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Do not talk about pricing

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Re: Do not talk about pricing

#101

Post by AlgorithmicTime »

dvtv75 wrote: post #61
tajen wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can get a house for $12k?

Re: Do not talk about pricing

#102

Post by mavhc »

creshal wrote: post #75
lmm wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

That's already more known unknowns than most software vendors have. 95% really boils down to "x licenses of package y, options z and w, additional support at n dollars/hour", which you can put on your website just fine. The "sales teams" are often glorified speech-to-text lackeys that just feed your numbers to an excel sheet, read back the result and then make you believe you're getting special treatment. It's differ…

The difference is whether they'll let you have a copy of the spreadsheet

Re: Do not talk about pricing

#103

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

creshal wrote: post #58

"Contact our sales team for a quote" == "Our prices are non-competitive and we know it" in my experience.

True. If you're not willing to show me your price, in a huge font, with big flashing letters, chances are you're secretly a bit ashamed of that price, and I shouldn't be paying it in the first place.

Re: Do not talk about pricing

#104

Post by emp_zealoth »

geon wrote: post #98
bpchaps wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They use a large, expensive platform for automation, and they don't know how to automate?

Imagine just how much of an unfair advantage those companies must have to basically set hundreds of millions on fire and still expand! :)

Re: Do not talk about pricing

#105

Post by username223 »

50CNT wrote: post #91
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…

And that's exactly why guarantees are so effective for sellers. It takes that risk off the customers shoulder, and due to the "Oh, it'd be embarrassing to refund this app, since that means I made a mistake", very few people actually go through with the guarantee. One pitch I found pretty neat goes roughly as follows. Buy now, and if within (30|90|365) days you at any point feel unsatisfied with it, feel free to ask f…

> And that's exactly why guarantees are so effective for sellers... very few people actually go through with the guarantee.

Not always -- many people are shameless jerks. REI used to have a lifetime no-questions-asked return policy, but people were returning worn-out shoes and such, so they had to discontinue it.

Re: Do not talk about pricing

#106

Post by cstejerean »

gizmo wrote: post #79
desdiv wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Elon Musk is transparent about SpaceX prices because they are much cheaper than the competition. There is no similar clarity of pricing with Tesla Motors or SolarCity. With Tesla Musk has a habit of advertising the price of the base model after tax credits have been subtracted, which is kind of misleading. The rule is to be clear about pricing when it works in your advantage and to obfuscate otherwise.

The price for a Tesla including all options is easily available on the website. You don't have to contact a sales person to find out the price. I have no idea about Solar City.

Re: Do not talk about pricing

#107

Post by pjc50 »

jpetso wrote: post #60

Is it not notable how, among all of these examples and thought processes, not a single word was lost on the value provided to the totality of customers, in addition to how much is monetizable? Obviously the ability to pay quality journalists is a valuable cause, but it irks me that retaining a large percentage of customers/consumers, and the corresponding potential to make much more of a difference in the world, isn'…

Journalists .. corresponding potential to make much more of a difference in the world

There very definitely is a market in this - the market for newspapers. Buying a newspaper as a proprietor is a fairly cost-effective way of getting a society to replicate your prejudices; you can get a huge amount of influence for a mere few tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.

Re: Do not talk about pricing

#108

Post by LanceH »

sosuke wrote: post #64
rorykoehler wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Going through this right now. Just got quoted $1400 higher for the same unit I bought last year from the same people. Nevermind that it is for the 2nd floor and wouldn't get used as much and should presumably be a much smaller unit.

Re: Do not talk about pricing

#109

Post by rlonstein »

lucaspiller wrote: post #31
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.

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…

> Try finding a price for one of Oracle's or IBM's > enterprise products on their website

Not to defend these two but in some cases for IBM you will, if you know the incantation and buzzwords, find the price. For example WebSphere Application Server and WebSphere MQ can be looked up because IBM deals in PVU's (processor value unit) and bundled licenses that include support. They do provide a PVU calculator. Of course, you'll have to register to get more information or download a demo. It's frustrating but not impossible.

Re: Do not talk about pricing

#110

Post by rlonstein »

bpchaps wrote: post #66
tajen wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I've had similar experience with CA and the Autosys product. Great lunches, nice cocktails, and weeks of arm twisting to get to speak with actual engineers and get into a tech session. Forget about DB schema, we ended up figuring that out on our own. This was a product we already owned.

In comparison, BMC was up front with an engineer during the eval and provided us with great documentation including the DB schema. We didn't go with them or others in the automation space for... reasons... but it was a very different experience.

[edit: Why the downvotes? My experience with another 800-lbs gorilla confirms the parent comment]

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