Usually it's because too much is hidden.
Not a SAS, but I once tapped an ad for redoing my shower. No prices, no way to know even approximately what it should cost.
I wanted more information, but I didn't want a phone call. I filled out the form asking for some high-level information on pricing, and that I didn't want a phone call.
Needless to say, the rep never responded to my inquiry.
But, put yourself in my situation: I don't want calls at random times of the day that are convenient to a salesman. I want to talk on the phone at a time that's convenient to ME, and only if I know the (ballpark) range of what you're selling costs. If a new shower costs $5k, and I won't be in a position to spend that for 18 months, I want to know that I should pick up the phone then, not now.
But low lead quality persists no matter what you do. It's just reality that lots and lots of people will request demos with zero buying intent. Sometimes people are just bored? Sometimes people are scamming? Sometimes people confuse you with a company that has a similar name (e.g. CSC [1] vs. CSC [2]). You'd be shocked how much traffic a SaaS company can get after some random government agency halfway across the world with a vaguely similar name appears in the local news.
It's actually a remarkable amount of work to take a list of N "high-intent" inbound leads, filter out the garbage, and get your ICPs on the phone.
[1] https://www.cscglobal.com/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Sciences_Corporation
No. It's. Not.
You get crap inbound because the process is frictionless.
> I wanted more information, but I didn't want a phone call. I filled out the form asking for some high-level information on pricing, and that I didn't want a phone call.
Needless to say, the rep never responded to my inquiry.
But, put yourself in my situation: I don't want calls at random times of the day that are convenient to a salesman. I want to talk on the phone at a time that's convenient to ME, and only if I know the (ballpark) range of what you're selling costs. If a new shower costs $5k, and I won't be in a position to spend that for 18 months, I want to know that I should pick up the phone then, not now.
I feel you. I really do. I've been in this position before. But until you operate a business at scale and see what absolute utter crap comes through the door, only then will you really understand what's behind the scenes.
Maybe if transparent pricing were posted, some people would choose not to submit, but it won’t stop all the crap from coming in.
You're also right that some fraction wouldn't be contacting asking for information if the information was more readily available.
They're not shitting on customers and abdicating responsibility for making a better website. They're pointing out something important and unintuitive.
I don't know how to bridge a conversational gap like this because it really is something to experience. Another form of it is job applications. At least 1/3 is just random people.
To try to show some humility beyond "bro u ever done this???":
- My mentally disabled sister, tested at 4th grade level at her peak, and would often spend days applying for random jobs that sounded cool. I'm not talking like "oh Dairy Queen cashier.", I mean, director/CXO etc.
- At my first company, we'd get a contact every 3-6 months, with demo-like questions from the same person. We were small enough that we couldn't chase every lead, made enough money we didn't have to, and I didn't like encouraging active salesmanship. After a couple years, someone followed up asking what his business was like. It was an 11 year old using a point of sale app to get drink orders from his friends from the family pool.
They organised an in-person demo at our office after they filled in the online forms for their "multi-million dollar drinks distribution company", right in our target zone of customer type and size. So we had a few salespeople present to give a swish demo and hopefully win them over.
Turned out to be a 15 year old doing door to door sales of his home made ginger beer. He told us our (half the price of the nearest competitor) product was too expensive for what it was and that we would never succeed in business like he would.
Kudos to our sales guys though: After the initial shock and eye rolling, they treated them like the large business they claimed to be and just used the time to practice their demo/sales techniques.
You either:
1. Pay sales people to construct custom slices of services with custom prices and force them and your customers to hash it out via communication.
or
2. Commit to choose-your-own-adventure offerings where customers just check boxes and see pricing change in real time.
Option 1 retains negotiation advantage and makes more money for the company even though they pay sales people.
Option 2 removes sales people and gives up negotiation advantage, which customers would love.
Saying that, in the option 1 scenario, "crap" comes through the door because the process is frictionless is like saying a person died of suffocation instead of that they were strangled in a domestic dispute: there's a lot more going on.
You're right that some fraction of people reaching out for into wouldn't be reaching out for info if the info was readily available.
This is very true, to the point its reflexively and obviously true.
It does not falsify the lived experience you'll have at a business with contact forms, be it for job applications, or product inquiries.
> Saying "crap" comes through the door because the process is frictionless is like saying a person died of suffocation instead of that they were strangled in a domestic dispute
This has to win some sort of prize for analogies.
Here's mine:
An open contact form on the internet is like leaving your front door wide open in a busy city. Sure, some people might wander in because they couldn't find your house number, but you'll also get lost tourists asking for directions, door-to-door salespeople hawking their wares, and the occasional raccoon looking for a snack. No amount of information on your facade will prevent the guy who thinks your living room is a public restroom from stumbling in.
I need less than a glance at the text on my contact form when I’ve seen the email address.
I'm sure he'd like the enterprise snack plan.
Agreed. I guess the point is that that is obvious to anyone who has ever run a website, and therefore facile.
It neatly skips over or ignores the fact that you don't have to have any crap come through the door at all: just put multiple signup buttons that require payment.
Coming at this another way: salespeople should be smiling and celebrating when crap comes through the door because without negotiated "enterprise" plans, the companies would probably make less money and have less need for salespeople.
Instead of crap, maybe it's salesperson gold?
Internet aside, it seems like those filter roles are much less likely to exist these days. Either you get someone who has no idea what's worth filtering, or you have to try to communicate with the expert directly and burn their time figuring out who's worth following up with.
Incredibly important for filling in billing paperwork, because practicing medicine is an increasingly small fraction of a doctor's time. This doesn't necessarily counter your point, but it's interesting how job allocation makes little sense and most expensively trained people are used to do the most menial jobs, because it's somehow cheaper than keeping extra headcount of lower-paid clerical workers.
Same is the case in software industry. A lot software engineer's work involves dealing with bullshit that should be, and used to be, handled by a dedicated staff.
lol, that's exactly what the grandparent author explained.
It's not my fault I'm a "low quality lead" because you didn't put any pricing on your SaaS page and your price point is way outside what I'm willing to pay.
