Vendors that skip the discovery call and just answer questions close faster
Posted by Limp_Cauliflower5192@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 112 comments
Straight up. The deals that drag are the ones where the vendor wants five calls before they'll tell you what the thing costs or how it actually works.
The ones that move fast are where the rep just answers the question. No deck. No "let me loop in a solutions engineer." Just a straight answer.
Been on both sides of this. The discovery call is usually for the vendor's benefit, not yours. They're qualifying you. You already know if you have the problem.
Anyone else just started ignoring vendors that won't give you a straight answer upfront?
pneRock@reddit
Yes. I have been to the point of rude with many of them because I don't care what their product features are if I can't afford it. If i can't get a price in the first hour, I've almost crossed the point into rude to get answers out of them.
surveysaysno@reddit
About a year ago I got into it with a sales zombie who couldn't give me a price on Symantec clustering software.
Absolutely refused to give pricing without a meeting for to talk about the professional services engagement to install the software.
Finally just told him okay, if the sales guy can't do a list price quote, we don't want the product, way to lose an easy sale. Told my VAR to never connect me with that guy again.
vanderaj@reddit
I once sat in several meetings with Sun Microsystems back in the late 1990's when we were trying to get to the bottom of how much it would cost to run 1/3rd of my state's hospital systems patient management systems (think Epic, back then in Australia, it was all PICK Basic based). They spent the entire time trash talking their competitors. Suffice to say they didn't progress to getting the opportunity to give us a formal quote (which often led to a best and final offer round). They lost all credibility during the sales process by wasting their time with us. Sales people need to work towards reducing sales friction and giving honest answers before they've made the sale.
pdp10@reddit
I'm cynical about the sales process, but there are a few secrets to it, and you may have missed out.
When vendors do this, and they're saying things you didn't already know, remember what they're saying because it's very likely true, relevant, and difficult to discover.
Since your organization didn't go with Sun, with whom did they go?
Not great. Not terrible. Historically, PICK was often akin to an appliance, running its own weird thing off in a corner of the datacenter, but performing its core functions rather well -- as long as you could interface with it. Hosting it within POSIX always struck me as having the potential to cause as many problems as it solved.
fatmanwithabeard@reddit
If it's the tech staff, with specific tech information, maybe.
Sales twits trash talking the competition is entirely table pounding idiocy. Sales twits who know enough to know why they're not the top technical choice, and can manage both the price and the refresh process, that's worth listening to.
surveysaysno@reddit
This is a good point.
Sales people tend to just malign their best competition in the hopes of reducing competitors sales. In my experience it's usually somewhere between lies and hyperbole.
Techs give you a reason for the issue. Support got outsourced, development has stopped, etc.
Ssakaa@reddit
Yeah. Though there's a solid difference between trashing competitors and highlighting your own advantages, even if it's just down to tone and framing. "We have a lot of customers that've been really happy when they found out we do X, Y, and Z well. We've had some point to those features as why they've switched away from", for example, is a great sales pitch. "Oh, you need X, Y, and Z? Well don't consider then, they're bad at that" isn't.
Granted, I'm bitter, jaded, and biased and don't blindly trust the sales pitch claims from any company about what their software supposedly does anymore. Burned entirely too many times by people trying to sell features as active and ready that were "on their roadmap" ... and may or may not ever materialize. I have one vendor at this point that I've routinely gotten direct and honest answers from... but their dev pipeline is mostly public, so things on their roadmap actually tie back to progress you can dig into and see happen. I've had a handful of offhand comments turn into later patch notes, which is neat.
uzlonewolf@reddit
Strongly disagree. It's fine to explain the capabilities of your system while mentioning it's something others cannot do (i.e. "Our software can easily do X, which is something no one else has been able to get working"), but straight-up trash talking the others? No.
FullPoet@reddit
When a company straight up shit talks competitors (especially if you know they're a bit shit themselves) they automatically go on my shit list.
No issue with poking fun at competitors and a bit of banter but a lot of companies seem to think its okay to just rag on, while think they're literally jesus themselves.
shadeland@reddit
Ah, the Unix wars. SunOS, Solaris, AIX, NeXTSTEP, HP-UX, DEC/Tru64...
f0gax@reddit
A vendor that spends any time trashing the competition is already losing. Sure, make comparisons. That's fine.
TIL_IM_A_SQUIRREL@reddit
PICK.. now that's a name I haven't heard in a LONG time!
