What is disconcerting is that the consultancy felt that your product was suitable for the prospective client. The prospective client, being uneducated began asking the standard “I have no idea what your product does, so tell me about your business” questions. The prospective client put you on the defensive and that’s where you stayed. Here are some responses you might have given, instead of telling the client what he/ she didn’t want to hear (and I don’t think that it’s any less truthful than how you responded):

Do you offer onsite training sessions?
In an effort to keep our service pricing down, we do not generally supply on-site training. Instead, we provide a very intuitive, user-friendly product that is unlikely to require any special training. We do offer on-line training materials, however. For larger customers, we do make exceptions. Depending upon the size of your business, we could schedule on-site training, provided that you are willing to commit to x,y,z (surely for $10,000-$20.000 someone familiar enough with your service would be willing to provide an on-site training session).

What are some of your larger customers? Would I have heard of any of them?
A better question would be whether we service any customers similar to yourself. What is your industry, how many customers would you need to invoice, and how many employees do you have? Many of our clients find that the enterprise-class one-size-fits-all approach that you allude to are unwieldy and productivity sapping. Why would you want a solution that requires 5-10 full-time employees to run when you only have 1 employee that will be using it?

How can I be sure you will be around in the future?
How can you be sure any company will be around in the future. This is the 21st century, where mergers are common, and size does not equate with security. We are a privately-held company and thus somewhat insulated from mergers and buyouts that leave customers out in the cold. We have been profitable for the last x years and have a rapidly growing customer base, currently numbering 60,000.

I am not sure that sales calls are dead. I think that the traditional “sales person” is being redefined in the IT world, as that “sales person” is often likely to be the CEO, a developer, or even a client that is making a commission on the sale. What took place was most definitely a sales call. You were the salesman (with perhaps some help from the consultancy) and the call didn’t go well. As businesses without vast (or possibly any) sales departments, it is our responsibility as company representatives to improve our selling ability even if that is outside the traditional job scope. If a properly educated customer decides that your service doesn’t suit their needs, that’s fine. I blame myself, however, when a poorly educated customer makes that same decision since I failed to educate the customer.

You might consider not answering his questions. Instead, ask him why he is asking these questions and why it is important to him or his company.

Although your ASP service might solve his problems, he will probably not be able to convince superiors to use a service that isn’t used by company’s like his.

Of course, if you don’t want these big companies to use it, than that’s fine. But, your sales approach just disqualified you. Instead, you should be disqualifying your prospects.