Interesting how you described the big enterprisey sales experience there.

I have been leading a large-impact project internally where we need a solution that has potential vendors at different places in this spectrum.

Inevitably, the largest and most "enterprisey" companies had what I would consider by far and away the worst sales experiences. Very clearly sales people who are used to dealing with business customers who probably won't have anything to do with the actual product in the day-to-day.

I was given vague salesy answers that clearly intended to skirt around the issues I presented, and they had no issue trying to exert pressure come monthly/quarterly sales quotas. Exploding offers for a large purchase of this nature are simply not appropriate (and certainly not appreciated).

Perhaps my biggest gripe has been with the lack of transparent pricing for any sort of B2B SaaS where you are on the highest tiers, and thus need "custom pricing." I understand some things are variable and need to be custom scoped, but in this case that was only true for some add-on services vs. the core product with volume-based pricing. As a prospective customer, I absolutely loathe these sorts of pricing negotiations. The time wasted on the back-and-forth is also a giant PITA and doesn't win the companies any points. It is always very obvious that their initial price is a high-ball offer, and they expect you to negotiate, which means that they in part are structured/incentivized to make some margin/sales commission by not giving the customer the fairest price they could. This in and of itself starts the relationship off on the wrong foot.

In general, I wish there was a way to choose the type of sales experience I want before beginning the process. If I'm a key decision maker and care more about the actual functionality, UI, integration, etc., I want someone knowledgeable of the technical aspects of the product. Someone who will be upfront on the product's shortcomings (to avoid surprises that result in a pissed-off customer down the road and make the buyer look like an idiot). I also want someone who can communicate with zero sales fluff, and give me fair and transparent pricing. Is that really too much to ask? Apparently so when it comes to enterprise B2B sales. Over the years I've often had the distinct impression that many of the salespeople I've dealt with exist simply to funnel communication between a sales engineer. I get their value if they are out hunting and bringing in their own prospects, but these have all been for inbound leads where I've contacted them.

Also, do all those fluffy buzzword-filled sell sheets and cheesy marketing videos devoid of any meaningful, tangible content actually add value for anyone? I had one sales guy send over an (often unrelated) white paper or marketing video link with every. single. email. I ultimately had to tell him to stop because it wasn't adding any value and was doing more harm than good.

Guess this turned into more of a rant...but if anyone has good solutions for dealing with the above I'm all ears. I've negotiated these kinds of contracts for years, know how the game is played, and play it reasonably well (IMHO). Doesn't make it any less frustrating.