In the course of my Twitter usage, I discovered Ted Glick (@ted_glick), an Account Executive for the Philadelphia 76ers. If you just look at his Tweets feed, you’ll see a lot of positive 76ers content, everything from RTs of the team’s content to asking fans what they think about the new logos and potential draft picks.
However, if you click over to his “Tweets & replies” feed, what you’ll see is someone who understand the power of Twitter as a sales channel. From the looks of the tweets that he has replied to, it seems like he searches for relevant combinations of the team name and tickets. The result? A social feed of self-identified potential ticket buyers. Take a look at a couple of these conversation threads:
There are many more examples in his thread, but the consistent theme is:
- Identifying a fan of the team that’s also mentioned tickets
- Proactively starting a conversation via social media
- Offering to take that conversation from online to offline where a sale could take place
I spoke to Ted via email, and he shared some other tips to keep in mind when using Twitter this way:
- Use your CRM – With a bit of searching, you can probably figure out if a particular Twitter user already exists in your database, which will reveal additional information on past ticket purchases and recent conversations.
- A younger demographic – Twitter users tend to skew younger, so start with more affordable products and try to work them up the ladder over time.
- Comfort on Twitter – Fans that tweet about the team are usually quite passionate and may just feel more comfortable having a conversation on Twitter than on the phone
I know many teams are scared of having their staff use social media to sell, but the potential is huge. Your ticket sales staff are often the best team ambassadors, so let them use the tools available to them. Yes, if they say the wrong thing on social, they could get fired, but that risk is also there on the phone, and many newer fans simply will not engage with sales staff on the phone anymore.
Let your staff be a part of the conversation where the conversation is taking place. I bet Ted’s efforts have generate a nice bit of sales for him and I applaud his initiative.
