Today I discovered a whole new repository of leads–Twitter followers. I’m embarrassed that I wasn’t on top of this. A follower is someone who is interested in hearing what you have to say. “Interest” being the key word.
The reason I’m suddenly tuned into this is because I’m being forced to think about sourcing leads in an entirely new light. Typically I’ll research companies and find the contact info on Jigsaw or InsideView. Now I’m more interested in companies and their managers that Tweet, particularly if they’re following me.
I also discovered that many of my followers are companies, and that the writers have some pretty good takes, similar to my thinking on a lot of sales and marketing ideas.
My 60 Day SCRM Challenge is allowing me to engage prospects in ways I hadn’t considered. I mean, I like that people are following my Tweets, and I work hard to produce original content in short blasts, much of it a link to my blog posts.
But it wouldn’t matter unless I had the right tool to make the access of Twitter followers a lead development process. That’s one of the promises I can see with Nimble CRM. If you’ve been following The Challenge, you know that I’m particpating in private beta with Nimble. In order to make a contribution, I decided to challenge myself to identify a whole new list of prospects and close a new customer in 60 days using Nimble CRM.
So I researched the followers, visited their company websites, LinkedIn profiles, Jigsaw information, and added them to my Nimble CRM account.
The next thing is to figure out the protocol for approaching a Twitter follower without interrupting their conversation.
Hi Brian!
We haven’t officially met, but I run social media at Nimble. I found your series of posts and wanted to thank you for writing about us, and for your insights. I’m really pleased that you are finding a new treasure trove of folks to connect with via Twitter, and I am convinced that that Nimble can help you achieve your goal of increasing your prospects and closing a new client, by nurturing relationships you form online. If you should have any questions along the way or if you want to throw around any ideas, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me. You can find me on Twitter or via email at maria (at) nimble (dot) com.
Cheers!
Social Media Director at Nimble. Connect with me on Twitter at @themaria or @Nimble