One Internet, Please!

The president and owner of a trucking company is an old guy in his seventies. He grew the company enough that they finally needed a $100,000 server upgrade.

After the presentation that another salesperson and I had, we answered several questions; finally, the owner asked:

Owner: “Now, this comes with the Internet?”

The whole room went quiet, and he noticed everyone’s awkward silence, so he explained himself:

Owner: “I’m just saying for $100,000 it should come with the Internet, right?”

Me: “Well, they’re Internet ready.”

Owner: “But they come with the Internet?”

We tried our best to say that the servers were Internet-ready and what they were for, but he was getting increasingly annoyed and kept asking:

Owner: “Okay, so it comes with the Internet?!”

Finally, one of his IT people stepped up and said:

IT Person: “Don’t worry, sir, we will get all this ironed out.”

As I leave the boardroom, the owner gives me a death grip handshake and says:

Owner: “I better have the Internet with this”.

I gave him a non-answer, answer, and then we left. Props to the guy; he built up a company from nothing in a pre-technological age, but it was clear he had no idea what was discussed during that two-hour presentation.

When I got back to my desk, the IT guy that the owner spoke to had already emailed me, asking me to just say “yes” if the owner asked me about the Internet again.