This Is How You Sell a Ferrari

I once was working for a startup and had the opportunity to meet with a senior technology executive at a very large insurance company. By this point in the sales cycle, we had done a couple demonstrations and this executive was now asking us if we could perform certain additional functions. I don’t remember my exact answer but it was along the lines of, “this is software, we can pretty much make it do anything but what you are asking for is not currently in the product.

His reply was thank you for being direct and honest, and that we were the only finalist who didn’t keep saying “yes” to everything asked. I thought of that story when I read this article although demonstrating a Ferrari is probably way more fun than demonstrating software….