Rant: My entire sales demo crashed because of a squirrel in Austin

A squirrel chewed through a fiber line near our office, so my 30 minute pitch to a Fortune 500 client turned into 30 minutes of me apologizing for my frozen face on Zoom. Anyone else have a deal almost die because of wildlife?

3 comments

3 Comments

andrewt413mo ago

Calling it dramatic misses how real the risk is. A broken demo can make a client question your whole company's reliability. That's a real business problem, not just a tech hiccup.

the_joel3mo ago

Fortune 500 deal" dying over a squirrel seems a bit dramatic.

skyler_anderson651mo ago

Agree with @andrewt41 here, the squirrel thing is just a symbol. When you're pitching a Fortune 500 company, you're already fighting an uphill battle to prove you're as stable and reliable as their current vendors. One stupid distraction, even from outside, can be the excuse they need to bail. They aren't looking for reasons to say yes, they're looking for reasons to say no so they don't have to change anything. So yeah, a squirrel literally breaking your demo feels dramatic, but it's the same logic as a conference room having bad wifi or your mouse dying during a presentation. It makes you look amateur in a space where being amateur is a dealbreaker.

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