[patio11]

I'm on your side here with regards to that, but this story is exactly why your vendor can't do that to you. You know you have no special requirements. They don't know you have no special requirements. They also don't know whether you're serious yet. For better or worse, asking you to put something on your calendar and show up to it is a great way to verify whether you're serious or not: if you're not willing to make yourself available for a phone call, it is possible you'd be able to organize your company to pay $10k for software but that isn't the way I'll bet.

I regretfully have years of anecdata on the close rate of doing things the geek-approved way versus the close rate when I get on the phone with somebody and it, ahem, is not a close call.

[lmorris84]

In the case I mentioned I wasn't serious at all - I was just putting feelers out and trying to gauge pricing across a few different vendors. A call at this point is probably wasting my time and theirs.

For me, the stage after finding out a standard price is to perhaps have a call and determine if my requirements match up to the product.

I guess it also depends on the size of the company, type of software etc. If the company has trial versions then it's more likely the person buying knows what it can do etc.

As a hard example, I go to jprofiler's website[1] and can order there and then, no messing around. I go to neotys[2] and it's the sales induced hell I mentioned above.

[1] https://www.ej-technologies.com/buy/jprofiler/select [2] http://www.neotys.com/product/neoload-licenses.html

[yourapostasy]

This is a clash of cultures: hacker culture and sales culture. patio11 has it exactly right.

The next time you find yourself in the situation of wanting a quick number, try it this way and you might get better results. When you make contact with the sales organization, communicate:

1. You have no idea what these things really cost.

2. You need just a non-binding, ballpark budgetary figure to the nearest $10K (or nearest $1K, or nearest $100) to find out if you can put it up for the budget.

3. You are not the purchasing decision maker, but do have influence (see below for variations).

4. A general idea of scope: how many users, seats, whether you are a DIY shop or you want to retain professional services for those things that need to be deployed, or whatever else you think will help the sales rep give you a rough sizing.

The vast majority of participants at HN do not have budgetary signing authority in the $50K+ USD range for a single purchase, and are not familiar with how the sales process works at this level. Indeed, many simply have no purchasing authority whatsoever, but do have influence ("my boss generally buys whatever I tell him to buy"). No offense, but the sales people don't want to really deal with you; they want to work with the people who can make a purchase decision. If you really do have purchasing authority, spell it out ("I can sign for the purchase", or "I sign for departmental purchases but it has to be approved by my division manager if it is above $X thousand", etc.).

Please don't lie about it if you don't have purchasing decision making power. In these days of ever-improving CRM systems, that simply hurts your co-workers when/if they contact the vendor again. The sales teams everywhere are getting increasingly better at remembering (with the help of CRM) companies who pull this stunt, and some are even remembering who told them; they might not drag their feet helping you, but you can be damn sure they're not going to bust their nuts digging through announcement lists and databases to find promotions or push special consideration to give you the best discount possible.

[sillysaurus3]

It sounded like Patrick's point was that vendors who force you onto the phone are vendors who will win, if you measure "win" as "more sales that close, with a higher price."

But it depends on the business and the product, of course.

[danielvinson]

"A call at this point is probably wasting my time and theirs."

Most salespeople spend countless hours of time with potential customers who don't purchase - it is certainly worth their time if there is even a slight chance that you will consider the product in the distant future. You are definitely NOT wasting their time.

[douche]

It's certainly wasting your time... It drives me nuts when I download a trial version of some software tool to evaluate and get phone calls from sales reps before the day is over. Calm down, I haven't had time to even try it yet...

[raminassemi]

From the software vendors' perspective, it makes good business sense to call you asap, see: http://blog.close.io/why-you-need-to-call-every-signup-user-...

From a customer perspective, ideally that call will help you to save time by: a) figuring out faster if this software is right for you or not b) helping you to learn how to use it the best way possible c) setting this up so you make the most out of your trial.

I'd rather take objection with bad sales calls, not with the fact that they call on the same day.

[rmc]

> You know you have no special requirements. They don't know you have no special requirements.

I presume "The company and the customer have different ideas of 'special requirements'" can also be a factor?

[hawkice]

Customers often have no idea whether they want special requirements before they use it (or, of course, someone who knows what questions to ask can drill down on particulars). There's simply no way to have copy detailed enough to trigger a simulation of their business in their mind perfect enough for them to find every problem they are willing to pay to solve.

Your mileage may vary though, my brain may be addled by too much extremely high touch B2B work. :)

[aragot]

The eternal high-touch vs low-touch debate...

Atlassian's whole sales system is to display the prices upfront and have no rebate. Last time I checked, their competitors (resp. IBM Rational and Microsoft Sharepoint) didn't grow by 35% every year for 10 years in a row.

I needed an office for 2 people. With Regus you need to plan a call. I ended up at a coworking space, mildly satisfied with the noise, with a bill 70% higher, but at least I don't have a 90-days commitment and I didn't sit with a salesman.

There are number of situations when you dodge providers who are just a dead weight.

[spdustin]

And nearly every "high touch" interaction with Microsoft and an enterprise using Confluence ends up converting to SharePoint.

Full disclosure: I make my living on SharePoint, and (perhaps ironically in some reader's view) use Confluence and other Atlassian products to manage my business.

[tbyehl]

| And nearly every "high touch" interaction with Microsoft and an enterprise using Confluence ends up converting to SharePoint.

Converting, or just ending up with both? I've worked for two companies with both and neither product was ever going to replace the other. As your disclosure suggests, the Atlassian suite fulfills a different set of needs than SharePoint.

[spdustin]

My disclosure is that operating my business doesn't require SharePoint, that's all. I'm not "enterprise", I'm running a small business with one partner, and SharePoint is overkill for us.

But your point is well taken. To that point: many of our customers bring up migrating their content from Confluence and the like to SharePoint once they begin using SharePoint as a platform for other apps.

[dublinclontarf]

I think it depends on the target customer/client. I as a technical person hate when things are not up front like pricing etc.

But then most people are not me, and there must be a reason why businesses continue to do this (better results I would guess).