How Come You Just Do SalesLogix? (Part 3)

Part 3 – SalesLogix Makes a Lasting Impression

When SalesLogix declined to bid on the project, I called the SalesLogix salesrep and asked, “Why?”. He told me they weren’t willing to do and spend what they’d experienced two of the other contenders would do and spend to cinch a big deal. At the time, I didn’t understand their answer. I appreciated their transparency, candor and honesty – whether it made sense or not.

The final selection and negotiation process taught me just how sound their reasoning was.

I’d done so much digging into the features, functions, benefits and costs of the SFA tools I was reasonably confident that SalesLogix should have won the deal.

The same person, Pat Sullivan, developed and brought to market both SalesLogix and ACT! (both are still a big players in the CRM market). What he learned developing and promoting ACT! he brought with him to the development of SalesLogix: Specifically, a ton of knowledge about what sales and marketing needs to do their jobs AND about how to put it all together into an easy-to-use, easy-to-configure, extensible package.

Their total cost of ownership, return on investment and payback were the best of the bunch – hands down. For what they were asking, they had the least expensive, most powerful and flexible solution. I say this because the SalesLogix architecture was just as powerful and just as elegant as the winner’s; yet it was about a third of the up-front cost and about a sixth of the total cost of ownership over time.

Nevertheless, I had to respect their decision. Who can say whether they’d have won or not? The eventual winner did many (IMHO) cheesy things to make sure their bid was always on top and engaged in some “very creative” shenanigans that certainly swayed the final decision in their favor.

Quite a project.

Ten years later, we used everything I learned to select a strategic CRM offering for MBI Systems and our customers.

That strategic offering is SalesLogix. It’s still a bargain.

Fast forward to today. We recently attended the worldwide conference for partners and customers of SaleLogix’s parent company, Sage Software. As expected, it was a grand event, and from a seminar and workshop content point of view, it was exceptional. But that’s not why we went. We attended to make sure we’d made a smart decision to remain committed to offering only SalesLogix as MBI System’s CRM offering.

I’m pleased to say, “Sage confirmed our decision”.

Sage Software continues to commit the right resources to improve, market, sell and service SalesLogix. They still don’t spend quite as much advertising their product as some of the firms listed in Gartner’s “Magic Quadrant”. Nor do they step outside the bounds of defensible ethics or common sense to close a deal. Instead, they’ve put together very capable sales, marketing, channel management and consulting teams who genuinely seem interested in providing real CRM value and provably cost-effective solutions. I personally appreciate the way they stick to telling the truth even when it’s not in their best short-term interest. We returned from the trip assured we’ve made a good business decision at MBI Systems in our commitment to represent only Sage SalesLogix as THE CRM product suite we choose to sell and support.

Treating our customers the way we’d want to be treated remains our most important business mantra.  SalesLogix helps us do that.

I’ve seen a lot of products come and go. Sometimes for good reason and sometimes not. While I can’t predict the future, I understand small and mid-sized business and have developed a good feel for what helps them succeed. Since SalesLogix fits the bill in all regards, we’ll stick with it as our only CRM offering for the foreseeable future.

Just seems like common sense to me.