Comment by randerson | Hacker News Reader

Comment by randerson | Hacker News Reader

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You can go to the Porsche configurator website and design a personally customized globally unique $300K+ car, and it shows you not only the price but also what it'll look like. So there's obviously nothing _technical_ preventing them from letting people just order online, like with Tesla. Frustratingly, you have to still go into a dealer for them to click the submit order button, and they might add a markup for this privilege despite them adding negative value to the experience. It is just as frustrating as B2B sales. I'm sure some buyers want to speak to a human, but enthusiasts tend to know exactly what they want and they dread having to "build a relationship" and wonder if they got screwed because they didn't negotiate hard enough / aren't good-looking enough / etc.

As for B2B sales, if AWS can show their pricing online, which has to be among the most complex pricing in existence - then so can every other SaaS company.

I think you and the parent comment are talking about different scales. A large SaaS company deal could be $300k per month per customer, and the sales process for a company like that can involve changing the software to meet the needs of the customer. A very early lesson is that what the customer says they need is not always the same as what they actually need.

One of the many reasons calls happen is that customers say "I need XYZ feature in order to do this deal," and the salesperson then needs to ask why they need XYZ feature, and what they want to accomplish, and maybe existing ABC feature actually meets their need, or maybe the company needs to develop XYZ feature to secure the contract. Once you get into a complex domain, that is not happening over email.

The article contains good advice to many businesses out there, but it's worth considering the situations where it doesn't apply, too.

It certainly makes sense for a deep dive sales interaction if you're actually going to your product or engineering team to make changes.

But if you're selling what's already on the truck, as most of these companies are, then there is no reason for the "call for pricing" for a standard enterprise plan. Pricing pages should have a separate column for custom/bespoke solutions, where it makes sense to have "schedule a call".

Funny that you picked Porsche as an example. Their sales process is much like the terrible B2B experience. They won't even sell you many of their cars if you haven't purchased something cheaper from them in the past. Walk into a dealer, tell them you want to purchase a GT3 RS, and they'll laugh you out the door.

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