I'm sure these things work, but they also alienate customers sometimes. People have founded entire businesses on offering clearer pricing schemes.
The rule is to be clear about pricing when it works in your advantage and to obfuscate otherwise.
you have to schedule a consultation if you want prices.
- The state of the roof (does it need reinforcing? will the installers need scaffolding?) - The complexity of the installation (lots of little roof sections with earth tiles and 2 or 3 transformers? Or a plain and simple one-transformer south facing asphalt roof?) - Does the crew need to drive 5h from headquarters? Or just 1h? - A 3kW installation may be worthwhile in some locations but not in others.
And finally since solar city depends on the performance of the panels (which they sell as debt), they must ensure that your house will be a good candidate. If it's not, they don't want you as a customer.
...actually, the more I think about it, this may be a business idea in itself, for the poor suckers who don't afford a solitary launch!
It's different for software that actually needs integration of some sort (SAP, most of the IBM portfolio, …) but SaaS startups doing this shit are just deluding themselves.
Is that millitonnes, more commonly known as kilograms?
That's to illustrate the difference between an imperial ton, which is 2000 lbs (or ~907kg).
Or (unfortunately not) better known as one megagram.
I used to work for a company that provided custom pricing software for highly complex products (did you know a semi truck can have over 4000 options?). They charged hundreds of thousands for a custom pricing software solution - but it was mostly a custom job, some off-the-shelf software but mostly a ton of customization for that particular customer and their very complex business needs.
So no, you can't just charge a flat rate like it's a box of Fruit Loops.
This is not a very meaningful distinction. Big enterprise software deals inevitably involve customizations and integrations.
>we believe strongly in a core message of the Lean Startup movement: We want to talk to people.
What if people don't want to talk to you? This should be entirely opt-in. Intercom makes this a seamless experience.
A certain large segment of people want upfront pricing information with no human involved. If you can't give exact pricing because your product/service is too complicated at least give some example setups and their respective costs. This way at least we have a ball park figure to anchor our thinking. No one wants to waste time exploring unfeasible (due to cost) options. Otherwise it becomes a turn off because it starts to feel like a negotiation rather than an exchange.
I do hate when small companies do it though. I'm looking for a new AC unit and so few dealers will just give me a price straight away. I just want to enter my credit card and have it delivered.
They don't quote a price because the cost of the product they sell makes up only a small percentage of the overall cost. The vast majority comes from consulting and product customization, which is billable by the hour. And since you don't know the prospect's exact need during the initial engagement, providing pricing would be silly.
Source: I work in that exact market. When a prospect asks for a price up front, they basically fail lead qualification. As the saying goes, if you have to ask how much it is, you ain't the target audience.
Actually they do target the small fish, that's why they won't publish prices. The idea here is that $big_co may pay $5m for $software, but $small_co will get the near equivalent for $100,000. $big_co doesn't want to feel it got ripped off, so secretive pricing all around.
Also, this pricing allows for a lot of negotiation, volume pricing, and "we'll beat the competition" tactics. Now the competition needs to also engage in secretive pricing to stay competitive.
Not to defend these two but in some cases for IBM you will, if you know the incantation and buzzwords, find the price. For example WebSphere Application Server and WebSphere MQ can be looked up because IBM deals in PVU's (processor value unit) and bundled licenses that include support. They do provide a PVU calculator. Of course, you'll have to register to get more information or download a demo. It's frustrating but not impossible.
Secret pricing is exactly how they conduct that business: With no public price, employees can't challenge IBM's consultants to provide the value they're charged for. If all from Atlassian to SpaceX publish their pricing, any other behaviour should trigger a SEC investigation.
The best part is that they brought in McDonald's UC4 engineer to talk about how good it was. When we asked him how they automated its deployment and where they got their init scripts from, since UC4 didn't include any (wtf), his answer was that it was basically his full time job to deploy it by hand, since he didn't know how to automate anything. Somehow he turned his lack of skill and McDonald's apparent lack of good tech leadership into a positive thing - which the execs also loved. These are the kinds of people making large, absurdly expensive software decisions for multi, multi billion dollar companies.
I have nightmares of trying to figure out their database schema. 2-6ish letter German acronyms for table names....
Their wiki gives a good impression of their character: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automic
In comparison, BMC was up front with an engineer during the eval and provided us with great documentation including the DB schema. We didn't go with them or others in the automation space for... reasons... but it was a very different experience.
