Then depending how formal the customer is the reply can be a text email with a quote, a formal quote that looks almost like an invoice (PDF), or even a 10 page draft document for further discussion.
This might sound like a lot of extra work, something that can't easily be automated, but those companies are used to long sales processes. The product manager needs to liaison with their legal department, then with their accounting department. "Request for quote" and "contact sales" are essentially the same.
It's in the launch HN instructions we give YC founders, which are here if anyone wants to see them: https://news.ycombinator.com/yli.html. All the advice is valid for HN generally, though the logistical aspects are specific to YC.
Edit: I even keep a list of examples to scare people:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40237070 (May 2024)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40170609 (April 2024)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39787870 (March 2024)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39513573 (Feb 2024)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31840885 (June 2022)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31659066 (June 2022)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31655259 (June 2022)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30630736 (March 2022)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29554111 (Dec 2021)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29552753 (Dec 2021)
* Since we sell mainly to Enterprise they all have procurement people who get measured on how much money they save - with some getting crazy bonuses if they can "save" 50%. So we needed to keep the price inflated by 50% until it gets to them so they can "twist our arm" down to the real price to show their value.
* And if a procurement person can get that 50% off our competitor such that the deal with them makes them look better they'll pick them instead.
* And when we used to put that 2X the real price price on our website some people wouldn't know to twist our arm for the discount and instead just thought we were too expensive. It was also abused by our competitors who were all "Contact Us" to make out they were cheaper than us without giving us the chance to compete.
So instead we do this stupid dance that I hate where we can't even tell the real price to the people in the early meetings (keeping that for procurement at the end of the process) - and we have to do all this fishing to find out who else they are looking at and what their price is that we have to beat before giving them our price. The entire purpose of our Sales Execs is to do this dance to decide whether to give a price and which price they tell to various people at the various stages as far as I can tell - though they actually are pretty good at it...
I came from Amazon where the price was public as were the mechanisms to lower it through various types of commitment so I found the whole thing ridiculous. I have since learned that everybody does it this way and this seems to be the reason. I argued "maybe if we are the one who doesn't in our space then we'll get more business for being the easiest one to deal with?" but I was assured that was not the case and it would just mean procurement people would want 50% off our best price instead...
Our pricing is in general based on a "fixed" monthly per-module price plus max-simultaneous-users price, and then a usage based per-transaction price element in addition.
The "fixed" cost can be somewhat different, typically it's a bit lower for smaller customers which also takes into account smaller customers typically have fewer custom integration needs (ie less custom maintenance/support).
The transaction pricing has a volume discount "ladder" with many steps. So smaller customers pays a lot more per transaction than larger customers. The transaction-based "price ladder" is otherwise quite fixed between customers.
This transaction-based element allows us to have reasonable overall prices for small as well as large, as it scales with our customers' activity. If they have a good month they pay more but also have more income.
This model is used for all our customers, from single-employee shops to the largest ones we have (many hundreds of simultaneous users). Our CEO has been clear he doesn't want to be cheapest, but deliver a superior product that justifies the price.
In the 10 years I've been here we've gone from #5 of a group of vendors to a dominating position. I think our pricing model has been one of the factors that has facilitated this.
Year 1 - Form posts into slack. Someone calls you and reads the price off a pdf.
Year 2 or 3 - form posts into CRM. Someone calls you and reads the price off a pdf.
Year 4+ - form posts into CRM. Someone calls you and maybe enters some details into a Google sheet.
Think very hard before using something not upfront about pricing.
The pricing will be basically the same rate for everyone, with discounts based on actual scale, but there will be a minimum commitment which will be calculated to be substantially less than your likely bill -- this is to encourage you to actually start using the service, rather than sitting on it for another year while you wonder if the conversion will be worth the trouble.
(It is. Clients love us after they actually start using us. One of our big sales drivers is employees of clients going to work at other companies and noting how much worse things are without us.)
Then the client will have due diligence and security questionaires and want to negotiate some fine details of the contract. Will they require special setup services? More or less training than usual? Sometimes this will require a one-time fee.
you'll get a list price (the price that the company needs to sell at with lots of margin added on top), and, depending on how serious you are and your actual needs, you'll get a "real" price after a sales person/sales engineer qualifies you.
there are a million ways big-money SaaS licenses can be discounted, but it always depends on the buyer, the relationship, how "sticky" they'll be (i.e. will they use it for a year and bounce, or could they be a multi-year loyal customer), sales targets and how much other stuff they might purchase.
also, like a previous poster said earlier, there are lots and lots and LOTS of ways that enterprise software can be purchased. "request for quote" sales flows covers that.
