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Do not talk about pricing

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Re: Do not talk about pricing

#61

Post by dvtv75 »

tajen wrote: post #53
lucaspiller wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do alienate customers, and for a lot of companies this is on purpose. Try finding a price for one of Oracle's or IBM's enterprise products on their website - you won't - their products aren't designed for the casual browser, they are designed for directors who have budgets in the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars range (where strangely the price ends up pretty similar to the budget). This is the type…

I would argue that IBM's business is selling golf courses and Orlando software-and-wine conferences to CEOs, for having witnessed it, because honestly, which sysadmin would accept to run such horrible pieces of software (IBM Rational Suite or IBM FileNet), let alone... pay for it, really? It looks like nothing more than corruption of officers on fiduciary duty. Secret pricing is exactly how they conduct that business…

There's also the rather odd "Sign up to see prices."

I did sign up to see what Autodesk Maya cost in my country's currency. At the time, in $US is was $3,995 for a single seat. In my country, it was around $US12000.

I did what any good person with a goodly amount of cash in the bank would do - I said "$#@! it," and bought a house instead.

Re: Do not talk about pricing

#62

Post by sosborn »

desdiv wrote: post #30
nitwit005 wrote: post #27

If you try to buy things, it's sometimes desperately frustrating that no one will just quote you a simple price. They have different pricing tiers, and want a salesperson to talk to you so they can pretend to give you a "special" discount, and all sorts of BS. I'm sure these things work, but they also alienate customers sometimes. People have founded entire businesses on offering clearer pricing schemes.

It's a funny world when Elon Musk will openly display "$90M to send 6.4mT of your shit into geosynchronous orbit"[0] and yet millions of businesses selling things that are far less expensive and far more fungible want you to "contact our sales team for a quote". [0] http://www.spacex.com/about/capabilities

Well, that's a bit apples to oranges. You don't have many options for sending shit into space.

Re: Do not talk about pricing

#63

Post by LoSboccacc »

orangecat wrote: post #16
LoSboccacc wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anything peolpe are afraid to explore the curve to find maximum profit. Starting high and giving out discoubts at various level trough the year can help building a model and set the best price if it's not overdone (as in, customer expecting continual discounts)

if it's not overdone (as in, customer expecting continual discounts) I'm still surprised that Steam has so many discounts; they've basically trained me to never pay full price. But I feel no need to play new games right when they're released; maybe there are enough people that do.

yeah steam was what I had in mind when I wrote that.

but it has changed policy last year or so: before titles got cheaper by time and got discounts on top, so it was usual to find a year old aaa game for 5$ or 7$ in the summer sale, now titles take at least two years before even starting to cheapen in price, and publisher are using the trick of giving out big discount (75% is common) but starting from incredibly high prices (so it ends up never going below 20$)

Re: Do not talk about pricing

#64

Post by sosuke »

rorykoehler wrote: post #47
nitwit005 wrote: post #27

If you try to buy things, it's sometimes desperately frustrating that no one will just quote you a simple price. They have different pricing tiers, and want a salesperson to talk to you so they can pretend to give you a "special" discount, and all sorts of BS. I'm sure these things work, but they also alienate customers sometimes. People have founded entire businesses on offering clearer pricing schemes.

Pretty much every company that doesn't display pricing doesn't get my business. There is invariably a competitor that does display pricing and I'll have bought that before the sales rep gets back to me. My philosophy/hunch is that reducing friction equals providing value. I always aim to provide value at every link in the value chain and reducing friction (displaying clear pricing and minimal click instant signup) is…

I had that experience trying to find out how much a dang AC unit costs. Call for pricing feels like an enormous expenditure to me now.

Re: Do not talk about pricing

#65

Post by lmm »

desdiv wrote: post #30
nitwit005 wrote: post #27

If you try to buy things, it's sometimes desperately frustrating that no one will just quote you a simple price. They have different pricing tiers, and want a salesperson to talk to you so they can pretend to give you a "special" discount, and all sorts of BS. I'm sure these things work, but they also alienate customers sometimes. People have founded entire businesses on offering clearer pricing schemes.

It's a funny world when Elon Musk will openly display "$90M to send 6.4mT of your shit into geosynchronous orbit"[0] and yet millions of businesses selling things that are far less expensive and far more fungible want you to "contact our sales team for a quote". [0] http://www.spacex.com/about/capabilities

Putting x tonnes into geosynchronous orbit is about as fungible as it gets. There wouldn't necessarily be any custom work at all (in practice there's integration work but if you're using a standard satellite bus that can be pretty standard).