Parking_Ocelot_6893@reddit
Vendors that display their pricing publicly are even better
ohyeahwell@reddit
I hate when they base their pricing on volume.
surveysaysno@reddit
It makes sense if it includes support.
Customer with 10 seats is going to use up more hours of support per seat than customer with 10k seats.
Dreilala@reddit
I understand with projects but if you sell a prefabricated piece of software just tell me the cost or I'll assume you intend to gouge me.
FrivolousMe@reddit
Especially because it's always contact sales for [premium tier] with one essential feature everyone wants, but a bunch of other shit nobody wants that they want to try to upsell you on. Either make it modular and transparent, or at least give us the price with everything included so we have an upper bound estimate.
PlayingDoomOnAGPS@reddit
project2501a@reddit
Honest question. Let's say I made something that can be used by big companies. Companies with a budget of a Saudi oil well.
What's my argument of not sizing up the client?
pointandclickit@reddit
The problem is every single vendor thinks they have something “unique.” And in almost every single case, they’re wrong.
Ok-Bill3318@reddit
Also why should I pay different or more expensive pricing because im a smaller company. Thats discriminatory predatory bullshit.
project2501a@reddit
Fair. I'll concede that.
AlexG2490@reddit
What do you need to "size me up" for? Unless "size me up" means "evaluate if that company has fat stacks of cash lying around and then charge them more," what does it matter to you?
I want the product, you have the product, I pay you the money for it. End of. Stop making it harder for me to give you money for things.
Broadcom.
project2501a@reddit
man a sales person who does not know who they talking to has more problems than just sizing up.
Zenkin@reddit
From a business prospective, the biggest concern would probably be competition undercutting you. Even if you have the best solution, if it costs you one hundred thousand dollars a year to produce/support a thing and you charge me a million for it (because I can afford it), you could lose out to someone who does a less efficient job but charges less. Maybe it costs another company $150,000 to deliver the same results, but they only quote me a quarter million. You might think "Well, at least we can undercut them," but I'd rather take a $50,000 beating by going with someone else than reward you for gouging me $750,000 (if I could afford it). You've torched any goodwill from our business relationship, and I am able to afford the cost of spiting you even if you're the best.
And most people who think they're the best aren't actually the best.
project2501a@reddit
I'll take that.
jaydizzleforshizzle@reddit
A lot will give vague generalities, but it’s software they have margins to push deals.
Ssakaa@reddit
The only immediate "cost" to them for selling a thousand more seats is the time the sales guy spends pitching it, too, so they can always negotiate. It's not like buying a palette of toilet paper, where there's a pretty static base cost in the paper, the manufacturing, the packaging, and the transport.
Tetha@reddit
Indeed. We have a pretty funny rift internally there - some parts of the products are used to on-prem sales, month-long customer-specific configuration projects, huge customization for specific customers, and sadly some newer products started to move into that direction initially. They are somewhat flabbergasted at the moment, because customers more and more want to use the software as soon as they buy it, not 12 months of project down the road.
For small and medium shops, it's much more effective for both sides to get the customer working in their own instance of the solution (which, on a multi-tenant saas hosting, costs almost nothing) with a few demo use cases, SSO, some initial users as quickly as possible - and expand and upsell more seats, more features, integrations and consulting from there. Well, assuming it's the solution they are looking for. If not, it's also good as it can end sooner.
safrax@reddit
Oh you want SSO? Well that’s an extra $20/user/parsec. And no that’s not supposed to make any sense to anyone, but you’re gonna pay it!
Tetha@reddit
Yeah back when enterprise sales were struggling, I was for some reason asked for suggestions to get a leg up, a positive thing or some selling point. I recommended to not charge extra for SSO, market it as our preferred login method and instead charge a one-time setup fee depending on how non-standard the IDP is.
Turns out, this tends to be a big green flag to many security departments. The fee was usually waived too for standard IDPs, and Entra ID is now self-service. Suddenly we look really professional for honestly not a lot of work, hah.
Ssakaa@reddit
... like, literally, I hope? Can we cut the arms off of people who think PHP is a good idea for something that security critical these days? I mean, you can write secure php, but most people who would care to moved away from it a long time ago...
fresh-dork@reddit
that sounds great - i'm at a F500 and our security is picky. i'm pretty sure that no SSO means they won't even consider a product.
chkltcow@reddit
A vague ballpark figure is nice. I need to know if the piece of software I'm looking at is $250/yr or $25,000/yr. And with some things I've seen, it's always hard to tell how proud companies are of their products.