SaaS companies do this because so much of B2B pricing is a function of value and willingness to pay for that value.
SOC2 reports, SLA monitoring dashboards, 5% annual increase limits, they can put literally anything as a requirement.
Once I was cooling my heels in the lobby of Oracle and, looking around realized I’d had a stupid brain fart. So I opened my laptop and doubled the price of every line item in the quote (felt very high tech in ~1994). They complained about the cost, but paid. They would have complained about the original quote: complaining about the cost is the first step of negotiation.
I’m surprised there isn’t a service that takes the requestor’s email address (if it’s something generic like @gmail.com, DWIM-searches LinkedIn), looks them up in an in-house proprietary database, and sends you a score (a multiplier).
Someone should start that — it’s probably a quick flip to Experian.
We'll walk through the problem you're facing that lead you to fill out the meeting form, and you'll either get a solution that day, or it'll be built rapidly.
I started with an "unlimited" plan and very quickly realised this attracts pathological customers for whom $199/mo for unlimited resources is a steal. So now I charge incrementally per resource used (uptime checks, status pages).
I’m guessing you want someone to reach out to you for a video call where they can tell you whether the product works with your Identity Provider, follows your security standards, and has a human who you can negotiate with set starting price per license/head/unit.
What do you put on a features/pricing page to help you start finding out what your enterprise customers might actually want? (Not the generic stuff like SSO and audits, but specific to your product/market).
Just a generic "Don't see the features you need? Email us!"?
When you submit the contact us form I receive a message via Matrix on Element. I also receive an email and the submission is recorded in postgres.
Depending on the request details, I may reach out to you immediately or put you on my task list for 24-48 hours to handle.
I don't sell or do anything with the data. I'm the only person that sees it.
Maybe you are shopping on price.
Maybe you are seeking bespoke services.
"Request a quote" is a sign to me that the company is dishonest, with high pressure sales tactics, toxic incentives, and a culture of maximizing profit over providing quality service. I've never seen a counter-example of an awesome, high performing company I loved working with, who went the extra mile, use "Request a quote" or similar tactics.
"Request a quote" is a corporate version of a street busker con, with them needing to get up close and personal, to shuffle the numbers and dazzle you with "here's what we are willing to do, just for you!" as their hand slides into your pocket.
There are always better options that somehow manage to be honest, clear, and upfront with pricing. If a company is hiding the price, it's to get away with something that you'd call out as sketchy if you knew all the information in advance. Even if it's only to force an interaction with a skilled sales agent, it's a despicable tactic.
1. It gets added to a list of marketing website leads, which is owned by SDRs/BDRs who are there to filter and qualify leads. These are usually early-career people, with a base salary + quota for qualifying leads. The website is many times their least preferred channel of leads due to the quality, but they can't ignore it because sometimes good customers do come through there.
2. The SDR will either work over email or on a call; their goal is to identify if you're a real potential customer (vs shopping for prices, vs confused about what we sell), write up notes, and identify which customer segment you belong to (geography + business type + business size).
3. You will then speak to a salesperson (with varying titles "Account Executive", "Sales Director", "Regional VP of Enterprise Sales", or whatever inflated title makes sense for that sales organization). Their goal is to confirm they're speaking to the right person in your organization (or wasting their time), if your use case is meaningful enough for the "enterprise plan" (they can't sign too small deals), what your budget is, what your usage will be like, etc.
4. Pricing could be made up by guessing your price point, but it's rare. It is difficult to consistently make up pricing that works over time and doesn't have many lowball deals that harm the company's revenue long-term, and salespeople often don't understand the technical details well enough to make things up that make sense. Usually, there will be a pricing framework and an internal calculator (very often, a spreadsheet with formulae and VLOOKUPs) that will give them a range. They can then choose what number within that range to offer, based on who they think you are and how far off they are from their quarterly quota.
5. They can then negotiate the number, or the included features, or the payment terms (upfront payment, multi-year contract, exit clauses, etc.) which can be translated into discounts if they're favorable to the seller.