I love lists. I love countdowns. It started with me listening to the “Top 10 at 10” songs on a local AM radio station as a kid, and eventually a variation was born called the “Top 6 at 6”. From there, countdowns seemed to be all over the place. There were tv shows in the 1980’s that counted down the top music videos of the week, and eventually sports shows counted down the best plays of the day, week and eventually year.

When I started to get involved with social media and conducted research on the internet, I realized that lists were prominent there too. I saw one problem. Many of the lists were 10, 25, 50 or even 100 items long! I had no issue with that until I realized that I always got distracted and never finished the lists.

So I felt the need to chime in on the “list phenomenon”, but with my own twist. It will be called,

“The Five Star 5”

I will include my favourites from a specific category, but each list will only be 5 entries long. The difficult part of course is narrowing down some decisions to 5, but that is the beauty of the short, concise list. I want each list to be impactful, short and sweet.

These were the first five people that I followed in the sales space, and I am sure glad that I did. If you are following them already, fantastic! If not, consider this a solid recommendation and follow them at once!

I will note their Twitter names and websites as points of reference:

Paul Castain – Your Sales Playbook; @PaulCastain

http://yoursalesplaybook.com/

Dan Waldschmidt – Edgy Conversations; @DanWaldo

http://danwaldschmidt.com

S. Anthony Iannarino – The Sales Blog; @Iannarino

http://thesalesblog.com/

Kelley Robertson – Fearless Selling; @FearlessSelling

http://fearless-selling.ca/

Mark Hunter – The Sales Hunter; @TheSalesHunter

http://thesaleshunter.com/

Enjoy this list. These guys are awesome!