"Call for pricing" is generally an immediate skip
DoctorOctagonapus@reddit
Vendors that display their pricing that can't be beaten in five minutes on the manufacturer website are fine too.
Looking at you Softcat.
Lurksome-Lurker@reddit
Displayed Price on website: “Ask for quote”
haggur@reddit
When I was selling my boss told me to use the "chair test". That's where you tell the prospect the ballpark price in the first call and then listen to see if you hear them fall out of their chair. Saves both parties a lot of time.
missed_sla@reddit
"Price: Call us or fill out this form"
No, I don't think I will...
TomCatInTheHouse@reddit
Yes.
What else drives me nuts is a cold call from my own area code. First thing I ask is where they are physically located at. It is never my area code. I tell them if they can call me from a legitimate business number from their own area code, I might listen to their schpiel. They'll claim it's a voip number. Great, call me from an actual number for your business from your own area code, not mine.
My next favorite is "We talked 6 months ago and you said you were busy at the time and to try back in 6 months so I'm calling now." "Really, dude? You are going to try to start a cold sales call with a lie?" Then they try to double down and say I must not remember.
darwinn_69@reddit
Vendors that call my personal cell phone are automatically put on the black list.
XB_Demon1337@reddit
I think this is being unfair to many types of software.
Like I can say my company sells a ticketing tool and that it is better than the rest. You can ask a ton of questions and then not do a demo and close the project with a sale. But then find out the software sucks even if it does everything you want it to.
We relay on sales folks who do the selling portion while we do the demo portion to sell our products. The same can be said for so many other product types.
BadgeOfDishonour@reddit
I find it surprising that tech vendors haven't figured out how to properly code switch yet. If they are talking to C-suite types, they need to schmooze and ramble and butter them up. Decks and chit-chat and all that nonsense. They need a lot of people on a meeting to make the customer feel important.
But when they talk to tech staff, like the people on this forum, we hate that crap. We want tech specs. We want short answers. We want clear conversation. No unnecessary fluff.
When they cannot code switch and speak properly to their completely different audiences, they lose one of them.
OurManInHavana@reddit
One of those audiences typically has control of the funding, and the other does not. Plenty of C-suite types have forced a purchase even when tech staff don't agree... but it's rare that tech staff can spend big money without C-suite support.
So tech vendors have polished their skills to talk to the audience that can most likely help hit their quarterly sales targets. It doesn't work against them... often enough to matter.
fatmanwithabeard@reddit
It's been years since I've been overridden on a no go.
The C suite doesn't like vendors that tell them that their people are wrong. If they tolerate that, you need to spend more time with them, or find a new job.
I can't spend big project money without buy in, but I'm also the guy who makes the big projects work.
Agoras_song@reddit
This is funny. I consider myself a grunt but kind of well respected enough that if I say no to a piece of software, hardware or set-up, then the owners will drop it. And I'm sure I'm not the only one in such a position in this industry. Why don't the sales guys understand that the grunts are trusted by the higher-ups (at least in medium sized companies) so we don't like a 'Please call' situation.
JustFrogot@reddit
That's the trouble with sales, you don't know who the decision makers are. Who is in charge of $$$ and who is in charge of deciding the fit.
fatmanwithabeard@reddit
Expect the customer to try to jam the code switching, too.
I'll be in the back of the C-suite meeting, not talking and face into my laptop. One of the quiet execs will be in the tech meeting. We will compare notes.
Also, I don't want short answers. I don't ask tech sheet questions, cause I can read the tech sheet. I want complete answers, and I ask edge case and failure mode questions.
Jaegermeiste@reddit
99.7% of sales reps don't have any technical skills in the first place and have never used the platform they're selling. They're effectively subject matter experts in the marketing copy. They're also incentivized to get a sale at all costs, which generally means if theres any gray area or ambiguity, just say yes to whatever requirement and let the project team sort it out later as a CR where they can lean on the sunk cost fallacy.
Sysadmins or engineers are really not the target audience for sales. Idiot C-suites are. That CFO you support whose password for everything is 'Password1' and even that is stuck to their monitor with a Post-It? Who is so highly compensated they drive an Aston Martin, but is so dumb they can't adjust the volume in the conference room? That's the audience.
VexingRaven@reddit
This is why sales engineers exist.
