A cold caller from a search engine optimization (SEO) firm left me a voicemail message that simply said “Hi, this is Jane Doe. I came across your web site and I have a few questions. Could you give me a call back at 444-444-4444?” Sounds a lot like a potential customer, doesn’t it? She didn’t say she was calling from an SEO firm and certainly didn’t say she was selling anything. So I called back and figured out it was a sales call pretty quick but what really bugged me was the blatant attempt to fool me as long as possible into thinking it was not a sales call.

I ended the call because of the tactic and not because I wasn’t interested. If she had been direct and told me quickly that I was doing well on search term X but there are a dozen related terms that I could be doing better on, I would have listened. There are lots of convincing things an SEO pitch can include but not telling me that you’re calling from an SEO firm is not one of them.

I’m not even going to do the firm the favor of outing them here.