[rsstack]

When people buy software they often speak to multiple vendors to compare prices. 90% of the time, they already know what they're going to use and they're only getting competitor quotes to show to their execs that they made the right decision. It isn't worth the time of the salespeople to entertain them, understand their usage, and give a quote if the customer already knows they want to use a competitor's product. Sometimes it is, sometimes not.

[jjav]

> 90% of the time, they already know what they're going to use

That seems exceedingly unlikely. When I'm shopping for a new vendor I have no idea who I'll use until I talk to a few to see how the offerings vary and which ones fit my budget.

The ridiculous part is how much time is wasted getting to the price. Then it turns out it is above my budget, so it's all wasted time on both sides. I don't expect a final price on first contact because I know enterprise contacts have variables, but give me a ballpark figure in the first 30 seconds to see if it's worth continuing to talk for three weeks or just end it there.

Just recently had a vendor (named similar to this site but "One" instead of "News"!) who gave me an approximate quote on day 1. Sounded perfect, fit my budget. So we continue talking about the details for many weeks. Only after a lot of time they reveal that quote is just for the core service we need, but there's also several other mandatory fees so the actual quote was like 3x higher. Far above my budget. Many weeks wasted. Maddening.

[michaelt]

> That seems exceedingly unlikely. When I'm shopping for a new vendor I have no idea who I'll use until I talk to a few to see how the offerings vary and which ones fit my budget.

Imagine you're an experienced user of AWS, you know their prices fit your budget, and you know experienced people are easy to hire.

But before signing that multi-million-dollar purchase order, your boss asks you to get a quote from Oracle Cloud.

Will you get the quote? Yes. Will you select Oracle? Maybe if they're 30-40% cheaper. Will they be? No.

[jjav]

> Imagine you're an experienced user of AWS

Ok you picked the one example where companies probably know where they're going already, mostly based on what the CTO liked in the past.

For the 99% other vendor procurements, one doesn't usually know yet before talking to them to get details and pricing.

[asielen]

Salesforce purchasing is the same. As is marketing automation platforms and BI tools. And confluence/jira. People buy what they already know.

[bachmeier]

> It isn't worth the time of the salespeople to entertain them, understand their usage, and give a quote if the customer already knows they want to use a competitor's product.

This quote reminds me of an eye-opening speech I attended way back about the things you learn about when you run a business.

One of the lessons was that hiring the wrong salesperson can put you out of business. When you're hiring the first time, you think they're going to maximize their commissions. In reality, a lot of people are satisfied getting half the income they could by only taking the easy money. They might have to work five or ten times as hard to make the second half of sales, so they let those customers know they're disinterested and they go elsewhere.

The tougher half of sales are maybe 90% of the potential customers, or maybe more than that. You lose 90% of your customer base initially, then people talk to others about their experience, you've lost half of the rest, and suddenly you're no longer a viable business.

[portaouflop]

Half of sales are 90% of potential customers? Lost me there

But I agree the first few sales people are crucial, that’s why the founders do it usually

[timr]

The tougher half of sales. In other words, 90% of your potential customers are concentrated amongst the half of leads that are difficult to close.

I don't know if that specific ratio is true, but it feels right. The OP's scenario is vivid to me. So many salespeople just want the fish to jump in the boat...

[Aeolun]

Feels right to me. Getting my enterprise to spend money on anything they didn’t before is a multi month affair costing tens of thousands of dollars in wasted salary and nearly 6 months to make a purchase with a yearly price lower than my monthly salary…

[makeitdouble]

> they already know what they're going to use

I'm curious about how they know.

I'm actually in that exact process, and have absolutely no idea if half of the providers I'm looking at have a decent product.

There's no free tier so I can't just create random accounts and see for myself. To your point, I'm also not the last decision point, but will be the poor soul explaining why we should choose X or Y to get someone up the chain to approve the money.

Your point probably stands for companies that will blindly buy the overpriced market leader anyway, and do whatever it takes to make it work whatever the proposition. But that's not even half of the market I think, very few companies actually require the top of the line service, by definition.

[rsstack]

> I'm curious about how they know.

> I'm actually in that exact process, and have absolutely no idea if half of the providers I'm looking at have a decent product.

Because they used it at a previous company, because they're renewing with their current vendor but are required to compare prices, because the CIO got a recommendation at a conference that is now mandatory, because their ex-colleague works at the vendor, etc.

[makeitdouble]

Renewing with the current vendor and/or being bribed I can understand.

Recommendations from colleagues who used it at a previous company can be so bullshit. We had someone heavily recommend Monday for ticket management, and oh god was it awful. It made me miss JIRA.

[rsstack]

Agreed. I hated Monday. We used it for 2 months at a start-up 2-3 years ago, and quickly missed Jira (which we then bought). Using Linear at a new place now, and it's actually pretty great.

[Aeolun]

That’s one problem that would entirely go away if you… I dunno. Just put the prices on the website in the first place.