<story><title>Ask HN: What happens when I click &quot;request for quote&quot; on your SaaS?</title><text>How do you come up with the pricing that is offered to me on your enterprise plan?</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>eloisant</author><text>How is a lead from the website bad quality? It&amp;#x27;s litterally a customer saying &amp;quot;I want to subscribe and pay more than the self-service price tag&amp;quot;, no?</text></item><item><author>rsstack</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve been part of the team that sets up this process at a few SaaS&amp;#x27;s, and I&amp;#x27;ve done SaaS procurement for a while, so I clicked that button often (if I didn&amp;#x27;t know anyone at the company).&lt;p&gt;1. It gets added to a list of marketing website leads, which is owned by SDRs&amp;#x2F;BDRs who are there to filter and qualify leads. These are usually early-career people, with a base salary + quota for qualifying leads. The website is many times their least preferred channel of leads due to the quality, but they can&amp;#x27;t ignore it because sometimes good customers do come through there.&lt;p&gt;2. The SDR will either work over email or on a call; their goal is to identify if you&amp;#x27;re a real potential customer (vs shopping for prices, vs confused about what we sell), write up notes, and identify which customer segment you belong to (geography + business type + business size).&lt;p&gt;3. You will then speak to a salesperson (with varying titles &amp;quot;Account Executive&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;Sales Director&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;Regional VP of Enterprise Sales&amp;quot;, or whatever inflated title makes sense for that sales organization). Their goal is to confirm they&amp;#x27;re speaking to the right person in your organization (or wasting their time), if your use case is meaningful enough for the &amp;quot;enterprise plan&amp;quot; (they can&amp;#x27;t sign too small deals), what your budget is, what your usage will be like, etc.&lt;p&gt;4. Pricing could be made up by guessing your price point, but it&amp;#x27;s rare. It is difficult to consistently make up pricing that works over time and doesn&amp;#x27;t have many lowball deals that harm the company&amp;#x27;s revenue long-term, and salespeople often don&amp;#x27;t understand the technical details well enough to make things up that make sense. Usually, there will be a pricing framework and an internal calculator (very often, a spreadsheet with formulae and VLOOKUPs) that will give them a range. They can then choose what number within that range to offer, based on who they think you are and how far off they are from their quarterly quota.&lt;p&gt;5. They can then negotiate the number, or the included features, or the payment terms (upfront payment, multi-year contract, exit clauses, etc.) which can be translated into discounts if they&amp;#x27;re favorable to the seller.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mbesto</author><text>Oh man, I take it you&amp;#x27;ve never operated this part of a scaled business before. Wouldn&amp;#x27;t you like to know the absolute crap that comes through those forms...and yes even from those who have the intent of &amp;quot;I want to pay more than the self service price tag&amp;quot;.</text></comment>
<story><title>Ask HN: What happens when I click &quot;request for quote&quot; on your SaaS?</title><text>How do you come up with the pricing that is offered to me on your enterprise plan?</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>eloisant</author><text>How is a lead from the website bad quality? It&amp;#x27;s litterally a customer saying &amp;quot;I want to subscribe and pay more than the self-service price tag&amp;quot;, no?</text></item><item><author>rsstack</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve been part of the team that sets up this process at a few SaaS&amp;#x27;s, and I&amp;#x27;ve done SaaS procurement for a while, so I clicked that button often (if I didn&amp;#x27;t know anyone at the company).&lt;p&gt;1. It gets added to a list of marketing website leads, which is owned by SDRs&amp;#x2F;BDRs who are there to filter and qualify leads. These are usually early-career people, with a base salary + quota for qualifying leads. The website is many times their least preferred channel of leads due to the quality, but they can&amp;#x27;t ignore it because sometimes good customers do come through there.&lt;p&gt;2. The SDR will either work over email or on a call; their goal is to identify if you&amp;#x27;re a real potential customer (vs shopping for prices, vs confused about what we sell), write up notes, and identify which customer segment you belong to (geography + business type + business size).&lt;p&gt;3. You will then speak to a salesperson (with varying titles &amp;quot;Account Executive&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;Sales Director&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;Regional VP of Enterprise Sales&amp;quot;, or whatever inflated title makes sense for that sales organization). Their goal is to confirm they&amp;#x27;re speaking to the right person in your organization (or wasting their time), if your use case is meaningful enough for the &amp;quot;enterprise plan&amp;quot; (they can&amp;#x27;t sign too small deals), what your budget is, what your usage will be like, etc.&lt;p&gt;4. Pricing could be made up by guessing your price point, but it&amp;#x27;s rare. It is difficult to consistently make up pricing that works over time and doesn&amp;#x27;t have many lowball deals that harm the company&amp;#x27;s revenue long-term, and salespeople often don&amp;#x27;t understand the technical details well enough to make things up that make sense. Usually, there will be a pricing framework and an internal calculator (very often, a spreadsheet with formulae and VLOOKUPs) that will give them a range. They can then choose what number within that range to offer, based on who they think you are and how far off they are from their quarterly quota.&lt;p&gt;5. They can then negotiate the number, or the included features, or the payment terms (upfront payment, multi-year contract, exit clauses, etc.) which can be translated into discounts if they&amp;#x27;re favorable to the seller.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>preetamjinka</author><text>Depends on who clicks the button. It could be a junior person doing some research for their team, in which case they are not the decision maker nor the one with the budget&amp;#x2F;writing the check.&lt;p&gt;If a VP clicks on the button, that&amp;#x27;s a different story.</text></comment>