A small but significant portion of my working week is wasted fielding telephone calls from call centre cold calling droids who want to sell me IT or communications products and services. Or, more accurately, they want me to agree to attend a short presentation with one of their “technical experts” here in Bradford in order for them to meet their targets for getting a number of prospective customers. Sales is a funny old game and that is how to treat it, as a game. Their objective is to get you to agree to something (no matter how minor) and yours is to not agree unless you want to, either by getting rid of them quickly, or stringing them along for a bit, depending on what mood you are in. I write as a former poacher turned gamekeeper as I was a sales engineer in a previous life. I have developed a set of shady rules for dealing with these calls which I am happy to share. My mind is often made up within the first couple of sentences, especially if the opening gambit on the phone from a complete stranger is

“Hello Ian, how are you today?”

Advice, in no particular order:

• Take control of the conversation, it is your time they are wasting.
• Suggest another time if you are busy, but mean it- they will call back.
• Expect the caller to twist any rebuttal into an opportunity.
• Tell them you are not interested. After repeating this a few times, you will derail the script.
• “So what?” will faze all but the most experienced. It might appear terribly rude, but it is much ruder to launch into a spiel without permission.
• Callers will try to weasel names of decision makers out of you. Whilst it may be their job, it is none of their business.
• Tell them to write to you with further information, make it clear that  if you are interested, YOU will contact THEM.
• It is far too easy to suggest they ring back in 3/6/12 months as a stalling tactic.  If you aren’t interested, tell them so
• If you might be interested, ask them what their unique selling point is. If they haven’t got one, you probably aren’t interested.
• Beware of vendor sponsored events, they are often rather one sided and sometimes predatory. (I once had someone introduce himself as my account manager, despite not being a customer. This bloke was a bit scary, he sat next me and followed me round throughout the event, taking notes. Fortunately I knew much more about his Company than he did & turned it into a joke, introducing him to people as my personal Clueless & Witless Stalker)
• Be prepared to hang up at any time. You didn’t ask to be called.

I’m sure others will have more to add.