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Much has been written lately about annoying sales tactics and how many in the security field try to duck vendor calls.  Believe it or not, I get my share of annoying sales calls as well.  Whether it is the great conference that is being organized with all of the CIOs that I would ever want to speak to or the latest, greatest new product that is going to make my life easier and define the road to riches, I am swamped with spam telephone calls (on my cell phone no less) every day. 

One thing that I have come to see is that many of these unsolicited calls come in with an unknown caller ID. I don't mean no name for entity, but no number either.  Most of these people don't leave a voice mail either, they just keep calling until the get an answer.  My view is that if the caller has to go to the effort of hiding their name and number, than they have something to hide and are not being upfront.  I don't want to do business with anyone like that. I think this just puts two strikes against anyone calling.  Why are you hiding who you are?  Are you ashamed of what you are doing?

So here is my Shimel rule on sales calls. If your caller ID does not identify you, than I don't want to talk to you!