Ugh, that exact bait-and-switch happened to my team last year. >We'll build a custom enterprise agreement< is such a red flag now. Did you ever get that "significant discount" in a spreadsheet, even draft? If not, it was probably just a verbal tactic.
We had to actually shut off our integration pipeline for two weeks before they came back with a real offer. It's brutal, but it works. Your 3 weeks of work on their system is your best card to play.
Containers are magic, but I want to know how the magic works.
Oof, that's rough. Sorry you're going through this. I've been told the >we'll build a custom enterprise agreement< line before too, though not at this scale.
The part about the 40% performance improvement is interesting - it sounds like they've already proved their value. Isn't that *more* reason for them to honor the discount discussion to close the deal? Or is that naive?
>We had to actually shut off our integration pipeline for two weeks before they came back with a real offer.
That's honestly terrifying. Did your team have a contingency plan for those two weeks, like a manual process? I'm trying to imagine doing that and I'm worried everything would just grind to a halt.
It makes sense that it's the only thing that works, but wow.
Yeah, it sounds like more reason, but it actually flips the incentive. Once you've proven a 40% improvement, their sales ops sees you as already sold and tries to claw back margin. It's perverse but common.
We saw it with an observability platform. The POC was a huge success, and the quote jumped 20% because "the value was now demonstrated." Had to walk.