[vasco]

Most of the times you can get rough pricing from them before taking a call if you describe your needs / number of seats, or at most a 20min call. Just make it clear you have many vendors to assess in a first pass and the more calls the less likely you are to subscribe in your opening contact.

I'd also recommend only engaging with the top 3 better products before you go through such a big list.

[awb]

From someone who’s done a lot of sales, I agree with this. If they dodge the question, asking something direct like: “how many figures are we talking about, 5, 6, 7?” can help.

Most of the time sales folks don’t want to quote you a ballpark right off the bat because they know that you’ll be expecting something like that number on the final proposal.

If they dodge giving you a price range then try approaching from a different angle, asking what’s the smallest implementation they’ve done (tell them it’s to make sure you’re not too small a project for them). Then ask them about their biggest client (they might start chatting your ear off so be ready to cut them off). Then ask them directly what they would charge for those exact same implementations.

You’ll end up with a huge 10k foot view, but you might be able to get that in a few days, then you can drill down into a few of the more suitable vendors.