It's not about you, it's about customers.
It could be that his software was mis-priced and poorly marketed (just added a link on download.com). Publishing his price may have hurt him if he was way over or under (making his stuff look cheap) other vendors. Getting sales leads certainly helped him, but there are other many ways to do that AND publish the price of the software. Price discrimination can be effective (see automobile sales), but it isn't exactly an endearing strategy.
I think many people here have at least thought of a startup, and often a startup idea is to solve some problem they are facing, or a way to make something better. So the natural way of thinking about customer service is "what would I like?"
Of course, not everyone is alike (otherwise there would not be such a word as "geek" :) So what actually works in sales may seem counterintuitive.
Which means that being able to see things from a customer's point of view is both hard and a valuable skill.