I love calls that begin with ‘I am not trying to sell you anything’ because it’s an absolute guarantee that that is exactly what they are trying to do.

Sometimes one person will ask you all manner of questions, supposedly in the form of an independent survey, and then pass you on to a second person for the inevitable hard sell.

The advice has to be to tell them nothing. Any information, no matter how obscure, will give them an opportunity to attempt to sell you something.