
Why some software companies still make you talk to a salesperson - mrbbk
https://blog.reifyworks.com/why-some-software-companies-still-make-you-talk-to-a-salesperson-4de8e946afe4#.3zs4rd8hl
======
patmcguire
It's pretty funny doing it the other way, where your customers expect a huge
sales process and you built out self-serve first.

You hear things like: "We'd like to set up a meeting to plan a trial in Q1 and
a full deployment in Q3"

Well, how I would do it is go to the form on the front page, add a credit card
and do the trial. When Q3 comes I'd go the plan page and slide it all the way
to the right.

Of course, that's not how their purchasing works, so you hold extra meetings
and add extra cost. But it's funny when someone tries to jump through hoops
and you have to hold them up for them.

~~~
meowface
From the enterprise customer side, I assure you, we also feel your pain.

~~~
dangero
I recently bought a piece of enterprise software and before we got our login
credentials the company we bought it from made me complete a six hour software
training.

------
gregmac
Some good points here, but doesn't help the frustration as a potential
customer.

The old adage when the price listed says '$ call us', it's a big number. For a
certain class of application (ERPs, CMS, etc), sure does make sense, because
pricing is very complex. At the opposite end of the spectrum, I would be
baffled by a company that tells me the cost is tens or hundreds of dollars,
but this doesn't exist.

The middle ground is products that are in the low hundreds to several
thousands of dollars. There's a number of times where I have come across
something that appears to fulfill a need I have, but that I could also do
myself (whether by spending a week or because there's an open-source version
that does 80% to base on).

Keep in mind there's always extra friction and admin overhead to dealing with
commercial software, which has to be considered as part of purchasing: does it
need a license to run on my build server? Does it have any kind of per-user
charge, requiring extra system work to track? Are there redistribution
licensing problems? Is there some stupid DRM that's going to cause me grief?
Are you capable of dealing with a separate technical user (me) and paying user
(my accounting department)? Am I going to have to deal with annual renewals?
etc..

So if it turns out the direct cost is less than building it myself, it's a
much easier decision. If it's significantly higher, now I have to really weigh
the above against the opportunity cost and risk.

When I can't even see where in the spectrum the software lies, but I'm going
to have to spend at least 30 minutes on the phone with some sales person to
figure that out (plus probably deal with them periodically harassing me for
the next year), the whole thing is that much less appealing.

I tend to move on to the next one, and only come back if there are no remotely
similar options. It makes me sad a bit because there's no way this company can
know they lost me as a customer merely by putting '$ call us' (even if the
price would have been acceptable).

~~~
_red
>When I can't even see where in the spectrum the software lies, but I'm going
to have to spend at least 30 minutes on the phone with some sales person to
figure that out (plus probably deal with them periodically harassing me for
the next year), the whole thing is that much less appealing.

Just went through this exact process with Bomgar. Our company was debating
between TeamViewer and Bomgar. TV = All pricing on page. BG = Can't see
anything, must call in and 'speak to salesman'.

The sales process with BG was so long and drawn out - multiple emails to setup
calls, wouldn't provide basic info in writing, etc. In the end we just went
with TeamViewer highest end edition.

Came to find out about a month later that Bomgar pricing may've been the
cheaper option for our use case. Oh well...

~~~
prawn
I did something like this when choosing a builder to build a new house. $200k+
decision.

The ones with their pricing for fixed plans listed publicly on their site got
our business.

