Comments on: Twitter and Social Networking for Sales People

By: Nick Moreno

Nick Moreno — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 01:56:40 +0000

Thanks Shane. Great info.
I’ll ask my team to give Twitter a try.
Nick

By: Kelly

Kelly — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 15:19:29 +0000

Twitter is a very good tool for networking. We’ve started using to promote our virtual assistant social network over at http://www.findvirtual.com/

We’ve seen traffic increase since twittering

By: Timothy Sullivan

Timothy Sullivan — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 18:39:27 +0000

Shane — thanks for your comment on my review of Twitter on my blog (http://sellinggeek.com/selling-geek-podcast-4-twitter-what-is-it-good-for/), and for your post here. I agree with you that Twitter is a potentially valuable social networking tool. But as a sales resource, I find it to be nearly worthless. Can Twitter help salespeople to find new prospects? Maybe, if you have a lot of followers, they might be able to refer you – but that sounds like a bit of stretch – and frankly, there are other services far better suited to build referrals than Twitter (e.g., InsideView, Jigsaw, LinkedIn). Can Twitter help salespeople to research accounts? No – and there are many other much better resources designed for account research, too. Can Twitter help to qualify opportunities, provide proof of concept, justify our offering’s value, negotiate or close new business? No. Can Twitter help us to manage and improve account relationships? Well, maybe, if your customer follows your Twitter feed – but remember that most of the interaction on Twitter is public. Do you really want customer inquiries to you to be broadcast to anyone who cares to read them? That doesn’t sound like a good idea to me. Can Twitter reduce administration or help salespeople to be more efficient? No – in fact, it will consume precious selling time. In short, I think Twitter is useful as a branding tool – I use it to post notices about updates to my blog using an RSS-to-Twitter application called Twitterfeed – but as a sales tool, I just don’t see it.

By: Shane Gibson

Shane Gibson — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 06:45:22 +0000

@coachdeb a quote would be great thanks!

Shane

By: @CoachDeb

@CoachDeb — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 05:56:10 +0000

BEST line ever!
May I quote you in the http://TWitterHandbook.com blog/book?

“One question / statement someone e-mailed to me after I invited them to connect on twitter was “How the hell do you have time for this?” I thought it was an entertaining question. I post about 5-10 mircoblogs or tweets per day. It takes less than a minute to write 140 characters. To me that’s a high impact low input marketing tool.”

By: Rebecca

Rebecca — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 22:28:30 +0000

Thanks for mentioning me Shane. I think you’re also doing great things with so many different forms of social media – it’s awesome!

By: Emily

Emily — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 04:56:00 +0000

Great post! thanks for mentioning the links.

By: Michelle Sullivan

Michelle Sullivan — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 22:56:20 +0000

I’ve linked to my blog post : the delightful Sage Tyrtle reading from Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody. This answers the fundamental question : Where do you find the time?

It’s a question of priorities, and I find my priorities more interesting than network tv.

Hope you enjoy Tod’s foam. It should have good karma

By: Shane Gibson

Shane Gibson — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 20:28:50 +0000

@Kye Grace I forgot that we connected offline! We established our further connections through twitter and meetup (another social networking tool). Tools like twitter help us begin relationships that can bridge into hybrid offline / online relationships.

I’m having a lot of fun with this. See you at the next meetup!

By: Shane Gibson

Shane Gibson — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 20:26:12 +0000

@Raul thank’s for mentioning the charity contributions and support. This is such an important part of being part of any community (on-line or in-person). I believe that you get out what you put in.

People join twitter or an off-line network like the Board of Trade or a Chamber and are disappointed that their “Me” focused networking and posting hasn’t gotten them any business. As Darcy Rezac says of networking: “Think how can I help you?” This pays big dividends over time.

By: Kye Grace

Kye Grace — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 19:17:04 +0000

As you know Shane, I found twitter to be an awesome tool in my first few days of using it. I met Shane on a Monday night and began using twitter and following him the next day. The next day he tweeted about having tickets for a Board of Trade function for anyone interested, which I was and quickly replied. Shane provided a pair of tickets to a great event at which my partner met someone who she hopes will be her future employer. They were mutually excited to have met, while she was conversing with the this person, Steve Jagger, Shane and I were chatting. Steve asked Shane how we knew each other. Shane chuckled and said “Through your meetup and twitter”. Steve’s reponse…”And they social media doesn’t work.”

One tweet led to multiple opportunities, including Corinne finding what may turn out to be her dream employer, and expanded relationships.

I am converted and hope others will join the movement.

By: Raul

Raul — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 19:05:17 +0000

Hi Shane,

Thanks for the shout out and the link love. Much appreciated!

I think you’ve also harnessed Twitter in becoming involved in charity in ways that you may not have had a chance before. Of course, I understand that you may not want to publicize that you’ve been doing charitable work, but you’ve been doing that and supporting others’ charitable causes and that’s to be commended.

What’s the link between charity and sales? Well, I think that your clients should know that you’re not only helping them with their sales, but that you’re also building goodwill and positive karma around. That’s my 2 cents