We don't ask for your budget to milk you dry

I'll respond from a different marketplace...ad sales and ad tech.

I get endless pitches from ad sales reps and ad tech sales reps. Quite often they raise the question of budget before they are willing to share their rates. As a buyer, I know that the moment I give you a number, I've lost some leverage. Now, I could give a false number, but either way that impacts the conversation.

In general I hate custom enterprise pricing that is negotiated and doesn't have finite constraints based the pieces. It quickly becomes a game for the sales person of "how much can I try to milk them for" instead of finding a happy middle-ground for both parties. You can tell this is happening because as soon as you tell them you're not interested, the price magically drops by 50% (happened to me many times).

Here's the deal. I'm busy. I hate playing games. Unless you can prove to me such as in the manner above that you are not going to try to screw me on price, I won't feel comfortable putting out a number first. Frankly as a prospective customer, I shouldn't have to in order to know what something will cost. It should cost what it costs and then the discussion is how realistic that is with the budget available and tailoring things accordingly.

I get that sales people want to quantify/qualify the opportunity, but just as you suggest that it can help focus on products within the budget provided, it can just as easily cause a sales person to avoid presenting a lower-priced option because they know you can afford the higher-priced one.

Now, obviously there's a lot of responsibility on the part of the buyer to do their due diligence and come to the table informed about what they are negotiating, but when I get this question on an initial call from a vendor before I even fully understand their offering, I find I'm quite put off by it.

Also, sales people need to understand that saying "trust me, I'm not like other sales people who ask this question" does nothing to assure me because there are too many bad actors out there for me to trust someone at their word when it comes to that.