Your original comment sounded a bit negative towards Qt, but it sounds like either the company was not legally complying with the license (in which case Qt was owed some money) or the company found some benefit in the paid product. In either case, I'm not sure there's a way I would view it negatively (unless Qt changed licensing on some used components such that the company was in compliance in the past but ended up unknowingly not being compliant by the time the rep was talking with them).

Talking to a sales rep isn't always a bad thing. Sometimes they let you know interesting things that are for offer you didn't know about, but would have bought if you did (or can give you trials of things you've been interested in but unwilling to pull the trigger on because you weren't sure how it would work).