Hacker News Reader

Comment by dylan604 | Hacker News Reader

It also means that the price isn't fixed, and that a good negotiator might be able to get a lower price than someone else. The whole "call us" also typically lowers the noise on the vendor's end as well. Anyone willing to take time out to contact them would be a much better chance of closing a sale. They are what would be known as the "good leads". If you're a user and researching multiple vendors with similar services/products/apps that have decent $$$ attached, you'd be a fool to not contact and only pay the price on the tin.

View on HN

I agree with you entirely on the possibility of being able to save money by calling and negotiating, but if I'm evaluating two options, and one shows me pricing and lets me sign up without talking to anyone, and the other will require a phone call, I will most likely not be calling and giving that company any money.

This is, of course, one of the many reasons why I don't run a large, VC-scale business. I don't have the patience or desire to play these sorts of games.

I agree re: quality of leads, but also wonder how many sales are lost to competitors _with_ advertised pricing purely because the user didn't want the hassle of talking to sales (maybe not purely, but you get the gist).

Depending on the business, that could be a customer you wouldn't want anyways. Customers looking solely for lowest price tend to be nightmare customers that would in the long run be more expensive as a customer than just not having them as a customer at all.

Companies that seek to convert every single potential sale and feel a non-sale is a net loss tend to be the companies that I as a potential customer do not want to be a customer of. They tend to have shite customer support anyways.

At the end of the day, the "contact us" pricing clearly is not something that ends companies, otherwise nobody would use it.

I'm confused; you seem to be arguing opposite things. A few comments above, you say:

> ["Call for pricing"] also means that the price isn't fixed, and that a good negotiator might be able to get a lower price than someone else.

But you also say:

> [A potential customer who doesn't want to talk to sales] could be a customer you wouldn't want anyways. Customers looking solely for lowest price tend to be nightmare customers...

So the potential customer who does call for pricing -- possibly with the intent to negotiate that price down -- is also potentially that nightmare customer who is just looking for the lowest price and will be a drag on your time and resources.

To me, the potential customer who just wants to get started without needing to suffer through a call with a sales person... well, that customer sounds at least as likely to be someone who will be a nice, quiet customer who uses your product and doesn't call or write in with inane complaints and issues all the time.

I don't think this is a good signal. I do agree that a potential customer who calls is probably more likely to sign up, but it's still an extra barrier to customer acquisition, no matter how you slice it.

The problem is this discussion is too abstract. There is a big difference between a 10 pack of cheap pens and a custom made pen - depending on which we are talking about different things make sense. Likewise it could be a sheet of paper or replace all the printers in the office. Some things call and we will figure out pricing make a lot of sense, while for others it doesn't. When you realize all of the above exists with call us prices but they are sold differently it starts to make sense why the signal is both good and bad to different people - we are thinking of different situations and so the signal means different things.

In my experience, "call for quote" type places are way more expensive than $5.99/month type of things. It's usually for the plans that for more than 2,000/perX that get those. At that point, it is definitely a negotiation. These places feel like just because your website receives X hits per hour/day/week translates to you being able to pay for a higher rate to do something like license a font/image/music.

The places that are using 'call for quote' on things available on Walmart tend to be people that don't want people of Walmart listed as a customer. However, again, in my experience, I haven't seen one of these. It's been for things that are going to have sticker shock level pricing.

Good negotiator would need leverage and in most cases that won’t exist for a product that understands its own value well. These are priced on value, the call us definitely lowers the noise but it has more to do with the target demo being enterprise large customer deals. Not providing pricing gives sales the ability to try to price it for value to capture maximum margin.

It is most definitely about the products sales team sizing up the potential client and how much they can get the client to pay, based on the company size and turn over. It's possible for the client to negotiate, but the product sales team have jack up the price way over their internal list price, so any client savings is only a fallacy

> good negotiator might be able to get a lower price than someone else.

A good negotiator is worried about more than price. There is quality, time to get the product, support. An lot of other things on those lines that I can't think of at the moment too. A good negotiator knows what is important to them and how to make the best trade off for their situation. Sometimes a good negotiator will offer more than the asking price because they know those others are important and if the company goes out of business they get none of them (this is rare, but it is sometimes needed).

That depends - I've seen contact us pricing on things that are cheap at walmart. They are losing money on every sale because the time for someone on the phone is more than gross profit (not net)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com