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I pride myself on never having paid for, recommended, or endorsed any product or service with "Contact Us For a Quote"-pricing. I have no desire to be in your

I pride myself on never having paid for, recommended, or endorsed any product or service with "Contact Us For a Quote"-pricing. I have no desire to be in your fucking sales funnel.

datavirtue 2y ago
You aren't the customer.
- mitthrowaway2 2y ago
  I'm in the same boat as the GP, and while I'm clearly also not the customer, that's not necessarily reflective of how much money is being forgone by missing out on my business. Oh well, their loss and the competition's gain.
  - staticautomatic 2y ago
    I am the customer I refuse to engage with 99.9% of companies who have a pricing page that says “contact us” for every tier.
    - satvikpendem 2y ago
      Then...you are not the customer. The customer for Contact Us is vastly different than the customer that can enter their credit card details and gain immediate access.
      - staticautomatic 2y ago
        I honestly don’t understand what you mean. Is it that I don’t have the money or that I’m not dumb enough to “Contact Us”?
        dpkirchner 2y ago
        As far as I can tell it's tautological: you're not the customer because you're not clicking the link because you're not the customer, etc.
        lee_ars 2y ago
        The customer who just wants to put in their CC# and buy the product isn't a pipeline customer. You can't come back to that customer every other quarter and take them out for golf and pump them for additional services based on the "strength" of your relationship. You don't have any opportunity to make an in-person upsell pitch at the customer who just wants to put in their CC# and go. In-person sales work at least in part because salesbros are trained to handle and overcome objections. They do it in many ways, and most of those ways take advantage of the fact that people by and large tend to want to act agreeable and kind to each other kind of by default. If you opt for the in-person meeting, the salesbro knows they have the opportunity to guilt or nudge or suggest you into buying additional services, or a longer service agreement, or a higher SLA, or whatever. So, OP isn't the customer because they're announcing they're not interested in the dance. Many (not all!) IT vendors prefer the dance because it makes more money. I say this as a former presales engineer for EMC (before it was EMC/DELL), serving large enterprise named accounts in the Houston area. If my boss saw me in the office, he'd kick me out and tell me I should be out taking clients out to lunch or to Astros games or whatever. I spent probably $2-3k/week on entertainment, and it was basically imaginary money to EMC, because if me and my salesbro blew $20-30k hooking a client, we were going to be doing it on a $2-3 million Symmetrix deal with 70-80% margin. So yeah. OP isn't a customer because they don't want to play, and (most, not all!) companies can extract more revenue out of customers who DO play.
        satvikpendem 2y ago
        Indeed, like I mentioned in another comment, if you saw a $10k pricing model on a landing page, you will be extremely likely to not buy it, but if you went through a human-led sales process, your chances of buying go up astronomically. That is why sales exists and why companies have sales teams.

I pride myself on never having paid for, recommended, or endorsed any product or service with "Contact Us For a Quote"-pricing. I have no desire to be in your fucking sales funnel.

datavirtue 2y ago

You aren't the customer.

mitthrowaway2 2y ago
I'm in the same boat as the GP, and while I'm clearly also not the customer, that's not necessarily reflective of how much money is being forgone by missing out on my business. Oh well, their loss and the competition's gain.
- staticautomatic 2y ago
  I am the customer I refuse to engage with 99.9% of companies who have a pricing page that says “contact us” for every tier.
  - satvikpendem 2y ago
    Then...you are not the customer. The customer for Contact Us is vastly different than the customer that can enter their credit card details and gain immediate access.
    - staticautomatic 2y ago
      I honestly don’t understand what you mean. Is it that I don’t have the money or that I’m not dumb enough to “Contact Us”?
      - dpkirchner 2y ago
        As far as I can tell it's tautological: you're not the customer because you're not clicking the link because you're not the customer, etc.
        lee_ars 2y ago
        The customer who just wants to put in their CC# and buy the product isn't a pipeline customer. You can't come back to that customer every other quarter and take them out for golf and pump them for additional services based on the "strength" of your relationship. You don't have any opportunity to make an in-person upsell pitch at the customer who just wants to put in their CC# and go. In-person sales work at least in part because salesbros are trained to handle and overcome objections. They do it in many ways, and most of those ways take advantage of the fact that people by and large tend to want to act agreeable and kind to each other kind of by default. If you opt for the in-person meeting, the salesbro knows they have the opportunity to guilt or nudge or suggest you into buying additional services, or a longer service agreement, or a higher SLA, or whatever. So, OP isn't the customer because they're announcing they're not interested in the dance. Many (not all!) IT vendors prefer the dance because it makes more money. I say this as a former presales engineer for EMC (before it was EMC/DELL), serving large enterprise named accounts in the Houston area. If my boss saw me in the office, he'd kick me out and tell me I should be out taking clients out to lunch or to Astros games or whatever. I spent probably $2-3k/week on entertainment, and it was basically imaginary money to EMC, because if me and my salesbro blew $20-30k hooking a client, we were going to be doing it on a $2-3 million Symmetrix deal with 70-80% margin. So yeah. OP isn't a customer because they don't want to play, and (most, not all!) companies can extract more revenue out of customers who DO play.
        satvikpendem 2y ago
        Indeed, like I mentioned in another comment, if you saw a $10k pricing model on a landing page, you will be extremely likely to not buy it, but if you went through a human-led sales process, your chances of buying go up astronomically. That is why sales exists and why companies have sales teams.