business

The price of doing business…

An acquaintance of mine has become the southern African partner for nice piece of European technology in the off-grid energy space. He asked me whether I would be willing to spread the word to potential customers, and I responded: "Sure. What's the entry-level price per unit?"

So here we are, on a Saturday afternoon, having a conference call with his German partner who proceeds to tell me about how brilliant his product is and its life expectancy is 20 years or more versus 5 years for the competition before I finally cut him short.

Name your price

Driving home this evening, I came across a sight which is not unfamiliar to my fellow South Africans: cars parked on the side of the road with "for sale" signs and numbers to call. 

Neither of them had a price tag.

My fellow South Africans, help me understand, why do we do this?