Objections

12Red Herrings

Great. Now we have another red herring on our hands.

—A.F. Stewart, Fairy Tale Fusion

This fall, a sales rep cold-called me and created enough interest that I scheduled a meeting to discuss his company's software platform. During the initial discovery, he asked thoughtful questions that piqued my interest even more.

We agreed to the next step, which was a demo with my executive team. I won't lie. We were salivating. Everything we'd heard led us to believe that this software as a service (SaaS) program would help us accelerate curriculum development for our clients and take our E-Learning offering to the next level. We were eager to see the program in action.

On a Wednesday morning at 10:00 a.m., my team gathered in our conference room in front of a big wall-mounted flat-screen TV for the video call and online demo. The account executive (AE) was already on when we joined the call and had with him a specialist to take us through the software demo.

After the basic introductions and pleasantries, the AE asked if we had any questions. I chimed in with the one question we had not yet asked: “How much does this cost?” But that's not how I asked the question. It was more of a direct challenge: “Before we get started, I think it is important for you to know that we are on a very tight budget. We aren't a big company, so we can't afford to pay what you are charging those big company logos that you have on the screen [referring to the brag slide where he'd listed a “who's ...