Comment by modoc

It is unfortunately a necessary evil of most enterprise sales situations. My company started out by providing clear, public, easy to understand pricing on our website. We quickly discovered that many large companies expect to get large discounts off of "list" price, and even if your pricing is on par with, or less than your competitors, you end up talking to people who say things like "I won't sign anything if I don't get at least 20% off list price". It's a weird weird world. Companies like Oracle who routinely discount 80+% off of "list" set these expectations in the market.