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No Calls

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1603 points ezekg | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.202s | source
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freedomben ◴[] No.42728008[source]
I'm a CTO who makes purchasing decisions. There are numerous products I likely would have purchased, but I either find a substitute or just go without because I won't play the stupid "let's get on a call" game.

If your website doesn't give me enough information to:

1. Know enough about your product to know that it will (generally speaking) meet my needs/requirements.

2. Know that the pricing is within the ballpark of reasonable given what your product does.

Then I will move on (unless I'm really desparate, which I assure you is rarely the case). I've rolled-my-own solution more than once as well when there were no other good competitors.

That's not to say that calls never work or don't have a place, because they definitely do. The key to using the call successfully (with me at least) is to use the call to get into true details about my needs, after I know that you're at least in the ballpark. Additionally, the call should be done efficiently. We don't need a 15 minute introduction and overview about you. We don't need a bunch of small talk about weather or sports. 2 minutes of that is ok, or when waiting for additional people to join the call, but beyond that I have things to do.

I know what my needs are. I understand you need some context on my company and needs in order to push useful information forward, and I also understand that many potential customers will not take the lead in asking questions and providing that context, but the sooner you take the temperature and adjust, the better. Also, you can get pretty far as a salesperson if you just spend 5 minutes looking at our website before the call! Then you don't have to ask basic questions about what we do. If you're willing to invest in the time to get on a call, then it's worth a few minutes of time before-hand to look at our website.

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1. TZubiri ◴[] No.42786202[source]
Not being upfront about prices is a major red flag, I associate it with someone selling pyramid schemes, or snake oil.

If I ask price and you insist on showing me a presentation to get me hooked and invested, I'm out. At that point you are bound to be talking to a salesman whose job it is to sell and you are experiencing a process that was designed and perfected to manipulate you into buying.

I don't want to buy from salesmen usually, directly from the manufacturer or provider is better, cut the middleman out. OTOH I have to be open to some imperfections, if we have to wait for someone or be inexperienced with sales process (introduction too long), that's fine.

On some industries it's possible for someone to do the work without saying price even. An electrician might be happy to do the work without talking about price, and then you have almost no recourse when it's a shitload.