your probably leaving money on the table then
i’d find that unacceptable as a ceo
you got to do the work to do what’s best for the company, not yourself
CTO's time is worth ~$10k a day, spending a day "on calls" to save $2.50 is unacceptable.
But part of doing what's right is considering opportunity cost.
If buying something would be a win for an org takes up too much organizational bandwidth because of how hard it is to procure, then it's not worth fiddling about trying to buy it.
The org gains a whole bunch of time he's not wasting on useless calls.
No, they're protecting money on their company's table from being taken by random sellers. "Let's get on a call" game seldom leads to better deals for the buyer.