Small lessons

Posted by Dave in General Sep 29th, 2009 | Comments

I work for a small web shop and enjoy a very casual atmosphere. This is great most of the time, but recently it caught up with me. We were all sitting around the conference table eating pizza on the company’s dime and watching the classic Batman film over lunch. I was sitting there scarfing down pizza next to my coworkers and my boss when our sales guy poked his head in and asked me how much we’d charge for hosting a simple e-commerce site.

We’re not exactly what I’d call a premium services sort of company, so I quoted him a price of $25/month. But I quickly added that at that price point it really was a bargain and should probably be more if the client is likely going to be a pain in the rear or otherwise using up our support resources. You know… breaking their own site after demanding FTP access or calling us because they forgot their password or they need new email accounts setup or any variety of other tech support/ customer service related calls.

I’m going on in my whiney client voice when I see that my boss is looking at me weird and the sales guy is bringing his finger up to say “shhh”. I realize that there was a reason he wasn’t having pizza with the rest of us. Evidently he was busy selling something to a client in his office, the door wide open just 10 ft from where I sat. My boss laughed it off, so it wasn’t a huge deal but I certainly didn’t make the sale any easier.

While I never found out for sure if the client had heard me, it was likely that she had. It never hurts to watch what you say, at least a little, especially in a small office, you never know what might happen, even if I did dodge the bullet this time.