BemusedBengal@reddit
...I also like being schmoozed, but if they're not buying me food then I want short answers.
donith913@reddit
Having been on both the purchasing side and the solution engineering side, I wouldn’t paint it so black and white. You’re right that it’s to qualify if a deal is worth pursuing and investing company resources in, but we also had the stats to show that when we don’t do proper discovery the sales cycle is actually LONGER and far less likely to actually complete a purchase.
One of the frameworks for this that any IT purchaser should know is MEDDIC or MEDDPICC. The seller needs to know up front if you actually have the budget, if you can authorize a purchase or if you’re just kicking tires before you pass us off to some disinterested VP, do you actually have a truly compelling reason to make a purchase and so on. There are stages to this, and as a sale advances, th seller needs to learn about competition, about your purchase process and budget cycle, about how you intend to grade your RFP and what decision points are actually important to you vs nice to have. Can we prove the use case works with references or are you going to drag me through a 30+ day POC? If you are, what do we actually need to show you to get you to make the purchase.
Part of why I went back to an IT role is being tired of 80% of my conversations being with people who have no intention or interest in making a purchase. Every good sales person is trying to do that qualifying discovery call to save both you and them months of wasted time. Come prepared for them and you’ll get more out of it.
In the SMB space where you may have the budget authority on your own or the contracts aren’t that complex this does not apply. Those sales guys are lucky if they even have an SE. The point in the smaller segments is straight up to sell either through a partner or automated because investors care about things like the cost to sell. What I’m talking about are enterprise size deals - Fortune 500 type companies.
GremlinNZ@reddit
Conversely, we have no idea if we have the budget, because we can't find out how much it costs. If it's way out of our league, we ideally want to know ASAP, not require a meeting etc.
POC, again, I can find all the sales crap on the website. I want to get hands on (so to speak), it tells me a lot more about how it's functioning, gives me a real world application and what it can do.
Unexpected_Cranberry@reddit
This. I had this conversation with a vendor a while back. I asked for a rough quote, he said he couldn't until he had more information, which would have meant several additional hours.
I finally got him to tell me the list price. When I saw that, I went well unless we're looking at a 80+% discount, I think we can stop here. I think we got an offer with a 30% discount of list price after that. And I was like dude, at that price I can hire two more dudes who will solve this for us manually and still have time left over to do other things as well.
It would have saved both companies days worth of working hours if they had just provided that up front.
fnordhole@reddit
Sunk Cost Falacy is part of their sales strategy. The time you spend with them gets you invested in their solution. And the notion that you've wasted your time if you don't buy. Added bonus: it's time you're not investigatng competing solutions.
Geminii27@reddit
Unfortunately for them, the more time you spend with them, the less likely you are to buy because it's just increasing frustration.
fnordhole@reddit
Me? Yeah.
But it works on some folks. Sometimes that steakhouse dinner seals it.
BemusedBengal@reddit
I don't mind listening to your sales pitch if you buy me a steak at the same time.
havermyer@reddit
I can listen to a sales pitch over a meal, but I absolutely do NOT want to be friends, share anything personal, or hear all about your kids and hobbies. Getting trapped in those forced social situations drives me batty. As long as they stay on topic with the product, I'm happy to have a lunch over it.
anxiousinfotech@reddit
Seals it with the executives that don't have the knowledge and experience to realize that the solution won't even work.
GremlinNZ@reddit
I think it's unfortunately a case of sales wanting to spend the time, look busy, work a deal. They have a budget to use looking for more clients etc.
I have plenty of other bloody meetings to attend and work to try and get done between.
sofixa11@reddit
Nah, sales have quotas to fill. Every minute wasted with a prospect that won't convert is a minute not going to ensure those that might actually do
donith913@reddit
The reality is that he probably isn’t lying, quotes beyond a back of the napkin budget number that’s 20-40% too high and almost useless anyhow are going to be gated behind a sales operations team/sales stage in a CRM in a mature org. And if the product is a complex suite of tools, it’s usually true that unless you tell me exactly what use cases you have and roughly what you think it should cost, getting you information that’s actually relevant to your scenario is very challenging.
As for POCs, companies have to account for POC licenses as though they’ve granted you a free license at their actual cost, and a sales guy or SE is going to have a VP down their neck. It reached a point where I was not allowed to get you a POC license without a full test plan in place. What exact use cases are we solving for, and do we have a commitment to purchase if we meet that and a path to procurement. Otherwise, it’s just an expensive science experiment for the vendor that only leads to a sale like 10% of the time. A POC with a plan and a path to close will lead to a sale like 70% of the time.
