At $dayJob we reached the seat limit on a SaaS product. I reached out to their sales team for a quote on a few more seats. We already pay for this software. I'm not a new customer.
What I expected was an email saying: "Great, glad you want to use this more. It will cost £X."
I needed that price because I can't green light the spend on my own. I take the number away, get the approval and come back.
Instead I got an email asking how many employees the organisation has. A pointless question when I only wanted a double-digit increase in seats. When I asked why, the answer sounded made up: "to route you to the right sales person". Because obviously not just any sales person can quote for a few extra seats. It has to be this guy.
The real reason, of course, is that the size of the business lets them pad the bill.
Over a day later, that sales person replied to ask what I needed. My blood pressure started to rise. They had been copied into the whole email chain and hadn't so much as glanced at it. Do these people not want money?
To their credit, they did then send the pricing. I wanted to write about this anyway because it's sadly not a unique experience. Far too much digital ink gets spent on simple requests.
I'm sure this process often earns these sales people large commissions, but my word, it leaves a bad taste. I go into software sales conversations knowing that noughts will be added because of the word "enterprise" (similar to the charge the word "wedding" carries), and I appreciate that money has to be made. What I don't expect is for the process to be so painful.
I want your thing. Give me the price and let me pay for it.