[edit: Why the downvotes? My experience with another 800-lbs gorilla confirms the parent comment]
I did sign up to see what Autodesk Maya cost in my country's currency. At the time, in $US is was $3,995 for a single seat. In my country, it was around $US12000.
I did what any good person with a goodly amount of cash in the bank would do - I said "$#@! it," and bought a house instead.
"I'm interested in XYZ. How much is it?"
"Well, with Option A or Option W?"
"... How much is either?"
"Oh, well that depends on if we make it with pixie dust or faerie magik."
"Ok. How much?"
"Well, which would you like? XYZ with A from Pixie Dust or XYZ with W made from Faerie Magik?"
"How much for either?"
"Well, that depends on ..."
No. No it does not depend. You have a chart in your hand, I guarantee it. It has pricing on it. Stop the dance.
One time, I asked a guy "Can you make this and how much would it cost?".
He responded: "We can do whatever you want." Really? I want a number, but you seem to have trouble giving it to me.
The ideal is some kind of pricing calculator, though. 3 packages and a custom quote generator, or "call".
This happens more often than not, and I usually eventually find someone to quote me a price within my budget on the first visit. I understand that that is typically how business is done, or more specifically haggling, but I don't want to haggle. Even if it is outside of my budget, I'll postpone the project until I get the money, and then call back whichever vendor didn't budge on price the first time (and had the lowest price, of course).
You may not care for negotiation, but that doesn't mean it is dishonest. Items and services don't have a "real" price, they are only worth what people will pay for them.
I am always very honest with them, and expect the same. Heck, I don't even hesitate to pay them when they screw something up. I pay them promptly, and then hope they will do the right thing.
While items and services don't have a "real" price, they do have a "best" price.
EDIT: I'd also like to add that, while the article focuses on consumer pricing, I am different when it comes to B2B pricing. E.g. I would quote a successful law firm more than a mom-and-pop shop for consulting services. Back when I was an entrepreneur, I actually lost a couple of contracts because my quotes were too low.
There is a divergence in moral values in here, and even if you think someone should accept a certain view on negotiation, it is, however, especially when there is no visible benefit at all for them, their choice to refuse to do so. The commerce has on its core the idea of mutual benefit and this haggling-justling violates the sense of mutual benefit. It is only natural to expect less trust from your "customers" when you've treated them this way.
Unfortunately this seems to be common practice whenever you deal with products/services that target businesses.
With years of experience from dealing with "ask for quote" businesses, this strategy is by now an immediate k.o. criteria for me when considering anything.
I may return for your offer only after spending considerable time of not finding any more transparent business (quite rare, but possible for very customized products like renting glass fiber for an office).
In practice this never happens and I've been a much happier customer ever since - with my business life cleaned up from 95% of dealing with crappy sales reps.
Recent case in the point: I was in the market for a Herman Miller Embody. I would've ordered it online at retail for ~$1500, but I wanted it ASAP so I went to a local HM dealer to see if they kept any in stock (they didn't). While there, the sales person got me a more-upgraded version of the Embody for less than $1000 by invoking dealership and small business discounts. Effectively, I made $500/hr during that trip to the HM dealership.
The downside of this experience was that, contrary to my original intention, it took about 5 weeks for the chair to arrive. :\ It would've shipped faster if I had paid full retail from the HM store online.
Of course, it's going to depend on the good, but considering that salespeople usually have a strong incentive structure to get your sale to go through them instead of an online retailer or to a competing business, they really will pull out all the stops to keep you around.
For example,you provide SaaS which is applicable to a wide audience, from personal account and tiny teams, to large companies. It's totally fine then to have public pricing for smaller use cases but need to get in touch with sales person to get a larger plan. In this case, your needs probably don't match typical plans (you need a lot of X, and no Y), and the amount of money is big enough to be negotiable. That's cool, since you don't buy these things willie nillie every few days.
Speaking of salesmen themselves, it varies a lot from my experience. Some will send you 10 emails during 14 days trial with live demos and trying to arrange a call and shit I don' care about. They do nothing at all to make the sale happen, just annoy a lot. While others just ask for your needs, ask a few questions for clarifications and about potentials needs and give a quote, not trying to arrange pointless calls. I have no problem with this kind of salesmen.
I agree with you on the small end of the spectrum - but there is a reason many "Enterprise" level plans are "call us" because the level of hassle involved can be directly tied into the cost you can charge.
they're saving everyone involved a lot of time.