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It’s one of the current axioms doing the rounds online – “I love Twitter but how do I sell it to my client or boss?”.
You can see the benefits because you use it every day, but just how do you transfer that message to those who wonder where the benefit of 140-character conversations are found?
Perhaps that’s not the question to ask – instead, how about asking why you even have to justify it at all.
Think about it for just a moment – your client or your boss’s success has probably had a lot to do with business relationships built up over the years.
Additionally, being aware of the business market around their industry will also have played a large part in their success. And you can be pretty sure that both these reasons are continuously worked on and monitored to sustain that success.
Now think of why Twitter is so beneficial to you.
Are you building relationships with great contacts? Are you keeping abreast of the latest news in the industry because people are talking about it in their Twitter stream? Are you finding content and advice that helps you grow both personally and professionally because of the information you’re a part of through your Twitter contacts and the information from their contacts?
I’d hazard a guess that the answer to all of these questions is a fairly comprehensive “Yes.” So why should it be any different for your client, boss or anyone else you’re trying to extol the virtues of Twitter to?
The next time you want to get your client involved in Twitter, or your boss dismisses it as nothing more than a fad for people having banal conversations, ask them a couple of simple questions:
- How do the majority of your customers find you?
- How do they then communicate with you?
You’ll probably find that the majority of the answers to the first question are “Via Google” and the majority of the answers to the second question will be, “They’ll call us or email us an inquiry.”
In short, they’re looking for specific goods or services and want to open up a dialogue with the hope of fulfilling that need.
The next step is usually a customer service representative calling back, or perhaps even a member of the sales team calling to discuss the (potential) client’s needs. Then, with a bit of luck (and sometimes depending on the skills and motivation of the person calling them back), that potential client may turn into a physical one.
But that’s the NORMAL practice.
What if it wasn’t down to luck? What if it was down to the interaction and genuine interest you showed in conversing with that client? Instead of just seeing them as another dollar bill through the business doors, they actually felt important to your business? That’s what Twitter offers.
Finding a company on Google (or any other search engine) is no different from finding that same company using the search feature on Twitter. And the inward communication regarding their needs? Imagine if the (potential) client could open up a two-way dialogue that was instantaneous and could cover everything in one conversation?
Instead of the customer service representative putting the caller on hold to ask sales a question, or check marketing’s latest offer, that department could be instantly engaged in the conversation with a Twitter “@ message”. And with the functionality of Twitter, even getting hold of someone out of the office is easy enough with Twitter alerts by cellphone.
Of course, there might be an argument that this is too simple a suggestion – there would still be the problem of the caller in question not being on Twitter. If so, put yourself in their shoes for a moment.
If you were a potential customer of a company and you were faced with a customer service line that may be engaged or a Twitter stream that costs nothing and is always open, which would you prefer? I know which I’d go for.
Of course, this is for the future – the immediate need is to convince your client or boss of Twitter’s value. So just ask them what offers more value than knowing what your customer base is thinking. What offers more value than answering concerns or questions that their customer base may have?
And perhaps most importantly of all, what offers more value than being able to answer these questions before your competitors answer for you?
The answer(s) should be simple.