Selling the Price Increase

8Wait, I Don't Even Know You!

As the CEO of a small company, I deal with a number of software vendors. Some of these software platforms are mission critical to the success of our business. Without them, we cannot serve our customers. For this reason, I like to maintain good relationships with my account managers to ensure that we are on top of new features and updates and that there are no interruptions in service.

For several years, I'd had a great relationship with Alexander, the account manager for our most important technology platform. This software is complex and the help desk often struggles to assist us because they don't always understand it, either. But no matter, Alexander was always responsive and would jump in at a moment's notice to help us. He did a great job and we rewarded him by purchasing plugins and additional features.

Then one day in early March, we lost Alexander as our account manager. He apparently had done such a good job that he received a promotion. Good for Alexander, bad for us.

We were told that our new account manager would be Mackenzie, and she would be contacting us soon to make an introduction. We waited patiently but heard nothing from her all spring. Months went by. Crickets.

Then in late summer we had an issue with the platform and I tried to contact her for help. But she didn't respond to me. Instead, she forwarded my email to support. She never followed up to see if the issue was resolved.

I'll admit that at this point, I was getting ...