Software Sellers Can Name the Price. Few Can Defend It.
AI Summary
SaaS discounting is usually blamed on salespeople who get uncomfortable when price comes up. Objective Management Group assessment data on salespeople in software and publishing points somewhere else: 68% are strong at discussing money.¹ The weaknesses appear earlier in the sale. Only 14% have a buy cycle that supports holding firm against comparison shopping, and only 10% are strong qualifiers.¹ Combined with a need for approval, those gaps make the discount the easiest way to keep a buyer happy. This article traces where SaaS discounts begin and what separates the teams that hold their price.
Where SaaS discounting really starts
Most SaaS sales leaders have watched this deal unfold. Discovery went well. The demo landed. The champion is enthusiastic. Then procurement joins the thread, a competitor’s quote appears, and the rep comes back asking for a discount to get it signed before quarter-end.
The buyer on the other side of that conversation is better equipped than ever. Gartner’s latest buyer research found that two-thirds of B2B buyers would rather buy without a sales rep, and nearly half used AI during a recent purchase.² Software buyers can now hand the negotiation itself to a machine: Vendr says its AI negotiation agents save buyers roughly 17% on average.³
The common explanation for SaaS discounting is a rep who freezes when money comes up. For salespeople at software and publishing, Objective Management Group assessment data tells a different story. The discount starts much earlier in the sale.
The data in this article comes from OMG assessments of current salespeople in the publishing industries category (NAICS 513), which includes software publishers along with newspaper, periodical, and book publishers.¹
Money talk is a strength
Comfort Discussing Money is one of the strongest competencies in this group. The average score is 72%, and 68% of salespeople in software and publishing are strong in this competency.¹
This competency measures whether a salesperson can ask about budget, talk through investment, and respond to a price objection without becoming defensive or anxious. Salespeople who lack it tend to avoid the budget question, quote late, and drop the price at the first sign of resistance.
Most reps in this group don’t fit that profile. They can state the number and answer questions about it. That rules out the most common explanation for discounting and raises a better question. If these salespeople are comfortable discussing money, why do so many of them give it back?
The answer is in two other Sales DNA competencies.
Sales DNA competency | Average score | % strong |
Comfortable Discussing Money | 72% | 68% |
Supportive Buy Cycle | 32% | 14% |
Supportive Sales Beliefs | 79% | 14% |
Source: Objective Management group data. Current salespeople in software and publishing (NAICS 513), 2025.
Sellers buy the way their buyers buy
Supportive Buy Cycle is the weakest Sales DNA competency in this data by a wide margin. The average score is 32%, and only 14% of salespeople in software and publishing have a supportive buy cycle.¹ That leaves 86% who don’t.
A salesperson’s buy cycle describes how they make their own significant purchases. Salespeople with a non-supportive buy cycle research extensively, compare several options, look for the lowest price, and take time to think it over before committing. There’s nothing wrong with any of that as a consumer. The trouble shows up in the sales conversation, because salespeople tend to accept from buyers the same behaviors they practice themselves.
When a buyer says, “We’re evaluating two other vendors,” or “Procurement needs a few weeks,” a rep with a non-supportive buy cycle hears something reasonable. They’d do the same thing. So they don’t ask what’s driving the comparison, they don’t test whether the timeline is real, and they don’t challenge the stall. The deal drifts into a price comparison, which is the one contest a value-based seller should avoid.
This is especially costly in SaaS, where free trials, competitive bake-offs, and procurement reviews are standard parts of the buying process. A sales force that empathizes with every one of those steps has handed the buyer control of the timeline, and the price usually follows.
Need for approval turns empathy into a discount
Need for approval adds pressure at exactly the wrong moment.
Salespeople with a need for approval want to be liked by their prospects. That makes them pleasant to work with. It also makes them reluctant to ask tough questions, push back on a stall, or let a buyer sit with an uncomfortable silence. When a buyer signals frustration about price, the rep’s priority shifts to restoring goodwill, and a discount does that faster than anything else.
On its own, need for approval might only soften a few questions. Combined with a non-supportive buy cycle, it creates a rep who agrees the buyer’s process is reasonable and then wants the buyer to feel good about the deal. The discount satisfies both impulses.
Sales beliefs can reinforce the pattern. Salespeople in software and publishing average 79% on Supportive Sales Beliefs, yet only 14% are strong in the competency.¹ A high average with few strong scores suggests that most reps hold largely supportive beliefs with one or two self-limiting ones mixed in. A single belief such as “buyers mainly decide on price” is enough to make a discount feel like the logical move.
Weak qualifying pushes the price fight to the end
The tactical data shows another area where software salespeople lose the sale.
Tactical competency | Average score | % strong |
Qualifying | 48% | 10% |
Consultative Selling | 48% | 25% |
Closing | 53% | 19% |
Source: Objective Management Group, current salespeople in software and publishing, 2025.¹
Only 10% of salespeople in software and publishing are strong qualifiers, the lowest percentage of any competency in this analysis.¹ Qualifying means confirming early that there is a compelling reason to buy, a budget that fits, a clear decision process, and access to the people who will make the decision. When those questions go unasked, the rep learns about the budget gap or the competing vendor late in the cycle, after weeks of demos and stakeholder meetings. With that much invested, walking away feels impossible, and the discount becomes the price of rescuing the deal.
Consultative Selling explains why there is often little value to defend. Only 25% of salespeople in software and publishing are strong in this competency.¹ Consultative sellers ask enough questions to uncover the business problem, what it costs, and why it needs solving now. Without that work, the buyer has no clear way to weigh the price against the cost of the problem, so price becomes the main point of comparison. Gartner’s research points in the same direction: buyers with high decision confidence are twice as likely as low-confidence buyers to say they got a high-quality deal.²
Closing completes the pattern. With only 19% strong in Closing, most reps in this group lack a reliable way to ask for the business on value.¹ Under quarter-end pressure, a concession becomes the close.
Together, these three competencies determine whether the money conversation happens early, on the seller’s terms, or late, on the buyer’s.
What high-performing organizations are doing differently
Organizations that hold their price in SaaS tend to look for the source of a discount, not just its size. Approval workflows and discount caps limit how much a rep can give away. They do nothing about why the rep wanted to give it away in the first place.
The data points to an earlier lever. Qualifying and consultative selling move the money conversation to the start of the cycle, when the rep still has the option to walk away. Leaders who coach to those competencies, and who review discounted deals by asking where qualification broke down, often find the discount was decided long before the proposal went out.
Final Thoughts
For the most part, the salespeople in this data are comfortable talking about money. What most of them lack is a position from which to defend it: a buy cycle that doesn’t empathize with every stall, the qualifying discipline to surface problems early, and enough value built into the deal to make price a secondary concern.
That changes where sales leaders should look. Discounts show up on the final proposal, but the data points to the first few conversations as the place where price is won or lost. Teams that strengthen what happens there will spend far less time approving discounts at the end of the quarter.
References
- Objective Management Group. (2026). Statistics Finding Tool: Average competency scores and percentage of current salespeople strong in each competency, publishing industries including software publishers (NAICS 513), January 1, 2025 to December 31, 2025 [Unpublished data set].
- Gartner. (2026, March 9). Gartner sales survey finds 67% of B2B buyers prefer a rep-free experience [Press release]. https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2026-03-09-gartner-sales-survey-finds-67-percent-of-b2b-buyers-prefer-a-rep-free-experience.
- Vendr. (n.d.). About Vendr. Retrieved October 13, 2026, from https://www.vendr.com/about.