I would have punched your associate.

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My wife is between EMRs at the moment. The one she was using recently "upgraded" to a "vastly-improved" feature set which came with a vastly-expanded cost; she went from $20 a month to $90 a month for a bunch of features she doesn't need and can't use. This has been pretty common for people in her industry; the company has held three webinars so far that were supposed to be about all the nifty new things the EMR does but have each time devolved into apologias and chaos. Meanwhile, there's a small firm that rolled their own for their own use that the grapevine has caught ahold of and this three-man shop is now having to ramp up to deal with pretty much every former customer of the EMR signing on (at twice the price they were paying). Meanwhile there's blood in the water so everyone with an EMR even vaguely appropriate to my wife's practice is banging down the door trying to get her to demo this and download that. So I've seen this sort of conversation a lot.

Your associate's approach was asinine, condescending, unresponsive, inflammatory and rude.

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- "Just how much does it cost? Remember, I was a customer until I judged your value to not match your price."

- "Fuck your question, let's change the subject to something else. Never mind that you have a ballpark idea of what it costs, I have a to-the-dime estimate of what you were paying, and when asked a direct question I feel the need to prevaricate."

- "Yes, I would agree that millenials are a pain in the ass. Your point? How much does it fucking cost?"

- "I know your employees and their needs better than you, wouldn't you agree? Fuck you, it costs what it costs."

- "I'm going to politely decline to rise to the bait of your condescension if you would just please give me a price, as if I were an adult."

- "But you're not an adult, you're a child! You see, I arranged this meeting and looked over your old account without making the first fucking effort to understand your business ahead of time and I would only do that to someone I consider feeble or naive! So I'll deflect the question again by asking you your pain point!"

- "Fuck you. No numbers for me, no numbers for you."

- "Maybe I should try fellating your ego."

- "Yes, I have an ego."

- "Good ego. Nice ego. Sucky sucky ego. Let's make an appointment to waste more of your time; I promise there will be more ego stroking and ball-cradling."

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Your associate is assuming their clients lack the sophistication to understand a fee schedule. They're passing up on the opportunity to let the customer contemplate the value-add. And they're neglecting the fact that their customers probably have a Yahoo group where they can post "Hey, how much does TNGSoft cost?" Now they control that conversation, not you. They're getting pricing from (at best) friends or (at worst) random strangers on the Internet and when next you meet with them, the discussion is going to be even more adversarial.

Sure, pricing is proprietary but I'll bet you guys have a range you can work within. And yeah - the Internet can't tell me what I'll pay for a Honda Fit but it'll bloody well get me close, and then I can evaluate it based on similar offers from similar vendors.

Your guy? He's arguing he's too much of a special little flower to be considered within the marketplace.

And if he really were, his customers would be calling on HIM.