I’m not saying I like it - I’m not doing it anymore. But the vendors do it for a reason, and it’s because selling costs money too, and too many companies don’t know what they want or have employees just kicking tires and collecting swag, and every minute I spend on the phone with an engineer whose boss has no intentions of doing the thing literally took money out of my paycheck. My explicit goal and instruction was to fail deals quickly. Find out if it’s got juice and run it down if it does. If not, be polite and let the prospect know that we’re here if things change.
Unexpected_Cranberry@reddit
I understand the process and why it's there. But in this case, we had a limited issue we wanted to solve. This product was more or less designed to solve this issue with a few added bella and whistles that we did not need.
I am fully aware that list prices are typically 10-40% higher than what you'll end up paying depending on the number of licenses or what have you you're buying.
So if I know, that even with a 90% discount, this will be a hard sell to get approved, I'm not going to bother spending any time looking into it.
Now, if this means I missed out because I might have gotten that discount, your list price is utter BS. Now, I understand why you don't want to list a price up front. But it's extremely annoying and time consuming, and unless you're the only game in town I will go out of my way to avoid dealing with you.
donith913@reddit
Yeah, I don’t disagree. I hated the lack of even public MSRP for the enterprise space so someone could do that math and make the call themselves, which felt like it would have saved a lot of effort.
But the reality was that in those larger deals, especially into the millions ARR, that the numbers were almost arbitrary. The sophistication (or clusterfuck…) of procurement in these orgs meant that even if I gave YOU best and final, come contract time your procurement guy was gonna come up with all kinds of whack requirements that would effect the final price. So it turns into this game of brinkmanship where no one wants to reveal too much too soon, lest you lose a deal because you couldn’t find the 10% more that the procurement guy needed to justify his existence.
I’m back to being and endpoint engineer in an IT department and I’m a hell of a lot happier, but it shocks me how many IT admins have ZERO clue what happens when they decide to make a purchase. I always tried to educate the ones who were kind and clearly had a problem they were eager to solve to help them get through the process smoothly, even though that totally was not my job.
pdp10@reddit
The customer can drag themselves through the PoC. Most of the ways that anyone is going to put you to trouble, are if the product or its documentation are weak, or if the sales side is pushing you every hour to be in contact with the prospective client.
One of the other ways is under-resourcing and time crunch on the buyer side. The engineers would like the resourcing and headroom to make these things go very smoothly, but as you might imagine, that's very seldom their call.
Trust_8067@reddit
Vendors have discovery calls because they're making sure you're not going to do something stupid, like use the wrong product for the job, because then you'll say their product sucks, when it's just you failing at your job.
ajaaaaaa@reddit
Yea but then what is the point of the sales guy if you could just get the answers directly?!?
brokenpipe@reddit
I’m going to disagree, one because I am biased as I work in presales but two is because if you’re dealing with competent sales and presales the discovery process works for both sides.
whiskeytab@reddit
I mean on my side I'm just going to straight up ignore a sales person if they aren't up front with pricing. there's no sense in wasting my time if I don't know whether we will even entertain it
Your-Supreme-Leader@reddit
What tf is pre-sale? Sounds even worse.
bastion_xx@reddit
A common term for the sales portion of field sales. Pre-sales deals with discovery (hunting/farming opportunites), qualification, and then winning and closing a deal. Post-sales would be professional services (if needed), support, and ongoing relationships with the sales team as they would then look for other opportunities in that account.
TheOhNoNotAgain@reddit
If you can't give me a ballpark figure early on, that's a red flag.
CrossWired@reddit
Also presales, but I agree completely, I should be able to give you directional pricing right up front but if what you're asking for isn't clear (hence the discovery call), that directional pricing will be as far off as San Diego to Seattle, it's on the right coast but way, way different.
ZealousidealState127@reddit
Give me the engineer and tell me what the warts are. If I have to dig for them its just a waste of everyone's time.
corruptboomerang@reddit
Nothing pisses me off more then talking to a 'sales engineer' (so they can say 'oh no this is our engineer') and them promising you it can do XYZ no problem.
Then, at implementation, oh you can only do XYZ with ABC turned off, but ABC is like core functionality.
Give me indicative pricing (heck just make it your highest pricing), so I can know if it's worth having the conversion.
