if you were to go to
them and say the support is going to be $2,800 per year that they pull
your invoices and check them to see they only paid $150 last year for
support.
Some of the things you could do to incent people to move toward plans:
- Not include remote support in any of your present hourly agreements -- make them move to a plan to get this highly valuable service
-
Lengthen the guaranteed call back time for those not on plan so that you get to them slower
(I've phrased this as "the level of service they've chosen")
- Make contacting Sage (for support or any reason) on their behalf a
part of the plan -- otherwise it is billable (and contacting Sage can
be a project in itself)
My advice would be to implement this immediately for all orphans and new clients.
Roll it out gradually to your installed base via soft offers (where
clients do not have to select a plan but are made away) --- then as you
get more clients on plan you will become more comfortable increasing
the demand that clients join a plan or not be able to obtain support
from your company.
This is the exact way that I did it -- and I eventually converted
most of my clients. The ones that dropped were truthfully dormant
people using old 2.x or 3.x versions who we invoiced once every three
years. In other words what drops off are typically not active clients.
A few people have asked for a list of presentations that I'm participating in at Insights 2009. Almost all my presentations have to do with Social Media and/or marketing. Sage doesn't trust me enough to give a talk on anything remotely technical.
For those who don't know me (which should be a lot of people) - I'm a full time Sage MAS 90 and MAS 200 consultant from Connecticut. I've been working with Sage since it was called State of the Art.
I work exclusively with Sage MAS 90 and MAS 200. My specialty is working with "A-List" clients and working efficiently. While I have an office I outsource almost everything else (phone, email, newsletter mailing, etc). My main computer is a MacBook Pro. Most of my clients come to me after having a bad experience with another VAR. I won't take any client (no exceptions) who does not enroll in a prepaid annual phone support plan with my firm.
Here's a copy of the agreement for those who are wondering what it looks like
I'm such a terrible salesperson that I've had to compensate by (wherever possible) having clients come to me. I do this largely by communicating at least twice monthly with my client base. In addition I blog and participate in lots of Social Media - aka making it easier for people to find you.
Here's a little about my philosophy. Can you tell I did this without a script?:
Here's my schedule of presentations and events I'll be participating in. Note that I'm not leading any of these events - rather I'm the "trained monkey" on a panel that someone leading the discussion points to and say's "listen to how Wayne does this" - to which I respond incoherently for five minutes then shut up:
Monday 8:30 pm - Bayou A - LinkedIn Group Meeting - Sage VARS, Employees, Alumni
Did you know there's a LinkedIn Group just for Sage geeks to hang out?
If you'd like to meet in person - come on down to this free social hour. There's no refreshments. No cheezy giveaways. Unless you want to - there's no requirement to stand up and introduce yourself (snore..).
This is just a good way to put a face to the name that you see online.
You do not have to be a member to attend - though I would encourage you to join the LinkedIn group (totally free) and participate.
Here's the questions they'll ask during this presentation (Hint: My answer is "Google Wayne Schulz")
Wednesday 1:30 to 3:00 pm - Beyond the Hype: Social Network Marketing for B2B
Looks like I only have to field two softball questions here:
1 - How Social Media has helped you
2 - How do you manage your time using social media
Since I think they're videotaping the session I'm thinking of bringing a couple large sized notecards and faking that I'm reading (slowly, poorly and with much labored effort) my answer word for word. Who say's it isn't fun to participate at Insights?!
Wednesday 3:15 to 4:45 pm - Partner-Proven Marketing Methods and Strategies
Here's the list of questions that the discussion leader say's we'll be talking about.
SEO/Websites:
Is there a short list of things
to do to improve websites and rankings for searches?
What little things do companies
miss most when optimizing their website for search?
What are some ways I can improve
my search rankings?
Is SEO overrated and do you
have to spend so much money to have it done? How many Sage resellers
have actually closed a deal exclusively by way of inbound SEO marketing,
and how much of their total new sales was driven from SEO?
Social Networking:
What proof is there that social
marketing really works or has impact? What is the potential negative
impact?
Is there a new means of communication
on the horizon? Does texting have a place in marketing?
Has any partner had significant
success from social networking?
Events and Customer Conferences:
Are annual customer conferences
worth the investment? Are attending trade shows?
Telemarketing:
Curious to hear if anyone has
used an “Appointment Setting Company” and if so, what were the results?
These types of firms are VERY expensive so we would like to see if anyone
has used them before.
Messaging:
What is the "we can save
you money or add sales" message that works? 2009 and possibly 2010 marketing
must address the "Bottom Line" or we won't get in the door.
Are there any proven methods
of getting a marketing message to the Owner/President?
General Questions
– Where to invest?
For small businesses new to
marketing, where should we focus our marketing efforts especially when
financial resources are limited?
What is the percent of marketing
spend is required to fuel double-digit organic growth that stems from
sales to both new and existing customers?
General Questions
– What to do?
What does not work? Stop using
this method? What is the best means of identifying my most valuable
prospect? What questions, when answered, best define my best customers
and prospects.
As a very small BP, learning
what is “working” with other BP’s in today’s economic climate
to drive new sales (small Client base to sell too) is very important
to us.
What marketing promotions are
successful (CRM) in this down economy?
What is the one illusive idea
that requires relatively little effort but produces great results?
What the most proven marketing
strategies and tools are for more finding new software sales opportunities?
What's WORKING for other resellers
in the SMB/ERP arena? How are they attracting NEW business/prospects?
Any prospecting ideas that
really work?
Prospecting – new methods
that work?
Contact information is below. If you've been thinking of starting a newsletter but aren't sure what to write about, or if you just wonder about how Social Media can be used to promote your business then follow the links below and sign up for either my newsletter or Facebook feed.....
...then just DO THE OPPOSITE of what I do and you should be ok!
It's been a while since I've seen one of these "turn your picture into" _____ gimmicks. With the release of Star Trek I guess it's only natural that now we have the ability to upload our photo and become one of the characters from the movie.
Here's a fun thing to do in NY. Head to the Times Square webcam by 46 and Broadway (right next to the Times Square visitor center). Call your family and friends. Have them watch on the web.
Wave like a lunatic.
Have your friends and family go here to watch you on the web (have them log onto camera #4 if you're at the 46th and Broadway location).
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