Bill Rice Internet Marketing > Using Twitter Lists to Manage Your Social Selling

Using Twitter Lists to Manage Your Social Selling

May 14, 2010 By

twitter-prospect Are you using Twitter in your sales process?

My guess is that many of you are. It’s hard isn’t it? You want thousands of followers to give you the sales leverage of large numbers, but you want to deliver a very personal experience to prospects and clients.

My suggestion (secret)? Twitter Lists.

I use Twitter Lists in four very productive ways:

  1. Segmenting various target audiences
  2. Researching new markets and audiences
  3. Tracking target accounts/prospects
  4. Tracking current clients

First, it’s important to understand the basics of Twitter Lists to effectively use them with this sales technique. There are two basic options—public and private.

I use public Twitter Lists for purposes 1 and 2.  It allows me to segment and monitor these folks in distinct segments, gives them a little visibility boost (value), and there is no need to keep them hidden.

I use private Twitter lists for purposes 3 and 4. This allows me to segment and monitor these folks without publicly revealing the people I want to work with or clients.

Here are the basics, as simple as it is it’s powerfully sales enabling.

Every time you follow someone get them on a useful list (pick purpose 1-4). Then set these lists up in your favorite Twitter client HootSuite, Seesmic, TweetDeck. I use TweetDeck.

Immediately you will have better visibility of the markets you’re working and learning, your clients, and most importantly (if you’re in sales) your sales pipeline. You will see more opportunities and help more people everyday—nothing accelerates sales like situational awareness!

Questions: Do you do anything like this? What are your tricks to managing sales prospecting and engagement on Twitter?

Filed Under: Social Media, Social Selling Tagged With: Social Media, social selling, twitter
About Bill Rice

Writer, Speaker, Social Selling, Lead Generation

Do you have a quick question? Email me: bill@bettercloser.com

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  • http://www.sellbycaring.com/ Claudia Dail

    Being new to Twitter this is a valuable tip. Thank you I will start making my lists right away!
    Claudia Dail

  • http://www.seoconsult.co.uk Jack

    http://www.hootsuite.com/ is nice tool for twitter and i have used it with success

  • http://blog.hubspot.com mark roberge

    Great tips. I also keep a list of “digital influencers” in my industry. These people are not prospects for my business. Instead they have heavy influence and lots of following within my target audience. A re-tweet or blog mention by them is extremely valuable to me. Therefore I promote their content hoping they reciprocate.

  • http://twitter.com/kfom KevinFerrasciOMalley

    Great post and thanks for four very good tips. I've also had success
    by creating private Twitter lists to segment competitors.

  • http://bettercloser.com Bill Rice

    Kevin,

    That's a great additional use for Twitter Lists. Especially since it seems the different between prospecting and competitive intelligence can be subtle.

    Thanks for reading and commenting!

  • http://bettercloser.com Bill Rice

    Mark,

    You are so right. Influencers are so powerful in any marketing and sales plan. Certainly the reciprocation is awesome, but I've found that just staying tuned into their perspectives and points of view help me in sales too. After all, there is a very good chance my prospects are tuned into them and have already shaped their “vision” to some degree. By paying attention to these influencers I can make sure I come in with the right angle of attack.

    Thanks for the comment!

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