Inquisitor_ForHire@reddit
We always ask for list pricing up front. We'll let purchasing finagle an actual price, but comparing list is helpful to establish who is bs'ing and who is serious.
joeyat@reddit
Vendors who actually show their actual product pictures on their website (its not 100% business spam of testimonials and stock photos), a youtube page of people demoing the menus etc with user guides and examples, they have a public documentation site with a reasonable API…… don’t even need to ring me. I’ll ring them!
PowerShellGenius@reddit
To be fair: a casual call doesn't bug me. If I ask questions sales can't answer (I typically ask very in-depth technical questions), and they offer to set up a call with me and an engineer to answer them, great! I'll get all my questions answered at once!
It's the formality of it, at such an early stage of the sales process where there are no commitments, that bugs me. No, I'm not going to see if others from my team want to join, and give you contact info for the decision maker, until I know the solution is A) compatible with our environment, and B) not outside the price range my director told me to find solutions in. Me facilitating you wasting my boss's time doesn't look good for me.
EmptyM_@reddit
It really depends, I once worked for a SMB phone systems reseller; Ericsson, Mitel, etc…
The sales team would always over promised and under deliver systems, and it’d end up costing the business a huge amount to provide the features & sla’s the customer signed for. And it also soured the customers relationship with us.
So nowadays with the experience of just how bad things can be when the vendor doesn’t care enough to know your requirements I automatically walk away from any vendor/reseller who wants to “go in dry on the first date”
uzlonewolf@reddit
What, exactly, is the point of "discussing your requirements" when you know the sales team is just going to use them to over promise and under deliver? Telling them what you need is going to result in an empty promise that their "solution" can do it even though it can't.
captainpistoff@reddit
This is really important, marketing says the product does everything. A great sales person wants that discovery call to quickly assess that what the customer wants and make sure there's a fit. A really poor sales person is trying to find an angle to make it fit... And unfortunately 90% of the sales people in tech really suck. I've been lucky enough to quickly move on from the poor ones and get really good ones.
liznin@reddit
The best is when the sales rep schedules a call. Can answer no technical questions. He schedules a follow up call with a "application engineer". During the follow up call the application engineer can answer zero technical questions and ask to schedule ANOTHER call with a different engineer...
matiascoca@reddit
The worst version of this is when the pricing is simple but the vendor hides it behind a "custom quote" process to maximize deal size. You know it is a per-seat or per-unit price, they know it is a per-seat or per-unit price, but they want the discovery call so they can gauge your budget before naming a number.
The vendors that publish pricing publicly tend to close faster because the buyer already self-qualified before the first conversation. By the time they reach out, they know the product fits their budget and they are asking implementation questions, not pricing questions. The vendor saves time too because they are not doing discovery on leads that will churn out at the pricing stage.
On the flip side, the one scenario where a discovery call is genuinely useful (not just for the vendor) is when the pricing model is complex enough that the wrong configuration could cost you 3x what the right one would. Usage-based pricing with multiple meters, tiered commitments, and add-on modules can genuinely be confusing. But even then, the vendor should publish a pricing page with ranges and only use the call to narrow it down, not to reveal the price for the first time.
kagato87@reddit
I've always ignored vendors like that. When they do manage to get my ear, I tell them to give me the elevator version of their pitch.
No discovery. Tell me what's so hot about the crap you're hawking, I'll decide if it's worth the time for either of us. Be coy about pricing and I'll assume it's exhorbitant, say as much, and end the call.
I get calls for security and monitoring products all the time. I'm not on the security team, I'm on the dev team, and no I won't forward you to the right person.
EffectiveEquivalent@reddit
My entire stack at work is stuff that required no sales intervention, except a specific business central extension which is by far the biggest pile of shit and most expensive we have.
I block sales calls, do my own research and lead the conversations. If they don’t give me fair and indicative prices, conversations over.
masheduppotato@reddit
What I’ve been doing recently is telling them that to get everyone I need together for a call will take forever and I want to get something in front of management ASAP. Can you send it as an email and I’ll work to get everyone together for a call with questions.
I really hate when I have to join a zoom for something that could have been an email. I’ll probably go with you even if you’re 10% more than the next guy if you keep the calls to a min.
1stPeter3-15@reddit
The most common problem I see comes down to a sales team, or more often the most senior person on the sales team, that is confidently wrong in their assessment of a client and circumstance. Ego and/or greed being the driver.
