I asked an audience of 200 mature salespeople and sales managers, “How many of you have a Twitter account with more than 500 followers?”

Two people raised their hand.

One of them was me. Yikes.

It seems as if seasoned salespeople are resisting Twitter or simply do not understand its power and efficacy.

With an estimated 125 MILLION accounts and millions of tweets a day, there just MAY be something to it. The Fortune 1000 are tweeting. Every newspaper and news agency is tweeting. Thousands of small businesses are tweeting.

Are you tweeting every day?

Or are you stymied by the process and, like most people, don’t quite know what to do?

WARNING: Twitter for business has nothing to do with being in your pajamas, having a tough day, heading to the office or other inane, useless information. It also has nothing to do with “tweeple,” “tweeps” or other buzzwords that are cute and condescending.

Twitter is about passing on information.

Twitter is about value messages.

Twitter is about connecting.

Twitter is about others finding value in your messages or information and passing it on to others. Known as “re-tweeting,” it’s proof that your message had enough value, content or vital information that people in your network were willing to share it with their networks.

BONUS: Your message, your tweet, is actually exposed to 125 million people through Twitter’s storing and searching features.

The key action to become searchable is using a “hash tag.” If you want to attract others who may be also tagging or searching for the categories you’re tweeting about, using the # symbol in front of your subject words will group your tweets with others of a like nature.

My subjects are sales, loyalty, trust, attitude, buying motives, presentation skills, networking and success.

You can also aggregate your tweets to appear on your LinkedIn account and on your business Facebook page.

In short, you can send information to your entire network every day. And if others find it interesting or valuable, they will send it to their networks.

How does a daily value tweet help you?

1. It challenges you to think and write. Daily discipline.

2. It challenges you to create viral messages so that you become better known as a person of value.

3. It challenges you to create the REAL law of attraction. Attraction = potential customer.

3.5. People will proactively connect with you. If they agree with you, and they respect you, they’ll tell others to connect with you.

I rarely use Twitter for interactive communication. I tweet thought-provoking statements. Re-tweetable statements.

Yesterday I tweeted: It’s easy to find and attract great people – just be a great person who does great things. gitomer. It got a hundred re-tweets in 24 hours and many comments on my LinkedIn account.

Today I’m tweeting: An objection is actually a sales barrier. Lower the barrier and reduce their perceived risk, and the sale is yours. gitomer

I try to keep my tweets under 120 characters, even though twitter permits 140. This way there’s plenty of space to re-tweet.

Here are last week’s most popular tweets of mine:

• If you’re looking to make more #sales NOW, make certain your prospective customers value you and your company first. gitomer

• The hardest door to open in #sales is NOT the car door – it’s the decision-maker’s door. gitomer

Is it working? I have more than 22,800 followers. You tell me.

Jeffrey Gitomer can be reached by phone at (704) 333-1112 or by e-mail at salesman@gitomer.com. © 2010 Jeffrey H. Gitomer