Comment by mikeocool

From a customer perspective, if you're making purchases of a certain size "Call for Pricing" is just a dance you need to learn to do.

It is pretty annoying that the first call is almost always with an SDR who can't answer basic questions about the product, whose whole job is to make sure you are a qualified customer, and book a second call. The goal of that call is basically answer their questions as fast possible, book the next call, and get off the phone.

On the second call, hopefully with a sales rep and a good solutions engineer -- you don't have to politely listen to their whole spiel, more often then not they'll be very happy if you start peppering them with very specific questions, rather than sitting through the generic demo. A good solutions engineer is able to answer my questions a lot faster than I can find the answer on the website.

It's also highly beneficial to have individual names and phone numbers inside the company if things don't go so well once you're a customer -- if google shuts down your gsuite account, it's nice to have your account rep's cell phone number.

Also, differential pricing is a perhaps a silly dance we all do, but it's life when making purchases of a certain size. It can also work in your favor as a buyer -- if you can, figure out when the company's quarter end is, and line your purchase with that -- there's a pretty good chance they'll be incentivized to cut you a good deal if they're trying to hit their numbers. Also, even if you're not planning on buying from a competitor, get a quote from them, and say "your competitor gave me X price, Im going to go with them unless you do better."