[grepLeigh]

Maybe I'm the outlier here, but 15 minutes to chat with a human about my use case and pricing is way more efficient than donking around in docs/trial product.

The only product I really want to punch in credit card info and GO is commodity software (e.g. AWS EC2 or a domain registration service.

I think wires sometimes get crossed in pricing/sales models, where an enterprise product gets priced like commodity software ... but that's usually a sign the company is immature. There shouldn't be a sales team for software that costs 2-3 figures. Software costing 5-6+ figures absolutely requires people in the sales/onboarding process, because a big part of what I'm paying for is support.

[scarab92]

Maybe I’m not asking the right questions, but I consistently find that I get “Yes” answers in these calls, that turn out to actually be “No” in practice.

I think the problem is that we rarely want to know “can you meet this use case”, but rather “how well can you meet this use case”, and that’s hard to assess without putting your hands on the software.

[bruce511]

Which is to say that the quality of the sales person matters.

If your sales department is staffed by people who got hired on Monday, and are on the phone by Friday, then frankly they're not worth much.

I've seen the opposite though where sales folk know more about the software than support folk. They're equipped to help you with choices, but also understand limits and high-cost areas. Yes you absolutely can get Custom Reports, but we absolutely charge for that. And the data you're looking for is on this built-in report....

Dealing with a good salesperson, who knows their stuff, and understands that truth and trust are important, is an amazing thing.

[johnnyanmac]

It's definitely a generational thing. I've been spammed so utterly often that I simply do not answer my phone for a non-contact (or the inevitable interview phone call. But less often with video calls these days). If it's important enough to contact me, it's important enough to leave a voice mail.

I don't really do these sale pitches often, but it's a similar mentality for a different reason. I simply want anything communicated in writing in case they try to say yes to put a foot in the door, but the small details say no.

[elevatedastalt]

I presume you are an emergency contact for some people? Maybe a spouse, or a kid? Or even a friend? What's your contingency for when they are lying bleeding somewhere and someone can't reach you since they are not on your contact list?

[ghaff]

I don't really disagree. The problem is outreach when you're clearly mostly researching something whether to do with computers or something else. One travel company is particular was pretty aggressively reaching out because I downloaded a couple brochures.