You’re in sales. I’m a technical decision-maker.

It is a bad, bad time to be dialing for dollars. I get it. You’re hungry. I look like a steak. So here are some free tips for cold-calling us geeks:

1. Don’t cold-call geeks. Email us. We can talk by phone later if we think you’re going to help us. I have done this.

2. Give us some time to answer your email. Unless you are totally irrelevant to our business it is likely that we are doing our homework, checking out your website and talking to other people about you. You have a set of probing questions to ask and we want to give correct answers, saving us both time. Which leads us to a really imortant point:

3. Geeks pretty universally HATE aggression. If you are too pushy or needy, we will probably not want to have a relationship with you.

4. Bad: “Can I please have a half hour of your time to talk to you about how cool we are?” Good: “Hello! Have you heard of us? Your peers at X, Y and Z are using our solution, may I do a quick demonstration?” I know, homework. Frowny face.

5. Please do not show me a website you made in 1998.

6. If we’re calling India, let’s say we’re calling India and not demean the second-largest country in the world by pretending we’re calling New York.

7. Can we not chit-chat on the phone every month just so we can keep you top-of-mind? Last thing I want to do when I’m on a great coding bender. Thanks.

8. Feel free to ask who will be doing the implementation of the software you’re selling. It might be me and not the IT guy, and you might not want to spend the next hour going, “You’ll LOVE this feature, John!”

9. Be either remarkable or very brief.