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Why do enterprises even initiate conversations with third parties if they won't immediately give you a price? Just move on to someone who will. If your options

Why do enterprises even initiate conversations with third parties if they won't immediately give you a price? Just move on to someone who will. If your options are $10,000 or <price unknown> its obvious option #2 will be more. If businesses categorically rejected working with companies that can't provide up-front estimates, they wouldn't be a thing.

evrydayhustling 6y ago
For enterprise deals, the price is often a small part of the overall cost of ownership. The defining element of enterprise deals is complication: large companies don't tend to buy the product as advertised. They need the vendor to make lots of adjustments and carry out extra processes to deploy (or else those costs fall back on the buyer). So, until the buyer's requirements have been explored, there's not a useful estimate to be had.
- tjalfi 6y ago
  This. There are no easy purchases in an enterprise. Working with any third party requires an NDA, contract review, and negotiations by our Purchasing department.
frenchy 6y ago
Probably a simliar reason as why I won't normally give an up-front price when doing contracting work. For better, or for worse, "enterprise" folk are trying to sell "solutions" and not services. This usually works out well for them, because the people who they're selling to don't usually understand the technical minutae, and will often get the details wrong or incomplete.
dman 6y ago
Because from an enterprise point of view they want to negotiate and arm twist vendors. Large players can and do use their weight to get pretty hefty discounts.
- bityard 6y ago
  I work for a company that buys a lot of enterprise gear. Here is what buying it looks like, if you've never done it before. Let's say you have your eye on a storage array. You know it's going to cost a bundle but it's exactly what you need and want to know how much to budget for buying one. So you call the company who makes it and ask for a price. They tell you, "Sorry, but we don't sell directly to end users, you have to buy our gear through an authorized vendor." So you ask for a list of their vendors. "Sorry, but we don't give out that information. You could try googling our name for some?" Once you locate a reseller, you call them up and ask them how much it costs to buy the storage array. "I'm sorry, I don't have the pricing in front of me but do you have time on Wednesday for a 1 hour phone call?" You ask, why can't you just give me a price over the phone? "Well, we want to get to know you and we need to make sure that this solution is the one that fits your needs. Plus we can tell you all about the product and answer any questions you might have." Fine, let's schedule a phone call. Wednesday rolls around and the phone rings. On the line is your "Account Manager" (salescritter), an Integration Engineer (salescritter who can sometimes answer technical questions), the Account Manager's manager, and possibly a trainee for any of the above. Because whenever there's a scheduled phone meeting, it's never just one person on the other end, it's a whole team. "Why don't you start by telling us about the problem you're trying to solve and by the way, all other parts of your infrastructure that we could possibly sell you solutions for?" So you answer their questions, as diplomatically as you can. Once that's done, if you're _lucky_, you will sit through a 30-minute long sales pitch on the product you already fully intend to buy, if the price is right. If you are unlucky, they will try to schedule a follow-up phone call and webex for it. As the hour-long phone call is clearly starting to wind down, you grit your teeth and ask, hopefully, how much does this thing actually cost? "I can see your a down-to-brass-tacks kind of guy so I'll tell you what, I'll send you a detailed quote sometime early next week, okay? Great!" _Two weeks_ later, you get the quote. At this point you are so tired of the resller people and their delays and empty platitudes, you just want to get the damn thing on order before your spending window closes. To your surprise, once they actually have the check in hand, they move a lot quicker and ship the unit more or less immediately. The thing is, if you offer a product in the enterprise space and _don't_ go through this complicated dog-and-pony show for every customer, they won't buy from you because they won't see you as a serious vendor. I hate it all.
snowwrestler 6y ago
All I care about, on behalf of my employer, is the final price. I’m not afraid to make a few phone calls, or exchange a few emails, to find out how much something costs. It’s not hard, and it’s my job to do it. As for your guess that “call for price” businesses are always more expensive than those with pricing pages, from my experience you are wrong. All that matters is the company’s willingness to negotiate with me. In my experience there is essentially no correlation between that and whether they publish a pricing page.
staysaasy 6y ago
It's a good point worth a discussion. Enterprise purchasing is more similar to a marriage than it is to buying a latté. Even down to having to get internal stakeholder buy-in (akin to "meeting the parents"). Price matters but it doesn't matter nearly as much as being able to navigate the evaluation and procurement process adeptly, so it's worth it for the vendor to filter out tourists, and the right buyers are looking for a longterm partner as well so they're down to do the dance (ie they're not just looking for a fling on Tinder). This feels like a bunch of sales/marketing bullshit, but it's not - it's just a byproduct of the fact that change management at a big company is hard and people are people (ie are difficult). I work in product/engineering, and we spend a lot of time thinking about how to tune our product to help enterprise buyers make purchases successfully. It's hard but rewarding. Tiny example, having a product that is flexible enough that you rarely have to say "no we can't do that" in a sales cycle is really powerful.

