[CallMeJim]

These calls exist because companies have learnt from wasting their time talking to people who can't afford it, aren't the decision maker and aren't interested in purchasing any time soon. The conversion rate of the sales profession is really low, and it can easily get an order of magnitude worse without qualification.

[phpisthebest]

Which is ironic because often times companies refuse to give budget numbers unless I sit through a damn demo first....

At this point I strongly disfavor companies that do not publish their retail prices. everyone from Microsoft to SpaceX can do it, there is ZERO excuse for companies not doing it today

[bruce511]

I'm a bit like you, I prefer published list prices. It really helps me if I know my budget is somewhere near your list price.

But I'm also in a business where we don't. And the reason we don't is because hardware is involved, and so prices can vary by 2 to 3 orders of magnitude.

In other words it takes time to gather up your requirements, which include hardware, software and crucially install and support services. From this we can generate a quote.

I'm not involved in the sales side, but I expect there's at least some demo as part of this process because it's helpful when reading the quote if the user has some idea of what they are buying. I don't think it's a terribly long demo though.

That all said, it is helpful to both parties if budget is mentioned early. With software-only projects I will often give the caller some idea of budget very early just to make sure we're playing in the same ballpark. That saves a lot of time.

[nextaccountic]

> But I'm also in a business where we don't. And the reason we don't is because hardware is involved, and so prices can vary by 2 to 3 orders of magnitude.

> In other words it takes time to gather up your requirements, which include hardware, software and crucially install and support services. From this we can generate a quote.

IOW, if the customer were afforded just a little bit of price discovery the business would tank.

Lots of companies have interactive websites where I can input all my requirements and it outputs exactly how much I'm going to pay, with no human in the loop involved.

[brabel]

But then, how can they overcharge you if they realize you're a noobie?

[bruce511]

The problem is that some customers pay 20k,some pay 2m. The range is too broad to make it as simple as filling in a web form.

[phpisthebest]

That is still not a reason to hide price. At a minimum publish the range, but in the modern age these is very little reason a matrix or wizard could not be created to get that price.

A F150 is almost infinitely configurable, yet I can walk through the website and configure my dream truck I will never actually buy because it is the price of a home and I don't want to live in it....

Further still most of the time when I see companies hiding behind 'install and support' my Spidey sense star tingling

[jrs235]

'install and support' starts to feel like buying a car where at the last step they start tacking on all these extra fees and 'services' and try to bleed you dry.

[rwmj]

And yet I can buy a car from a website even though cars are hardware that can vary in price by 5x or more.

[bstpierre]

These kinds of calls should really just be emails. Forcing a synchronous meeting to essentially fill in a form is dumb.

[sneak]

Just turn down the calls and ask them to use email instead. You’re the customer, you make the rules.

[grogenaut]

3 different times I've used a product, either via freeware or sales lead and when I went to go buy the spent so long getting back to us on a price we had written around it on the engineering team. One small team had not sold a copy before and so they took 3 weeks to settle on a price (but they had a sales staff), in which time I had learned enough 3d math to just re-write the system.

[CPLX]

They’re still talking to them.

They’re just wasting everyone’s time.

[FredPret]

A lower ranked salersperson does the qualifying. The more trained ones do the selling. They are optimizing their resources and for a big purchase, the buyer is expecting a more involved process than one-click checkout.

[CPLX]

Yeah I get it it’s just annoying. Train some entry level people to show some basic software features instead of training them to waste people’s time asking questions.

[cercatrova]

That's a quick way to lose sales. It's like asking a backend dev to make a pretty frontend website to impress a visually oriented client. Roles are stratified for a reason.