"Request a quote" is a sales tactic to elicit as much money as possible from larger customers. It's never the reasons being bandied about, like complexity in enterprise agreements or customized discounts for scale, or any of the reasons the people slinging the product might have convinced themselves are true. It's about getting the opportunity to introduce sales tactics that a straightforward and honest price menu would provide.
"Request a quote" is a sign to me that the company is dishonest, with high pressure sales tactics, toxic incentives, and a culture of maximizing profit over providing quality service. I've never seen a counter-example of an awesome, high performing company I loved working with, who went the extra mile, use "Request a quote" or similar tactics.
"Request a quote" is a corporate version of a street busker con, with them needing to get up close and personal, to shuffle the numbers and dazzle you with "here's what we are willing to do, just for you!" as their hand slides into your pocket.
There are always better options that somehow manage to be honest, clear, and upfront with pricing. If a company is hiding the price, it's to get away with something that you'd call out as sketchy if you knew all the information in advance. Even if it's only to force an interaction with a skilled sales agent, it's a despicable tactic.
I have seen SaaS sales where the prospect (not the vendor) required contracts to be executed prior to determining requirements. This involved legal on both sides to be involved. Once the trial was started, the prospect required many changes to the app, API, data model, and other fundamental aspects of the SaaS.
In order to account for this, what number would you put on the website's pricing page?
$X for a "take it or leave it" contract, with all the terms attached for the prospect's legal team to peruse at their own leisure, and then a "call us if you need something more bespoke" button.
OP is specifically saying this is always a scammy sales tactic. I am asking for a way to arrive at a scalar $ value to put on the website to avoid this tactic of "talking to the customer to determine the price."
OP is specifically saying this is a scummy pressure sales tactic. I am asking for a specific number to put there instead, in the interest of transparency.
That's not a number that represents what the buyer is looking for though, so it doesn't help. I guess to be transparent you could put some text like "if you don't want to buy one of these plans, we are not the vendor for you?"
I used to think the same, until I started working at the place I'm currently at. You can see our pricing model in the post I made here[1].
Thing is, while we might be able to provide a "sticker price" on our webpage that would fit the smallest customers, it wouldn't for anyone larger.
For example, our product has a lot of modules (over 20), and you pay per module. Unless you've worked with our product before, you have little to no idea which modules you need. Best is to give us a call, explain your daily operation and we can then tell you which modules you need and give you some options on which modules you might benefit from additionally.
Anyone but the smallest customers also has some integration. Largest ones have a lot. Do you require a custom integration or can you use our standard integrations? It doesn't help that you run say SAP on your other system, as no two SAPs are the same. Perhaps our standard integration can cover your needs, perhaps not. Similar for a lot of other systems we integrate with.
We have tons of small customers, including many single-employee shops, up to the biggest fish in our pond. There's some variation in pricing between customers through negotiation, but not a lot. It's just that customers have quite varied needs.
I've never seen a counter-example of an awesome, high performing company I loved working with, who went the extra mile, use "Request a quote" or similar tactics.
I bet those companies also have a "request a quote" process for their enterprise customers, who do not pay the public prices, you just don't see it.
You're misunderstanding the dynamic. There are many SAAS companies that present a public-facing abstraction of a "sticker price", but the actual price that large customers pay has no consistent relationship with that price, because of exactly the factors you're dismissing. No enterprise procurement department will agree to pay a sticker price, and few enterprises will be satisfied with "sticker service".
Why aren't companies honest and upfront about this? Sometimes they are. Slack, for example (https://app.slack.com/plans/T02EPKPG3) is pretty straightforward: you can pay $7.25 if you're a normie company, $12.50 if you have more advanced needs, or you can request a quote if you're a giant enterprise who's going to be expensive to support. The risk is that a company which really ought to be in the "request a quote" tier ends up in a lower one and then has mismatched expectations. I've seen one case where a sticker-price-tier customer was absolutely outraged that nobody would set up a call with engineering for him.
Right, but the problem is when a company can't (or won't) quantify a no-frills normie price. I don't think anybody is complaining about the fact that huge needy clients will cost more and so will need to pay more; the problem is marketing material that says "we will treat everyone like a huge needy client".
I think that, most of the time people think they've seen such marketing material, the intended message was really "we're primarily interested in doing business with huge needy clients". For some kinds of software it's fundamentally hard to reliably make money from small users.
"Request a quote" is a sign to me that the company is dishonest, with high pressure sales tactics, toxic incentives, and a culture of maximizing profit over providing quality service. I've never seen a counter-example of an awesome, high performing company I loved working with, who went the extra mile, use "Request a quote" or similar tactics.
"Request a quote" is a corporate version of a street busker con, with them needing to get up close and personal, to shuffle the numbers and dazzle you with "here's what we are willing to do, just for you!" as their hand slides into your pocket.
There are always better options that somehow manage to be honest, clear, and upfront with pricing. If a company is hiding the price, it's to get away with something that you'd call out as sketchy if you knew all the information in advance. Even if it's only to force an interaction with a skilled sales agent, it's a despicable tactic.