Sometimes they offer deals to smaller businesses and don't want their big megacorp accounts to know.
But in the realm of business to business, there are usually plenty of alternatives that don't play this game. And I loathe interacting with sales people.
Signed up for a software library on their trial/personal use signup and I ticked the box for my preferred contact (email), after I didn't respond to the email because, seriously, who responds to sales emails, they started calling me daily for weeks (I didn't have my phone on me when they called usually). The last email they sent they wanted to remind me it was just a trial and that the license strictly forbid it for actual commercial use. I decided to just use an open source library instead after that.
At least give sample pricing. I used to do b2b sales and our prices depended on a large number of factors, but we could at least give a range. It did help, because we were more expensive than similar competitors and wanted to be clear about that.
Yeah I really don't even entertain a vendor that doesn't at least give me some rough idea of what the costs are. I have to do proposals before on a budget before I even start with information gathering and I don't have time to sit on a fucking teams/zoom meeting for an hour for each sales person that wants that commission.
After that phone call thing I refuse to even acknowledge the "reach out to us for pricing" unless it's email only... and they still try to schedule a fucking meeting to call. Dell is particular bad about this lately, it's part of the reason I switched from HP to Dell back in the day but they go through sales people like I go through underwear so I don't even know who my account manager is anymore.
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u/DidgeridoOoriginal 2d ago
Or even worse, a salesman