------
elchief
No. The reason you have to talk to a sales person is so they can size you up
and figure out how much they can charge. It's called price discrimination.

~~~
wott
Exactly. When there is no price list, I do not even bother to go further, I
switch to another product/company.

Else I know I am gonna get screwed. First, the price will be set as my face
fits (there is even an expression for that in my language, I am unsure how it
translates to English which does not seem to have the equivalent saying); that
means depending how the salesman judges me, he will set a price according to
the maximum of what he imagines I am ready to pay. If I call from another
company, I may get a different offer for the same product. If I word my
request differently, he may infer I am the sucker of the day.

Then he will expect me to bargain. Fuck that. That means his second or final
offer still provides him the reasonable benefit he needs. Which also means
that he only provides lubricant now and he was ready to fuck me dry with the
same plastic smile in the first place if I did not bargain. How can I trust
someone like that? How can I trust I got a fair price? What if I hear someone
else got a different price? Will I be pissed at the seller or... very pissed
at the seller?

Oh, and meanwhile, he has wasted my time, and he has wasted his own time
talking and talking, or exchanging several mails across several days. I have
had salesmen coming to my office, and then during the meeting calling their
company each time I asked something to get a different price than the official
one. What is the point of this cinema? I know the guy on the phone is just
reading a price list, he's not making complex financial calculations for stuff
in the range of $100. Why doesn't the first guy have it? He knows he's not
going to use the official price anyway.

If they get kicks from that, that's fine, find themselves a game or a sport
that does the same. Because now they are costing their company money, and that
money has to be taken from _the price I pay_ , so I necessarily pay more than
if they had just put a price list. _Price list that they do have ready_ ,
because they're not pulling the prices they tell me out of their asses. But
they keep it 'secret', as keeping it secret is the only justification of their
job existence.

I just want a price list, that includes the proper benefit to have their
company live fine, that's all. I can read the varying "prices per quantity"
columns as the salesman does, thank you.

EDIT: and I forgot the case when the price is 1 or 2 orders of magnitude
_higher_ than what we can afford. I want to know it _immediately_ , before I
spend any minute considering the product, which may be all bells an whistles,
but since I cannot afford anyway, it doesn't matter. So it makes me adjust my
expectations.

------
shakil
I think this article misses the biggest reason Sales exists as a profession:
because customers need help understanding what they're buying!

It costs money to hire Sales people, and if a company were able to sell its
products entirely as a self-service option, that would help them improve
margins. So people in the Sales profession have to justify their existence
every single day - what have you done for me lately etc.

The only way to succeed in the profession is to show results, to help
customers understand and extract the value of what they're buying so they can
come back to buy more and tell their friends.

You might see Sales people succeed in the short-term by lying or cheating
their customers but that doesn't last. Your reputation catches up to you.
Depending on the industry, every one knows everyone else, and the only way to
truly succeed in the long term is to make sure you create a win-win for both
the customer and your employer, every time, on every sale.

~~~
flukus
> I think this article misses the biggest reason Sales exists as a profession:
> because customers need help understanding what they're buying!

This is another common and overlapping problem, companies that can't explain
what they're selling. No one should need to talk to a salesman to understand
what they're buying, if they do then the marketing has failed. I wonder if
this is caused be sales teams being in charge of the website and not wanting
to make themselves obsolete.

It seems to be infecting OSS too, just last night I was considering installing
fedora but the website manages to tell me absolutely nothing
([https://getfedora.org/en/workstation/](https://getfedora.org/en/workstation/)).

~~~
IanCal
> No one should need to talk to a salesman to understand what they're buying,
> if they do then the marketing has failed.

I think it's a bit simplistic to suggest that an entirely one-way
communication can solve all problems well.

~~~
flukus
Where did I suggest that? No one is saying you can't have information and
salesmen.

~~~
convolvatron
information doesn't upsell itself

------
flukus
Not listing the price is an instant no purchase for me. I can't evaluate the
worth without knowing the price.

~~~
danieltillett
I am in two minds about this. While I agree that listing the price is best (we
do this), many potential customers have a very poor idea of the worth of a
software product to them. We find many of our customers had at first dismissed
our products because they didn’t know what they do. This is where sales staff
are supposed to step in and help the customer understand the value.

~~~
wott
Write proper documentation.

~~~
danieltillett
Having just spent the last three week writing a manual for a new product I
have to laugh at the suggestion. Absolutely nobody reads manuals.

~~~
flukus
Documentation and manuals are two different things. A lot of people read
documentation.

~~~
danieltillett
I am not too sure what the difference is between documentations and manuals
other than the format. The funny thing is if you don’t provide a manual people
ask where is the manual, but if you do they don’t read it.

~~~
flukus
A manual will typically document every function of the software in mind
numbing fashion. "Section 4, Subsection 7 - Adding Foos - To add a new foo
click the add button as indicated in the picture below".

Documentation is much more encompassing and often in more of a wiki format.
You could include a recipes section for example, which apart from being useful
for customers, it can also show off what the software can do. A FAQ section is
another very common one. People asking for a manual is really people asking
"how do I do X".

