"That's Cool"

I was in a cross-team meeting today, and the sales person there said, "If someone says 'That's cool!', you know you don't have a sale."

And I got to thinking...

I believe the sales guy is perfectly correct. People - especially those with big budgets - don't buy stuff because it's really neat. They buy it because it fills a need. So having a prospect say, "That's cool!" means the prospect is NOT saying, "Wow I really need that" or "That could save me so much time!".

But...

When you're hiring, having the candidate say, "That's cool!" is a very good thing. The kind of engineer I want is the kind of engineer who's going to listen to a problem we have, or a special kind of trick we've got, and say, "that's cool!". Here, that means that the candidate is thinking he'll be challenged and that the work will be interesting.

So I empathize with the sales guy, but I still get a good thrill when someone I'm pitching to says, "That's cool!".