A beautiful reply from a salesman

We are big fans of Joel Spolsky and one of his companies, Fog Creek. It is a software company specializing in project management tools. One of its main products is FogBugz.

Couple of years back we evaluated FogBugz for project management and bug tracking. We were impressed with the product and customer service but did not buy the paid version. Cost was the main factor.

Few days back, my colleague Kuntal evaluated FogBugz once again and asked for a discounted one time price as monthly subscription cost was coming out to be USD 900/month.

Here is what he wrote:

Hello Will,

We are now evaluating the Software at DIGICORP that can help us with Project Management, Bug Tracking and Documentation. FogBugz has been our choice for a long time. Unfortunately we have not been able to start using a paid version. I wanted to know what is the best case deal for us from your end.

Following is our requirements.

We would like to use the whole software along with Wiki and Time Tracking.

We would like to score 12 on 12 on Joel Test so we want the best tools money can buy so FogBugz is the choice;

We are today total 100 persons in the company, we will grow up to 120 persons with in next 6 months.

The monthly pricing for on demand version comes around 900 USD which is too high for our budget.

What is the best we can get in one time cost?

We are big fan of Joel, we have also made an Android App for Joel on Android.

Can you please revert to us with some really discounted price for our organisation?

Thanks,
Kuntal

The very next day, we get this reply from Fog Creek.

Hello!

Thanks for reaching out to us! I’m sorry that our pricing may not work out for you but it is our policy to offer our published prices to whoever wants to buy our software, without any arbitrary or promotional discounts.

We find this helps keep us in the business of making software rather than deciding who gets what price. It also keeps you from wondering if you got the best deal on our software. If you pay the public price, you know you got the best deal we offer.

By doing away with negotiations, we actually enable our sales and support team to spend a LOT more time with each customer understanding their needs and helping them succeed with our software.

We’re so certain that you’ll love our software and will find it to be an excellent value that we are proud to offer the industry’s best unconditional, no-questions-asked money-back guarantee for a full 90 days.

If you are still interested in pursuing this, I’d be happy to help you out.

Thank you!

All the best,
Will Everett

Isn’t it beautiful? We simply loved the reply.

I am sure, a lot of companies don’t discount the price for their customers (For e.g. Basecamp which we use at Digicorp) but never so far we received a polite “NO” like this.

Above all they are not faking it. They really mean it when they say,

By doing away with negotiations, we actually enable our sales and support team to spend a LOT more time with each customer understanding their needs and helping them succeed with our software.

We learn so much by simply following the companies we admire and people we respect.

Thank you Fog Creek and Joel Spolsky for creating this wonderful company.

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