evrydayhustling 6y ago

For enterprise deals, the price is often a small part of the overall cost of ownership. The defining element of enterprise deals is complication: large companies don't tend to buy the product as advertised. They need the vendor to make lots of adjustments and carry out extra processes to deploy (or else those costs fall back on the buyer). So, until the buyer's requirements have been explored, there's not a useful estimate to be had.

tjalfi 6y ago
This. There are no easy purchases in an enterprise. Working with any third party requires an NDA, contract review, and negotiations by our Purchasing department.

frenchy 6y ago

Probably a simliar reason as why I won't normally give an up-front price when doing contracting work. For better, or for worse, "enterprise" folk are trying to sell "solutions" and not services. This usually works out well for them, because the people who they're selling to don't usually understand the technical minutae, and will often get the details wrong or incomplete.

dman 6y ago

Because from an enterprise point of view they want to negotiate and arm twist vendors. Large players can and do use their weight to get pretty hefty discounts.

bityard 6y ago
I work for a company that buys a lot of enterprise gear. Here is what buying it looks like, if you've never done it before. Let's say you have your eye on a storage array. You know it's going to cost a bundle but it's exactly what you need and want to know how much to budget for buying one. So you call the company who makes it and ask for a price. They tell you, "Sorry, but we don't sell directly to end users, you have to buy our gear through an authorized vendor." So you ask for a list of their vendors. "Sorry, but we don't give out that information. You could try googling our name for some?" Once you locate a reseller, you call them up and ask them how much it costs to buy the storage array. "I'm sorry, I don't have the pricing in front of me but do you have time on Wednesday for a 1 hour phone call?" You ask, why can't you just give me a price over the phone? "Well, we want to get to know you and we need to make sure that this solution is the one that fits your needs. Plus we can tell you all about the product and answer any questions you might have." Fine, let's schedule a phone call. Wednesday rolls around and the phone rings. On the line is your "Account Manager" (salescritter), an Integration Engineer (salescritter who can sometimes answer technical questions), the Account Manager's manager, and possibly a trainee for any of the above. Because whenever there's a scheduled phone meeting, it's never just one person on the other end, it's a whole team. "Why don't you start by telling us about the problem you're trying to solve and by the way, all other parts of your infrastructure that we could possibly sell you solutions for?" So you answer their questions, as diplomatically as you can. Once that's done, if you're _lucky_, you will sit through a 30-minute long sales pitch on the product you already fully intend to buy, if the price is right. If you are unlucky, they will try to schedule a follow-up phone call and webex for it. As the hour-long phone call is clearly starting to wind down, you grit your teeth and ask, hopefully, how much does this thing actually cost? "I can see your a down-to-brass-tacks kind of guy so I'll tell you what, I'll send you a detailed quote sometime early next week, okay? Great!" _Two weeks_ later, you get the quote. At this point you are so tired of the resller people and their delays and empty platitudes, you just want to get the damn thing on order before your spending window closes. To your surprise, once they actually have the check in hand, they move a lot quicker and ship the unit more or less immediately. The thing is, if you offer a product in the enterprise space and _don't_ go through this complicated dog-and-pony show for every customer, they won't buy from you because they won't see you as a serious vendor. I hate it all.

snowwrestler 6y ago

All I care about, on behalf of my employer, is the final price. I’m not afraid to make a few phone calls, or exchange a few emails, to find out how much something costs. It’s not hard, and it’s my job to do it. As for your guess that “call for price” businesses are always more expensive than those with pricing pages, from my experience you are wrong. All that matters is the company’s willingness to negotiate with me. In my experience there is essentially no correlation between that and whether they publish a pricing page.

staysaasy 6y ago

It's a good point worth a discussion. Enterprise purchasing is more similar to a marriage than it is to buying a latté. Even down to having to get internal stakeholder buy-in (akin to "meeting the parents"). Price matters but it doesn't matter nearly as much as being able to navigate the evaluation and procurement process adeptly, so it's worth it for the vendor to filter out tourists, and the right buyers are looking for a longterm partner as well so they're down to do the dance (ie they're not just looking for a fling on Tinder). This feels like a bunch of sales/marketing bullshit, but it's not - it's just a byproduct of the fact that change management at a big company is hard and people are people (ie are difficult). I work in product/engineering, and we spend a lot of time thinking about how to tune our product to help enterprise buyers make purchases successfully. It's hard but rewarding. Tiny example, having a product that is flexible enough that you rarely have to say "no we can't do that" in a sales cycle is really powerful.