Failing at Sales Due to Pricing Secrecy

Having spent entirely too much of my time in the last week contacting IT security vendors for pricing estimates, I've certainly seen the best—and worst—of technology sales.

I've been on the other side of sales before, from sitting with BDRs and giving feedback on cold calls, to handling pre-sales engineering efforts for various technology services. It's not easy, and sometimes, it's completely terrible. Being in sales isn't necessarily fun, but if you get it wrong for your company, you can burn some big bridges, very quickly.

Today, I had the misfortune of having someone respond to my contact form where I was asking for a price estimate with a phone call that began with little introduction and a few hostility-ridden questions. It took me a few minutes to figure out what the problem was, but once I did, I was infuriated.

This company, a teeny-tiny niche IT firm, called to interrogate me with an accusatory tone that I was going to somehow—intentionally or otherwise—leak their magical pixie dust pricing scheme to my employer who has a slim overlap as a competitor. Ha!

I explained at the start of the call what my role is, what I am doing for my client, why I am contacting them, and how I even heard about them. Despite all of this, I was told that I couldn't be given pricing. I noted that next time I'd just contact them with a fake name and company and skip all of this silliness. Even after I explained that my work was not company-wide to be seen by any of our sales staff or anyone relevant to their worry, the sales person was still convinced that this magical data would "get out" somehow.

Sales people, your pricing may not be "public," but it's not a trade secret, either. Your pricing likely changes often, you give deals to different organizations, you structure deals differently for contract length, etc. By saying that you won't give me a price, when I am coming to you with my real name and real company—MAYBE JUST ANSWER THE QUESTION.

If keeping pricing a deep, dark secret is your only leg-up on the competition, you need to seriously reevaluate what you think you know about the market you're playing in.

If you don't want to advertise your pricing, it should be because it's too complex to determine for a customer without additional knowledge or that you want to structure deals differently for certain verticals. If you hide your pricing, just because, you're wasting people's time, losing deals, and making your company look scared of competition.

I will never recommend this company, to anyone, ever. Instead, I'll find a company in this space that does want to make money and can relax on their pricing espionage paranoia to work with people trying to get a job done.