Competitor pricing research: finding B2B prices when list prices are hidden

When B2B competitors hide their prices behind "contact sales," you can still build a reliable picture of what buyers pay. Collect what competitors publish now and in the past, check public procurement records, and talk to buyers who received quotes. Former employees can explain how pricing works in the market in general terms, but not their old employer's confidential terms. Never get pricing by talking to competitors themselves or by posing as a buyer.

A worked example: security software for mid-size companies

Suppose you are launching security awareness training software for companies with 200 to 2,000 employees. Your three main competitors each show a "request a quote" button and no prices. You need to know roughly what buyers pay per employee per year, how discounts work, and what gets bundled, before you set your own price. This example is hypothetical and used throughout the page.

Start with what competitors publish

Even when a vendor hides its top-tier price, it often publishes more than you expect:

• Pricing pages, including the lower tiers. Many B2B products publish entry prices and hide only the enterprise tier. Slack's pricing page, for example, lists Pro and Business+ prices but says "contact sales for pricing" for Enterprise+. The published tiers tell you the pricing unit (per user, per employee, per location) and roughly where the hidden tier begins.
• Old versions of the page. The Wayback Machine keeps archived copies of many websites. You can list every capture of a URL and open old versions, which shows when a competitor removed its prices, changed tiers or raised them. Some pages are missing because they were blocked or never crawled.
• Help docs, contracts and order forms. Billing help articles often explain how seats are counted, minimum terms and overage charges even when the price is not listed.
• Public company filings. For a listed competitor, the annual report can describe how it sells and to whom. Competitor analysis covers reading a 10-K.

Check public procurement records

Government purchases are often public. GSA eLibrary is the US federal government's source for contract award information on GSA Schedules and technology contracts. If a competitor sells to federal agencies through a schedule, you can look up its contract there. GSA has also described a proposed upgrade that would make services price lists downloadable in GSA Advantage, eLibrary and eBuy.

Treat government prices as a reference point, not what a commercial buyer pays. Contract terms, volumes and discounting can differ a lot. State and local governments often publish contract awards too, and they vary by jurisdiction.

Talk to buyers who received quotes

The most useful evidence comes from people who went through a competitor's sales process: procurement managers, IT leads and finance staff who received a proposal, negotiated it and signed or walked away.

Buyers can often talk about their own quotes, but some contracts include confidentiality clauses. Ask them to share only what they are comfortable sharing, and accept ranges. In the security training example, you might ask:

• "When you evaluated vendors, what was the pricing unit: per employee, per admin, or a flat fee?"
• "Roughly where did the first quote land per employee per year, and where did you end up?"
• "What got you the discount: a longer contract, more employees, a competing quote, the end of a quarter?"
• "What was bundled in, and what cost extra?"
• "How did the price compare with what you had budgeted?"

Interview several buyers across company sizes. One quote shows one negotiation. Five or six start to show a pattern, such as a list price that nobody pays or a steep discount for multi-year terms. How to interview customers who chose another product covers these conversations, and your own lost deals are a good place to start.

Talk to former employees, within limits

Former sales, sales operations and customer success staff understand how pricing works in their market: how buyers compare vendors, which terms are normally negotiable, and why deals stall on price. They also owe their former employer a duty of confidentiality.

Say at the start of the call that you do not want confidential information, and mean it:

If something confidential comes up anyway, do not use it. What to do when an expert cannot share confidential information covers how to handle that moment.

What not to do

• Do not discuss prices with competitors. The FTC's guide to price fixing says antitrust scrutiny may occur when competitors discuss present or future prices, pricing policies, discounts, bids and costs. The FTC also says that matching a competitor's publicly advertised prices is fine as long as the decision is your own. Research public prices and buyers' experience; do not trade pricing with a rival, including informally at an industry event.
• Do not pose as a buyer. Requesting a quote under a false identity is deceptive, and the SCIP code of ethics for competitive intelligence calls for disclosing your identity and organization before all interviews, and notes that misrepresentation may be illegal depending on the jurisdiction.
• Do not ask anyone to break a confidentiality agreement. That applies to former employees and to buyers whose contracts forbid sharing terms.

This section is general information, not legal advice. If you are unsure whether a source or question is appropriate, ask a lawyer.

Turn the evidence into a price range

Put each data point in one table: source type, date, company size, pricing unit, list or first-quote price, final price if known, and what was included. Mark how confident you are in each. Then look for the range buyers of your target size actually paid, and where your product should sit in it.

In the example, you might find that the published entry tiers, a government contract record and six buyer interviews all point to a similar per-employee range for 500-person companies, with discounts for three-year terms. That is enough to set a first price and test it with real quotes. Value-based pricing helps you decide whether to price above or below that range.

Your next step

Pull the current and archived pricing pages for your three closest competitors, and list what each one publishes. Then identify five buyers who evaluated at least one of them in the last year.

When those buyers are outside your network, Instant Expert can find people who match a description you write, such as "IT managers at mid-size companies who bought security awareness training in the last year." You review who it finds, it sends your invitations, and you pay only for calls that get booked. Put your "no confidential information" line in the invitation, not only on the call. The directory pages for procurement professionals in enterprise SaaS and IT professionals in cybersecurity are one place to start.