Re: Do not talk about pricing

#66

Post by bpchaps »

tajen wrote: post #53
lucaspiller wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do alienate customers, and for a lot of companies this is on purpose. Try finding a price for one of Oracle's or IBM's enterprise products on their website - you won't - their products aren't designed for the casual browser, they are designed for directors who have budgets in the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars range (where strangely the price ends up pretty similar to the budget). This is the type…

I would argue that IBM's business is selling golf courses and Orlando software-and-wine conferences to CEOs, for having witnessed it, because honestly, which sysadmin would accept to run such horrible pieces of software (IBM Rational Suite or IBM FileNet), let alone... pay for it, really? It looks like nothing more than corruption of officers on fiduciary duty. Secret pricing is exactly how they conduct that business…

Other smaller companies act like this, too. Was invited to a steak lunch for automic's UC4 (job scheduling) at a fancy dinner far away from anything relevant and at no point, during a two hour talk, was anything of substance actually said. They were trying to sell us UC4 (we already owned it, ffs) yet they didn't even show us the damn interface! Everything was fluff upon fluff upon fluff. And the execs - wearing some of the most expensive suits and watches I've ever seen - friggin' loved it.

The best part is that they brought in McDonald's UC4 engineer to talk about how good it was. When we asked him how they automated its deployment and where they got their init scripts from, since UC4 didn't include any (wtf), his answer was that it was basically his full time job to deploy it by hand, since he didn't know how to automate anything. Somehow he turned his lack of skill and McDonald's apparent lack of good tech leadership into a positive thing - which the execs also loved. These are the kinds of people making large, absurdly expensive software decisions for multi, multi billion dollar companies.

I have nightmares of trying to figure out their database schema. 2-6ish letter German acronyms for table names....

Their wiki gives a good impression of their character: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automic

Re: Do not talk about pricing

#67

Post by LaurentVB »

Spivak wrote: post #6

> “It is not your customer’s job to set pricing. An optimal price is one that is accepted but not without some initial resistance” says Ash Mauyra explains in this great piece. I can imagine this as general purpose advice but this is no way to build a loyal base. There are some services that I have that I begrudgingly pay for because they price so aggressively that they extract nearly all of the value from my subscri…

I have this feeling with Intercom, that every bit of added value I want to extract next, I have to upgrade my plan or buy yet another plan. Their pricing pisses me off every single time, yet I pay every single time... after insulting them copiously. They're that good.

Re: Do not talk about pricing

#68

Post by rapht »

Very good points in this post, but it seems to me that they are only valid if you look at a single line of products / services at a time.

When you put multiple products/services in one store, that is when your products get to be next to both competing and non-competing (non directly substituable) products, there are other consumer feelings to add like the sum of all things they're going to buy -- whether or not they have a budget, the sum of the things will either look "cheap" or "expensive". And who knows what they will buy next... if they come back at all.

Re: Do not talk about pricing

#69

Post by estefan »

enraged_camel wrote: post #36
lucaspiller wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do alienate customers, and for a lot of companies this is on purpose. Try finding a price for one of Oracle's or IBM's enterprise products on their website - you won't - their products aren't designed for the casual browser, they are designed for directors who have budgets in the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars range (where strangely the price ends up pretty similar to the budget). This is the type…

You're right about the target audience, but wrong about the reason. They don't quote a price because the cost of the product they sell makes up only a small percentage of the overall cost. The vast majority comes from consulting and product customization, which is billable by the hour. And since you don't know the prospect's exact need during the initial engagement, providing pricing would be silly. Source: I work in…

It's also because it releases less information into the public domain about how the industry works. Less information = greater competitive advantage. It's harder for new entrants to determine 'reasonable' pricing and to position their offerings.

Re: Do not talk about pricing

#70

Post by majewsky »

hkmurakami wrote: post #49
corysama wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is uncertainty. With pizza, you know pretty well what you are going to get. With an app, 90% are crap, 9% are ok but not what you personally prefer, 1% are great. So, gambling $2 with a seemingly 1% chance of greatness feels like an app costs $200. The reality is not that bad. But, it's all about how it feels. On top of that, it's not even really about the money. You don't want to feel bad about gettin…

I guess it's also training. We have many positive experiences of the "risk" of ordering pizza has turned out well. The number of experiences we have had to psotively reinforce app purchase positive experience is likely two orders of magnitude smaller.

Also, the benefit is more immediate. "I will enjoy this food within the next 30 minutes" is closer temporally than "I will enjoy this app over the course of the next few months or maybe even years".
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