Selling Geek: Tech Reviews for Sales Pros

Archive for the tag 'Twitter as a sales tool'

Jun 15 2008

Selling Geek podcast #4 - Twitter, what is it good for?

Published by Timothy Sullivan under Podcast, Review, Web tools

Selling Geek 004-Twitter [19:40m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Let’s take a critical look at what is arguably becoming the biggest “Web 2.0” fad. Since it’s inception in 2007, Twitter now serves over 1.7 million users, and that number is growing by over 2,000 new users every day, and accelerating.

What is Twitter? Why is it generating so much buzz? And most importantly, does it have anything to offer salespeople? In this review, we hope to answer all things a-Twitter for the curious sales professional.

What is Twitter?

Twitter is a very simple idea – so simple, it sounds trivial when you try to explain it. Imagine you have your own private billboard, but anyone can see it, if they care to look. You can put anything on your billboard, Twitter is like a billboard as long as it’s text, and as long as each addition is no more than 140 characters. Any time you add something to your billboard, anyone that is interested will see a copy of what you posted, instantly.

And that’s all Twitter is, really. Except that your billboard is a web page on the Internet, and it is called a Twitter feed.

Twitter users can update their Twitter feeds by browsing their page on the Twitter site, or by using their mobile phones to post through SMS text messages. Likewise, users can view the Twitter feeds of others with their computers or their phones, at their option. And there are a large number of independently developed Twitter applications that make it easy to post to your feed, or monitor other people’s feeds.

In order to get notification of updates from someone else’s Twitter feed, you have to become a “follower”. You do this by looking up their Twitter name in the search bar, going to their Twitter page, and clicking the “follow” button. Some Twitter users actively recruit large legions of followers. For example, as of June 2008, tech guru Leo Laporte had over 42,000 followers, all reading his 140-character posts about his observations on technology trends, people, and life in general.

UPDATE: As of July 8, 2008, Leo Laporte had garnered 46,473 followers on Twitter.

Twitter is Like Love, Gone Wrong

As a social networking phenomenon, Twitter sounds like a neat idea. What’s wrong with trying to bring people together, after all?

Perhaps the best way to summarize my evaluation of Twitter is to share a personal story, from many years ago…

Love Gone Wrong Back in my single days, long ago – well, perhaps long, long, long ago – I dated a nice girl in college. She was great – still is great, as far as I know. She was attractive, and very popular. I felt I was definitely in the “in crowd” when we were together – there was always a party at her place, with lots of interesting, entertaining people around. But something was missing. I never felt like I really knew my girlfriend very well. There just wasn’t a lot of depth to our relationship. And those parties – while fun – always felt superficial and shallow. I never had a conversation there that lasted more than a few minutes.

At first I thought it must be me – perhaps I was the one that was odd. After all, she seemed to be extraordinarily popular – there had to be good reason, right?

Eventually, I came to realize that we just didn’t have much in common, really, and she didn’t have the means or desire to build anything deeper. So, we broke up. She took it well – in fact, I’m sure she didn’t really miss me at all.

I tell you this personal tale of love gone wrong because it echoes all my feelings about Twitter perfectly. It’s a very popular platform, and it has a lot of initial appeal. But there just isn’t a lot of depth there, and ultimately, it’s unsatisfying, especially when the suitor in this technological courtship is a sales professional. After trying to use Twitter for a while, I think that most salespeople will wonder what the fuss is all about, and go find something more productive to do.

If that sounds equivocal, you understand me perfectly. I want to like Twitter – after all, so many people do, there must be something good in it – but the more I use it, the more mystified I become as to why so many people are attracted to it. Sort of like Paris Hilton – I can’t figure out the popular appeal there, either.

Twitter Problems Galore

Although Twitter is admittedly trendy and fashionable, it has a number of critical flaws.

Too Much Information

First, Twitter is just too darn open. Just because you can put anything in your Twitter posts doesn’t mean that you should. But, unfortunately, some do. For example, I started following one Twitter feed from a well-known sales best practices expert, hoping he might have some interesting insights to share. Instead, I received a steady stream of messages like this:

“Got up this morning, feeling good!”
“Sitting on the back porch, enjoying life!”
“Just realized what a lucky guy I am!”

I am all for having an optimistic outlook on life. However, I am not a fan of having that optimism forced upon me in an endless stream of greeting card platitudes. Every time I read one of these little gems of anti-depressant inspired wisdom, I thought, “Thanks for stealing another five seconds of my life, pal.” It adds up, after a while.

I stopped following this fellow, when I realized that he never really said anything important. Sort of like Paris Hilton, come to think of it.

As bad as this example is, there are other Twitter feeds that are worse. Does anyone really think that the entire world needs to know when they are heading for the bathroom, and what they do when they get there? Apparently, some Twitter users are so narcissistic that they feel compelled to share every aspect of their life with the world, in real time, no matter how mundane.

To these people, I say only this: no one wants to know you that well. Trust me.

A House Built on Sand

Second, Twitter’s infrastructure just doesn’t work very well. It goes offline, inexplicably, at frequent but random intervals. It stops working so often that there are websites dedicated to the frequent downtime of Twitter. When people start memorializing your failures, it’s not a good thing. During my evaluation, I observed that Twitter went down an average of at least once every other day, for intervals lasting between twenty minutes and more than two hours. It wouldn’t be so bad if it went down at scheduled times – Twitter’s outages are generally unpredictable.

Tech analysts speculate that Twitter’s unreliability is due to the underlying technology, which was never intended to support so many users. Also, no one predicted that nearly two million people would be running up the Twitter curve this quickly, further compounding the performance problem. Which means, most likely, that Twitter outages are going to get a lot worse until the system gets a complete overhaul. And Twitter isn’t saying when or if that might happen.

Who Are You, Really?

Third, Twitter is wide open to spoofing (and so is Jott, which we recently reviewed). Spoofing, for the uninitiated, is when other people masquerade as you by falsifying data. As Twitter is set up today, anyone that knows a Twitter user’s authorized cell phone number can update that person’s Twitter page, with relative ease. Imagine, for a moment, that one of your unscrupulous competitors gets your mobile number, goes to your Twitter page, and posts obscenities about your prospect or customer, and then directs them there. This is why I have not connected my mobile phone to my Twitter feed – I don’t want anyone else to put words in my mouth, especially in a public forum.

A Selling Time Vampire

Finally, Twitter offers almost nothing of value to sales professionals. Let’s walk through some essential elements of a salesperson’s job, and see if Twitter provides any utility:

Can Twitter help us 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.
Can Twitter help us to research accounts? Highly unlikely – and there are many other much better resources designed for account research, too.
Can Twitter help us 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.

One Good Use for Twitter

You may notice that I maintain a Twitter account, and in fact show it on the SellingGeek.com website. That’s because I use my Twitter feed only to share updates from the Selling Geek blog, using a handy RSS-to-Twitter utility called Twitterfeed. You’ll find no posts on my Twitter page about my personal life – ever – I promise. So, if you use Twitter, feel free to follow me – my Twitter name is TimothySullivan.

Sales Pro Value Score

As a tool for sales professionals, the pretty, popular, and lightweight Twitter doesn’t have much to offer. So, because of its low sales utility, lack of identity security, annoying user practices, and yet, a significant “cool factor”, Selling Geek gives Twitter a Sales Pro Value Score of 1.5, out of a possible 5.