Groveling Salesmen

Recently, I was put in charge of a small project at work. It involves getting custom binders to hold some training DVDs that we will be sending out to all of my company's retail locations. I came up with some artwork for it, and made a mock up for the Executive committee to look at. They decided what color they wanted, thickness and size of the binder etc. I then got price quotes from 4 different companies for this project.

Company A, was the cheapest. Very cut and dry to deal with.

Company B was very friendly, and even sent me some samples, but they were a nickel more per piece.

Company C gave me an odd feeling dealing with them. Their sales person didn't have his own email address. I had to send stuff to info@companyc.com, instead of salesguy@companyc.com. Weird. Plus they were 75 cents higher a piece.

Company D has a smooth, here's-my-card, 2 cell phone type of salesperson. He wanted to not only make the binders for us, but duplicate the DVDs, get the DVD sheets for the binders, and then Drop ship the whole thing to each of our locations. Impressive? Yes, but I just wanted a binder quote. Do good in this department, and we will talk about the rest. They came in $1.13 higher than Company A.

Well, I really liked Company B, and their price wasn't too far from Company A's price. I sent a quick e-mail, asking Company B to match Company A's price. They were more than happy to, and even beat them by a penny. Not much in the grand scheme of things, but they could have just matched it and been good.

I send out an e-mail to Company A, C, and D. Letting them know that we went with B. Not 2 minutes, LITERALLY, 2 MINUTES, after I sent that. Salesguy from D is calling me.

"Hey! If ya don't mind me askin', why did we lose this project?"
"Another company beat your price quote."
"Really? By how much if you don't mind me asking."
"By more than a dollar a piece."
"Well, we will match any written bid from another company."
"Sorry, the decision has been made."
*click*

I just hate that. DO YOU OWN HOMEWORK! Don't wait for me to call you and then say, "um sure... We can do it for that too." Then, why did you quote me so high??? Give me your lowest price to start with, and maybe I wouldn't have thrown your bid away the minute I got it, because you were almost 50% higher than the others. Just another reason why I couldn't make it in Sales.