~~~
danieltillett
Well by this standard the manuals I write are documentation. Nobody reads them
:)

------
awad
One thing to note is most people, often especially those with purchasing
authority in a company, are not technical and don't care about software in
itself. They need solutions to their problems first and foremost. Often, the
best way of educating them is through a sales process that breaks down the
discovery and identification of the problem and mapping that to solutions that
currently exist or can be made to exist with the product offering of a
company. The stereotype of an overly pushy car salesperson is a caricature;
the best sales people are good at educating potential buyers and thinking
through problems they face...not aggressively ramming excessive products down
your throat. That being said, there are plenty of terrible sales people out
there, to be certain, but it is not useless or misguided as many other folks
are alluding to in this thread. I am not aware of any software company doing
north of a billion in revenue without a sales function.

------
kafkaesq
Not only do they make you talk to a salesperson before buying their
software... a lot of these places make you talk to a "salesperson" (i.e. an
internal recruiter) before even referring your resume to someone who can
actually evaluate it. Which is sad because I find these "buffer" discussions
to be a waste of time, and all-around drag coefficient in the process,
generally.

(Though I understand also what secondary functions they serve -- or at least
appear to serve -- for some companies).

~~~
mrbbk
Interesting how these techniques translate over to recruiting too!

------
petethomas
Salespeople are most effective in situations where convincing one person or
one committee within a large prospective company to buy your product will
unleash tens or better yet hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees to you,
the seller. Most other situations should probably be handled with a great web
page that shows reasonable pricing.

------
mianos
I think Atlassian is the reference for this. Next to no salespeople, prices up
front. Seems to work for them.

~~~
awad
They are actually more of an exception to the rule. It's certainly possible to
have a good software business that is self-service through and through, but
very few large (as in multi-billion $$) software companies actually are this
way. Even the companies you might think of as good examples will still often
have a sales operation to go and get the big contracts.

------
dijhrykl
"Call us" is an instant no sale for me.

I also don't buy from companies that don't publish their manuals online. I
nearly always read the manual before buying, because 99% of the time the
marketing copy or "specifications" page is inadequate to properly evaluate the
product. If the manuals aren't published, they might have something to hide or
they might be in the habit of making documentation conditional on support
contracts. Either way it makes it impossible for me to evaluate the product.

------
hobarrera
It's a fun fact that lots of companies require that you call them for the
price of their very simple and standardized-products, but I know exactly how
much it costs to send my stuff to mars.

[http://www.spacex.com/about/capabilities](http://www.spacex.com/about/capabilities)

------
davidgerard
yep. You know how much effort engineering takes? Sales takes the same effort,
from people of similarly specialised actual talents.

Respect your sales people - they need to be as good at their gig as you are at
yours.

~~~
wott
> You know how much effort engineering takes? Sales takes the same effort,

Yeah, sure. That's the perfect example of typical commercial bullshit speech
that drives me nuts at you guys.

> from people of similarly specialised actual talents.

Yeah sure, they are not at all people who ended up there because:

1\. They were not able to do anything else.

2\. They have a lust for money and playing with people.

Please cut the crap, when you hold this kind of speeches, I know you're
already trying to make me a fool.

~~~
davidivadavid
I think sales takes a lot more effort. I guess things are subjective?

By the way, salespeople who make 6 or 7 figures in commission per annum didn't
pick that job because they weren't "able to do anything else."

Are you telling me SV engineers have picked jobs where they make 6 figures
coincidentally? Or maybe they just ended up there because:

1\. They were shy nerds who couldn't do anything but code 2\. They hate money
so they pick jobs that put them in the 90th income percentile

Or maybe... it looks like things are a bit more complicated and clichés aren't
adding much to the discussion.

------
jrs235
What if companies listed the mean, median, and mode pricing for their
solutions?

"Here are the mean, median, and mode prices for the solutions we offer to our
customers:" ?

------
icedchai
Talking to a salesperson is a good way to get a tremendous discount. Wait
until you're near the end of quarter and they're desperate to fill their
quota.

~~~
wott
It means they screw you with great contentment the other months. I don't wanna
deal with such individuals.

