Q: How do you know when you’re talking to an excessively enterprisey software vendor?
A: When they require an NDA before they tell you anything about what their product costs.
I’ve been down the enterprise software path; I’ve worked in companies producing it, I’ve worked in companies buying it. I know the drill. I’ve fought the battles to produce quality, polished software in spite of the forces leading toward (ummm….) overly postmodern results.
Be proud of your offerings and your value proposition. Of course we all have situation where a lot of discussions are needed to figure out what a project will cost; but if you have an off the shelf product, it’s just basic block-and-tackle execution to get to a point where you can state a few prices for a few packages as part of your sales presentation.
One justification for requiring an NDA before discussing price is to prevent competitors from discovering your price. I have heard of situations where competitors explicitly undercut a price just to make the sale – no matter that the vendor will take a loss, the sale is simply “strategic”.
Wait, they wanted an NDA for pricing? Hahahaha.
That’s when I’d say: “There’s the door, don’t let it hit out on the way out”.