I dismissed two vendors from a recent multimillion dollar deal in the RFP phase because they so poorly misread the situation.
burnte@reddit
I literally had to teach a vendor this lesson this week. We scheduled a demo call with a vendor, the vendor decided it was a fact finding call, then at the end told us a price betore we even had any idea of what the product might do, and blew the entire deal. Then they wanted to schedule a demo call and we declined to go further. When asked why in email later, I had to explain all the ways the call went wrong.
PlsChgMe@reddit
I interrupt their spiel and take control of the call. What is your name again? What is the name of your company? What do you do? At the end of those three questions I know what I meed to know. They won't let me interrupt? I hang up. They just start their spiel over? I hang up. They cooperate, if I need what they have they'll get a dhot at my business.
generic-d-engineer@reddit
YES
We usually do a pre call and literally coach the sales team on exactly what we’re looking for. Very specific features and tailored to a business case and audience.
Even still we have sales guys who start out with a generalist deck and completely miss the mark.
Like you literally give them the answers to the test but they go with their own script lol. /picard facepalm
PepsiOfWrath@reddit
I am the engineer for the vendor, I feel this so much. I’ve closed countless deals, saved many others, and sank a few where I knew we couldn’t deliver. Because of the few that were sunk when you were honest about a feature, the sales team starts to get a bad taste in their mouths and will avoid bringing you in until demanded. Then sales stink, and they blame everything else but themselves. I detest salesmen and sales info where you can’t even tell what you’re buying until you speak with an engineer. Microsoft does this with a lot of their sales material, they make it high level, then take it two levels higher until you’re not sure what it does anymore and it’s a mishmash of buzzwords. Maybe higher ups in enterprises like this, but I like to know what the product actually does.
llDemonll@reddit
Anyone who doesn’t have pricing after a first call needs to work on standing up for themselves and being pushy. You should get MSRP immediately as part of the introductions regardless. Do not have a second call until you have pricing.
There are scenarios where this isn’t true. Sizing out new infrastructure? Chances are you’re going to have a few calls discussing different technology, different benefits, different “classes” of price-points. In scenarios like those I don’t expect pricing immediately, but we’re also discussing the project with different vendors and they’re all going to compete later so I’m not too worried because we’re generally going to get the solution we want at the price we want. SaaS stuff and the likes is a different story.
pdp10@reddit
It's the same sales funnel they teach to used car salespersons.
The engineer is going to want to know what it is, how it works, what it costs, without the posterior pain of relationship building games with someone's sales team. The best way to get these is to get it from customers, from the ones who built it, or from yourself when doing a Proof-of-Concept (PoC) implementation.
Sales knows what reference accounts are, sales will surprisingly-often let you speak with a real engineer (not a PSE), sales understands PoCs. The first and third you can conceivably perform without their help. I've also gotten lucky and run into product engineers at conventions and gotten the real facts, by paying attention to the logo tees that everyone is wearing.
Oh, and vendor classes are often a goldmine if you have the right instructor. Class credits are part of the sales package, but there's no reason you can't negotiate them as part of the sales funnel.
ErrorID10T@reddit
If I need feature X and that feature is behind a plan that requires a call to a sales team, I guess I just need a different product.
jfernandezr76@reddit
That's exactly my reasoning.
hybrid0404@reddit
I had a similar situation where I was evaluating some products. We had a big renewal coming up and I was tasked with going out into the market to do some due diligence. I have my preferences but I try to take an objective approach and wrote up all the capabilities we used and preferred.
The sales guy was decent at responding but when it came down to prices, he refused to work with me at first. Basically said, I wasn't important enough and demanded to speak with an executive (2-3 levels of management above me) in order to share pricing. I told my boss and they even refused to share with him. The vendor only complied once I called their bluff and said "OK we are done here, I guess then". Suddenly they were on to share the pricing.
We have had other instances where there was poor executive support in the sense that the above tactic worked. They went around the folks evaluating solutions and just sold the concept to a higher up who doesn't understand how it all works. We were locked into the solution for several years as a result. They got their sale and pissed off the folks they were going to need to work with for years (also that executive left the company a year or so later).
The cynical side of me says that part of the reason that is happens in discovery is because what you experienced works. A good salesperson will figure out which levers to pull, a great one will figure that out without pissing off the engineers.
bastion_xx@reddit
I hate seeing this too. It's a reason I moved from traditional product/service sales to AWS field sales (SA). Customers would ask for pricing and I'd either point them to the pricing calculator or work up the services and volumes they wanted and help build a design and architecture to price out.
