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Quite easily. Take a look at Monetate's website. No transparent pricing. Making it clear what the costs is and making the set up ridiculously easy. Exactly th

Quite easily. Take a look at Monetate's website. No transparent pricing. Making it clear what the costs is and making the set up ridiculously easy. Exactly the same strategy as they did with A/B testing.

jonahx 14y ago
It's shocking to me whenever I see company nowadays that makes you contact them for pricing.
- modoc 14y ago
  It is unfortunately a necessary evil of most enterprise sales situations. My company started out by providing clear, public, easy to understand pricing on our website. We quickly discovered that many large companies expect to get large discounts off of "list" price, and even if your pricing is on par with, or less than your competitors, you end up talking to people who say things like "I won't sign anything if I don't get at least 20% off list price". It's a weird weird world. Companies like Oracle who routinely discount 80+% off of "list" set these expectations in the market.
  - jonahx 14y ago
    That actually makes some sense. I feel like they could at least say something like "We are enterprise only product. Pricing varies, but starts at $XXX" Of course I just assume that if there's no price tag, it's going to be high, but still.
  - kerno 14y ago
    From Jason Cohen "This is always how the conversation would go: PM: What kind of discount are you offering? Me: We don’t discount; instead we put our pricing on our website so there’s no misunderstanding. PM: Well I’m going to need some kind of discount. How about 30%? Me: As it says on our website, we don’t discount. PM: But I’m buying 400 seats!" http://blog.asmartbear.com/startups-emotionally-draining.html http://blog.asmartbear.com/startups-emotionally-draining.htm...
ramanujam 14y ago
In enterprise sales, setting a common open price is very hard. If you look at the current offerings of Optimizely, they want to call you if you want to buy a package that is > $360/mo. The reason is, it might be based on the site traffic, level of service you are picking and a few other factors. Also, each sale will have legal contracts that might drag on for months with pitches to several members from the buying organization and negotiations. In addition, your product offerings keep getting better every quarter and you also want to test varying price points, offer discounts and compete well against several competitors in the process. If you are going after a market trying to acquire 1000s of customers paying $xxx/month having a transparent open pricing works great but it doesn't when you are targeting enterprises. Disclaimer: I work for monetate and we do have a pricing page that explains to the buyers on what to expect. http://monetate.com/products/packages-and-pricing http://monetate.com/products/packages-and-pricing. Also, most of the enterprise buyers are used to this kind of setup and putting a price tag on your website doesn't really work.
- jacquesm 14y ago
  > I work for monetate Looks like you have some serious competition.
  - untog 14y ago
    He still makes some good points though.

jonahx 14y ago

It's shocking to me whenever I see company nowadays that makes you contact them for pricing.

modoc 14y ago
It is unfortunately a necessary evil of most enterprise sales situations. My company started out by providing clear, public, easy to understand pricing on our website. We quickly discovered that many large companies expect to get large discounts off of "list" price, and even if your pricing is on par with, or less than your competitors, you end up talking to people who say things like "I won't sign anything if I don't get at least 20% off list price". It's a weird weird world. Companies like Oracle who routinely discount 80+% off of "list" set these expectations in the market.
- jonahx 14y ago
  That actually makes some sense. I feel like they could at least say something like "We are enterprise only product. Pricing varies, but starts at $XXX" Of course I just assume that if there's no price tag, it's going to be high, but still.
- kerno 14y ago
  From Jason Cohen "This is always how the conversation would go: PM: What kind of discount are you offering? Me: We don’t discount; instead we put our pricing on our website so there’s no misunderstanding. PM: Well I’m going to need some kind of discount. How about 30%? Me: As it says on our website, we don’t discount. PM: But I’m buying 400 seats!" http://blog.asmartbear.com/startups-emotionally-draining.html http://blog.asmartbear.com/startups-emotionally-draining.htm...

ramanujam 14y ago

In enterprise sales, setting a common open price is very hard. If you look at the current offerings of Optimizely, they want to call you if you want to buy a package that is > $360/mo. The reason is, it might be based on the site traffic, level of service you are picking and a few other factors. Also, each sale will have legal contracts that might drag on for months with pitches to several members from the buying organization and negotiations. In addition, your product offerings keep getting better every quarter and you also want to test varying price points, offer discounts and compete well against several competitors in the process. If you are going after a market trying to acquire 1000s of customers paying $xxx/month having a transparent open pricing works great but it doesn't when you are targeting enterprises. Disclaimer: I work for monetate and we do have a pricing page that explains to the buyers on what to expect. http://monetate.com/products/packages-and-pricing http://monetate.com/products/packages-and-pricing. Also, most of the enterprise buyers are used to this kind of setup and putting a price tag on your website doesn't really work.

jacquesm 14y ago
> I work for monetate Looks like you have some serious competition.
- untog 14y ago
  He still makes some good points though.