How not to make a sale

My business partner and I had a conference call from someone who had promised to show us some things that would improve our business. The presentation was light on details, heavy on sales pitch. We were okay with that.

But then he went into full "used-car salesman" mode. When we wouldn't commit to a sale right away he decided to do us a "favor" and go talk to his supervisor. Sure enough, he came back with a wonderful new offer about a third lower than the first one--if we acted right away. We were not about to act right away. We needed time to think about it.

But time was one thing he absolutely did not want to give us. Every time we would tell him we wanted to think about it he would keep countering with various reasons why we didn't need to. Some lovely gems:

- If we didn't like charging the amount to our credit cards he could always set us up a business account so it would be charged to the business. This, frankly, was an insult to our intelligence. Debt is debt, whether it is owed by us or by the company we own. If we aren't sure we can afford it on our personal credit cards we are not going to be any more able to afford it if we charge it to the business. It's real money, regardless of where we charge it.

- When we asked for a couple of days to think it over he initially agreed, but then countered by asking what could possibly change in two days? He added that all that was likely to happen in two days was that we'd talk ourselves out of it. I can't argue with that. He hadn't really made that strong of a case for his company's services. If he had, we'd still feel good about it after a couple of days.

The bottom line was that no matter what we said he wanted us to decided right then and there. People like that annoy me. They obviously do not have faith in their product. They do NOT want you to think about it, which is always a red flag to me that you should do plenty of thinking.

My partner was much nicer than I was. I gave up about 2/3rds of the way into the conversation and walked away. Had it been my phone I would have hung up on the guy. I don't have time for jerks like that. I've got plenty of fly-by-night shysters calling me now that I have a registered business. I don't have that much time to waste on them. I hope to never hear from that one again.