It seems like most business to business transactions start with the "dummy price" out the gate.
Oh and they get to stamp their feet and hop up and down with rage and send shitty emails when you don't live up to their expectations.
And they also usually do this to all of their other suppliers and customers too, which means that they tend to go out of business without warning, still owing you money.
I'm curious to learn why you do that? On "contact a sales person" type sales I can understand but you use the term 'transaction' which implies you are doing this on self-service purchases.
Most self-service businesses are setup to streamline (ie avoid) human-interactions which would also suggest they are honestly pricing their goods/services. By contacting them for a discount you're already increasing their CAC before you then ask for a discount too.
If you have sticker-shock on the price because it's not offering a return value to you or you cannot afford it then you're probably not a target customer. That's why I don't go into the Ferrari dealership and ask for 10% off.
This doesn't follow. It shows they are concerned with reducing their costs, not that they will pass those cost savings onto the customer.
Don't ask, don't get. If you are going to be a solid, profitable customer for a business, they have a clear incentive to get you on board by sweetening the deal.
If everyone emailed in wanting pre-sales and discounts the price would go up because there would need to be a sales team to service the requests.
I'm telling you that as someone who runs such a business that has both self-service and sales-led products that are priced differently (partly) for that reason. (that business is hosting the OP site as it happens)
You could even set up a standard response email. If someone writes asking for a discount, just send them a ~10% discount code.
It should pay for itself in the form of (even slightly) increased conversions in no time.
I want every one of our customers to be 100% confident that they are paying the same price as anybody else on the same plan. In our case, I've even explicitly refused to do any deals or promotional discounts. This keeps things simple for us to keep track of as well.