Fun with marketers

I just had so much fun with a cold call marketer it almost wasn’t fair.  He was calling from Web Buyer’s Guide to offer me a free eSeminar in Cybercrime. 

He asked for Marc Resnick and when I asked what company he was from, he assumed I was Marc and announced he was from Web Buyer’s Guide.

I said I was not interested.  He asked how I could know; he hadn’t told me what he was calling about yet. I said I had never heard of his company, which is a pretty reliable sign.

He told me I had visited a website (apparently that they mined for my phone personal information) where I had either downloaded an eBook or watched a video.  I asked him which one it was.  He didn’t know. 

I said that wasn’t a good omen for their targeting.  He defended himself by telling me that he knew my email, phone number, and that I worked at Bentley (wow, how impressive).

I asked him if he knew whether I liked the eBook (telling him of course which one I had downloaded).  If not, I probably wasn’t a good target to offer me something new. 

He interrupted my witty comeback by announcing that he was offering me a FREE eSeminar on cybercrime.  Free!!  How can you not like free?

I asked if he had any evidence that I was interested in cybercrime.  He ducked the question and said everyone was interested in cybercrime.  I asked why he thought I would have confidence in Web Buyer’s Guide’s knowledge of cybercrime. He ducked that question too.

I asked him if he had any indication that an eSeminar was a channel I was interested in getting information through.  He was silent.  I let him know that I had never taken an eSeminar and never planned to. 

But I thanked him for a very fun conversation.  He just hung up.