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Last week I attended the oversold (500 people plus) Sales 2.0 Conference in San Francisco and was invited to participate on the panel discussion, “Accelerating Productivity: New Sales 2.0 Tools”. A week earlier, I was the guest speaker at the inaugural Social Media Breakfast San Francisco meeting (see online video), during which I was interviewed, Fresh Air style, by social media guru, Chris Kenton. There was a common theme between these two events: the most engaging (or should I say heated?) discussion topic was the use of twitter in the sales process.
People are passionate about twitter, whether they love it or hate it. To the majority of sales executives I know, twitter is seen as perhaps only second to Facebook as a major distraction for the sales force and drain on its productivity. Garth Moulton, cofounder and VP of Community at Jigsaw, sums it up in his recent blog post, “Not Digging on Twitter” that “for a working professional Twitter is totally stupid.”
He might be right. But I’m not willing to accept that until I give it a chance.
Like my dermatologist who tries out every new procedure on herself before subjecting her patients to it, I have immersed myself in the twitter community and am experimenting with it. A few weeks ago, I didn’t know what a hashtag, retweet, or @reply meant, but I’m enjoying learning about a new communications medium that so may people (some sources say 2,000 new user accounts are created on average per day) are flocking to. During the opening session of the Sales 2.0 conference, I tried my hand at “live tweeting” the content: broadcasting it out to an audience of twitter users who were following the conference online in real time. You can read some of these “tweets” in several blogs written by members of the Sales 2.0 community: Michael Damphousse’s Smashmouth Marketing, Parker Trewin’s B2B Marketing for Faster Sales, and Andrew Lennon’s The Daily Anchor, among others.
My theory is that when new technologies are adopted enthusiastically by the mainstream, they may just have a place in the buying cycle. In B2B sales, that might not be the end of that cycle – it’s hard to imagine someone placing a million dollar deal via twitter – but never say never. Twenty-four years ago, I was told I was crazy to expect the sophisticated customers of Oracle Corporation to buy its complex products by phone. 
How are YOU using twitter in the sales process? Is it improving or decreasing sales productivity in your company? And most importantly, what revenue has resulted from a twitter interaction with a prospect?
7 Comments to Twitter: Friend or Foe of Sales?
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Anneke, I was at the same place and time as you last week, and began to ask myself the same question — and as a company, we’re asking this and related questions of ourselves and others.
For now, personally, I’m doing some experimenting to see what flows through Twitter. My approach is to be Tweeting tidbits of perspective credibly — beginning with references to others, articles, research, etc. — to begin to build a “following.
I’m being careful not to be to blantantly self-promoting or company-promoting — although the extension of my approach would be to begin to see if any of my followers take action associated with a link to an interesting article or research or offer that would be associated with our company.
Whether that leads to a sale…or a referral…or what…remains to be seen!
In terms of time drain, I probably touch Twitter once a day, often evenings unless I absolutely come upon something that deserves to be shared.
Reflecting back on the conference, I agree with your observation that the Twitter dialogue was some of the most emotional.
What I am discovering is that Twitter is not an instant success for sales. Give it some time, develop your followers and those you follow selectively, and fine tune those groups on a regular basis. What has developed for me is an intriguing flow of ideas and comments from an extremely diverse group of people that I would not have ever come across in my daily life.
After 3 months, I now look at my Twitter stream 2 or 3 times a day now, and have started several relationships that have moved to the “business deal” stage.
If you give it time to develop, I think you will identify Twitter as it is, a tool to be used as a part of your overall strategy. I have.
[...] Twitter: Friend or Foe of Sales by Anneke Seley, CEO Phoneworks [...]
[...] Twitter: Friend or Foe of Sales by Anneke Seley, CEO Phoneworks [...]
We were skeptical of Twitter at first as a business tool, but one weekend I decided to create a Twitter site (www.twitter.com/charles_river) for my company, Charles River Apparel. We have only been on there a month but the response has been tremendous. We are a business to business apparel manufacturer and I was surprised at how many of our customers – and potential customers – have Twitter sites for their businesses. Email is a great way to stay in touch and get a mass message out, but we have found that Twitter is a more personal way to stay in touch with our customers.
Hi Anneke, Twitter is better at post-sales than pre-sales leads. You can search on your company’s name and see if anyone has issues to resolve, or potential testimonials to use. You can keep people updated more rapidly on good news and interesting info. You can generate excitement by seeing the flow of retweets on a particular post. You can establish credibility by talking about how you work with your partners.
JUCCCE is a non-profit. We put our twitter address in our email signature, and now on our business cards.
In several months, we’ve hit the 400 follower mark. More importantly, the quality of our followers is very high because we keep our content very focused on “green news you can use” and updates on our organization.
We are going to be incorporating content from our upcoming JUCCCE Energy Blueprint (a hub of all energy project collaboration) into our twitter posts.
I think it’s too early to diss this as a sales tool. It’s still evolving.
[...] doubts were expressed at the March Sales 2.0 conference in San Francisco, which I wrote about in an earlier post. As sales managers are struggling to make their numbers in a slowed down economy, they are super [...]