81–90 of 173 posts
Unlikely you'll find any good source. "contact us" pricing revolves around understanding the customer's use case deeply enough so that you can demonstrate maximum product value to them and then extract the most possible money. I despise it.
As you already know, this is typical for "enterprise" software due to the idea that potential customers will immediately click away if the price seems too high, so you need to let your customer know what value is in your software before they immediately walk away. One take-away from this is the old "if you have to ask, you can't afford it", and another is that they're automatically filtering out lower-value or price-…
> due to the idea that potential customers will immediately click away if the price seems too high That's not how I read these at all. "Contact Us" means the company doesn't have set pricing but rather will have a sales person/department that will structure a specific deal and negotiate a contract for your business's specific needs.
If you're talking to larger companies, thing FAANG, then they have a list price and discount levels that can act as incentives, levers or there are other options for inducement. Otherwise, you give the sales team the authority on go-to-market strategy while they are executing individual deals (tactics). Senior sales leaders can authorize some of those discounts and any special inducements or incentives have to be custom written into contracts by legal + deal desk, making them more time intensive and less desirable.
Long version: First, my heart goes out to you. I was in charge of a lot of SaaS procurement for a number of years, and even as our company grew and our ability to pay went up, the lack of pricing transparency only became more frustrating to me! It used to be: “if we have to ask, we can’t afford it,” but then it became, “we can likely afford it, but it would be nice to make sure we should even talk to this vendor or industry before sitting through long eye-rolling sales calls.” (Or even worse, the 15 minute sales call with an intern to get you as a lead before you can talk to someone who knows anything.) but my blood pressure is rising, and I digress…
To level the playing field, we recently signed up with one of the “SaaS procurement” companies that has made this MUCH more tolerable. We use TropicApp.io, and have been happy with them and how they do business. They help us find and negotiate purchases. Even before we buy something, we can ask them stuff like, “we need a tool to do X. What are people using these days, and what is ballpark pricing and pricing model for a tool like that?” They (and their competitors) charge a percentage of the money they save you. They can’t help with smaller stuff (less than 5k per year), but are helpful with the rest. (Not affiliated with them or any competitors like Vendr.com - just happy that these companies exist now, and wish we’d found them sooner.)
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Sometimes I ask sales people of these companies, "why is it that SpaceX can give me a price for launching something into space, with detailed manuals about how to prepare all my interfaces, but you have to take 2 weeks to think about how much to charge me?" Yes I know the comparison isn't quite right, but sometimes you just have to put some pressure on bro salespeople coming in, making shit up, and trying to test how…
You cannot tell SpaceX to move up their launch date for you. You cannot send a payload that exceeds the weight or size limits. You cannot tell them that you don't like the color of the rocket since it doesn't fit with your brand. As far as sales go, it's easy for SpaceX to publish their prices because it's the most rigid type of service possible. Enterprise SaaS is the exact opposite. The product that is listed on th…
As you already know, this is typical for "enterprise" software due to the idea that potential customers will immediately click away if the price seems too high, so you need to let your customer know what value is in your software before they immediately walk away. One take-away from this is the old "if you have to ask, you can't afford it", and another is that they're automatically filtering out lower-value or price-…
Don't forget that "contact us" pricing also gives vendor managers something to do, and the ability to brag about whatever discount they negotiate (and it hardly matters if everyone gets that "discount"). It's also the case that if something goes wrong the first question is often "do we have a contact at X?" and if you've gone through the "contact us" pricing dance, the answer is probably "yes", or at least "maybe', w…
If you pay for a product or service and when something goes wrong your only contact is some jerk in sales that means you fucked up bad. Support options and contacts should have been determined and documented long before you spend a single cent.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> due to the idea that potential customers will immediately click away if the price seems too high That's not how I read these at all. "Contact Us" means the company doesn't have set pricing but rather will have a sales person/department that will structure a specific deal and negotiate a contract for your business's specific needs.
I read it as: the company doesn't have set pricing but rather has a sales person/department that will charge you more than the next person for the exact same product/service if they have any reason to suspect they can get away with it after learning as much as they can about your finances and only after wasting your time on a high pressure sales pitch. If someone refuses to openly list prices they're either: - Embarr…
There's a large and very lucrative industry around just implementing SaaS software.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't forget that "contact us" pricing also gives vendor managers something to do, and the ability to brag about whatever discount they negotiate (and it hardly matters if everyone gets that "discount"). It's also the case that if something goes wrong the first question is often "do we have a contact at X?" and if you've gone through the "contact us" pricing dance, the answer is probably "yes", or at least "maybe', w…
> It's also the case that if something goes wrong the first question is often "do we have a contact at X?" and if you've gone through the "contact us" pricing dance, the answer is probably "yes" If you pay for a product or service and when something goes wrong your only contact is some jerk in sales that means you fucked up bad. Support options and contacts should have been determined and documented long before you s…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I read it as: the company doesn't have set pricing but rather has a sales person/department that will charge you more than the next person for the exact same product/service if they have any reason to suspect they can get away with it after learning as much as they can about your finances and only after wasting your time on a high pressure sales pitch. If someone refuses to openly list prices they're either: - Embarr…
Enterprise SaaS customers are notorious for demanding one-off features, special packages, customizations, or hundreds of hours of meetings. For complicated enterprise products where these requests are inevitable, special pricing is inevitable. There's a large and very lucrative industry around just implementing SaaS software.
End of month reports are always a good time, End of quarter even better, Triple witching week is the best. Sometimes you get lucky and some middle-manager-muckity-muck is only $X thousands from the bonus target... and thats when you find your deals. Start early and be prepared to wait.