The only time alignment to senior decision makers was important was for private pricing agreements since it impacted more than just IT in most cases. Either FinOps, procurement, or CIO/CFO would lead those conversations. But even then those in IT could still see the full breakdown of services (and discounts if shared internally -- looking at you PANW, where FinOps wouldn't share billing data except at a certain level).
Nachtwolfe@reddit
Pre-contract discovery calls drag
BUT post-contract discovery is crucial. We had a vendor that created a statement of work that was missing half our config. We had to convince them (like back and forth for 2 weeks) to do a discovery session so they could better understand our current configuration (if it had been up to me, I would have went with another vendor at that point).
brianinca@reddit
Having run out of patience with the long drawn out pre-sales interrogation method, I start meetings with a summary of where we are and where we want to be. It works out well, and essentially qualifies the sales team for me - if they followed along and paid attention, we can get down to business. If they don't, NEXT.
I learned from my CFO to get a budget number early on, as well - it's a normal question in construction projects, for good reason. He's all about saving time, I'm on board with that!
racingthunder12@reddit
Tech vendors are the equivalent of used car salesmen and there badly needs to be some sort of regulation in this field. It boggles my mind how the industry works with so much of it smoke and mirrors, mergers and acquisitions, raising contract prices, or creating a legal attack dog team to find the most obscure ways to sue competitors or customers for IP laws or contract violations.
THEN on top of all that bullshit they ask us in the field to spend thousands on training, certifications, to become experts at THEIR product. What kind of shit is that?
jason120au@reddit
Or even better when I can just self serve and sort everything out myself. If you have a process whereby I have to call the sales team just to get a price I am not going to bother.
itskdog@reddit
And if you do have a web shop, check it works.
Saves my time and yours when getting the 3 quotes I need to make sure I'm getting the best price.
itskdog@reddit
The same goes for suppliers that provide a quote the same day rather than giving no response for a week while the account manager has to talk with a different department for a price, rather then just being able to pull it up on their IT system in a few minutes.
Specialist-Slide-774@reddit
fwiw the vendors that just send you a pricing sheet without a call first are the ones i actually come back to. had a network switch vendor last year who answered every question over email, no discovery call required. bought from them twice since. the ones who insist on 'just a quick 30 min call' to tell me what a 24-port managed switch costs get ignored.
chrisgore-spor@reddit
Finally. Someone saying what I have been banging on about for years. I can’t tell you how many times I don’t go with a company because I don’t want to “schedule a call”.
That’s why we placed a pricing estimator directly on the home page of our website. Open, honest and transparent.
Thanks for sharing
FrankGrimesApartment@reddit
I just tell vendors to spin me up a tenant and we will play with it and to let me know what it costs. If they cant do that in 2 weeks i usually start ghosting, because we are too busy. Unless we really really want the solution.
lord_of_Ahhiyawa@reddit
I wish I could print this post and mail it to every tech sales middle manager on earth.
As someone who used to be in tech sales and moved to a sysadmin position, i dont understand why companies still use this archaic "hook in the prospect then book them on 2+" calls strategy. Most information on tools can be found online. Reps should be there to quickly answer the questions that cant be answered with research or self help.
The second i hear "let's book a quick call with an account manager" my brain turns off and I disregard that companies product. People in IT dont buy products like this anymore. Answer the questions and give me a trial, or stop wasting my time. I can't stress enough that no one cares about your qualifying question spreadsheet, and no one is interested in meeting your end of quarter forecast deadlines.
SquizzOC@reddit
Manufacturer reps need to fill their calendars with BS to show they are doing their jobs. It’s terrible micromanagement and this is one of the results. Often is on the VAR side can say out right “Customer hates sales pitches, have your engineer ready to answer questions and move quickly or they will write you off and move on to the next product” and this fixes that problem in about 80% of the calls I do.
throwaway_jhggs@reddit
Lol tell me you've never worked in tech presales without telling you've never worked in tech pre sales.
Geminii27@reddit
Why would that be a factor? It's not a sysadmin's job to make some salesperson's job easier or more profitable.
agent_fuzzyboots@reddit
i have worked on the vendor side before (long time ago) and once or twice i have sent extra complicated questions to a potential customer, just because i thought that the customer haven't told the IT department that they want to purchase something (aka shadow IT)
Civil_Inspection579@reddit
yeah this resonates a lot when someone just answers clearly and directly it builds trust immediately too many calls upfront feels like friction instead of value people already know their problem, they just want to know if you can solve it