The Opportunity Cost of Not Answering the Question

Just the Number: A Lesson in Listening

A few weeks ago, I was interviewed by a journalist from a specialist financial publication based in the UK. The conversation was thoughtful and engaging, exactly the sort of professional exchange that reminds you why good journalism still matters. To view the final article, I signed up for a short trial subscription.

That is how I discovered the title: through genuine dialogue, not through marketing. The content was excellent and directly relevant to my field. I was, by any reasonable measure, an interested and willing prospect.

Then I tried to subscribe.

That is where the experience turned from pre-transactional to downright peculiar.

The website offered no visible pricing, only an invitation to contact sales. Fair enough. I assumed this would be simple.

The first outreach came from a salesperson based in New York. He called me while I was biking home through a Copenhagen snowstorm. Not an ideal moment for a lengthy conversation. I asked for one very straightforward thing: please send me the price by email.

Just the number; or, as Jack Webb said, “Just the facts.”

The email arrived promptly. It was polite and enthusiastic, filled with standard sales language about benefits and opportunity costs. What it did not contain was the price.

I wrote back and asked again. Silence.

A week later I tried another channel. Silence again.

Yet the automated reminders continued to arrive with impressive regularity, each one encouraging me to subscribe and inviting me to complete surveys about my experience.

At no point did anyone answer the only question I had actually asked.

This is where the episode becomes instructive.

There is a subtle but important disconnect when a salesperson in New York attempts to sell to a potential client in Northern Europe without adjusting to the context. Scandinavian business culture tends to value clarity and directness. When someone asks for a price, they expect a price, not a presentation.

Instead, I received a steady stream of boilerplate dross lifted from a standard playbook designed for a different commercial environment.

Sales, at its heart, is meant to be a conversation. A negotiation between two parties trying to reach common ground. When one side insists on speaking from a script rather than engaging with the actual person on the other end, the relationship never truly begins.

Chris Voss, the former FBI negotiator and author of Never Split the Difference, teaches that successful negotiation starts with listening. Real listening. The kind that acknowledges what the other person is asking.

In this case the request could not have been simpler. What does it cost?

The inability or unwillingness to respond to that basic question turned a willing buyer into a mildly amused/annoyed observer of process dysfunction.

Many organizations today confuse activity with engagement. They rely on CRM prompts, automated emails, and post-interaction surveys to substitute for genuine dialogue. But a survey does not replace a conversation. Automation does not create trust. Templates do not listen.

For younger sales professionals, there is a simple lesson here.

When a potential client asks a direct question, answer it directly. Even if the response is not known, answering I do not know is acceptable, although for a media subscription that should be fairly straightforward. It is also acceptable to say no, which Voss has also spoken about.

Honesty beats evasion every time.

As someone who has led teams with varying degrees of commercial success over the past few decades, I recognize the mechanics behind the behavior. Large firms standardize their sales approaches, and smaller houses follow suit with attempts to emulate the big guys.

Efficiency becomes the objective. Yet efficiency without attentiveness is simply bureaucracy with better software.

The irony is that the product itself was genuinely valuable. I wanted to buy it. The journalism appealed to my interests and experience. The path from curiosity to subscription should have been effortless.

Instead, it became an exercise in one-sided communication.

Sales is not a monologue delivered from a distant office. It is a dialogue that respects geography, context, and the person on the other side of the table. If you ignore the human element, even the best product can fail to find a buyer.

My own small adventure ended predictably:

• No subscription.

• No relationship.

• No transaction.

A perfectly good opportunity lost because nobody paused to listen.

That is the real opportunity cost.

No automated survey, post hoc or otherwise, can repair that.