If you’re like so many other salespeople, you’ve found yourself joining various social media sites. The challenge is to not allow them to wind up sucking up your valuable time. When you first join these sites, it’s easy to spend too much time on them and I’m not going to yell at anyone for that. What I am going to get upset at is if you’re spending more than 30 minutes a day total on social media sites. The only exception is if you have definite proof that spending more time each day is a key component of your sales strategy.

When I say no more than 30 minutes a day, I also am saying this is not 30 minutes a day that is to be taken out of your selling time. It should be 30 minutes of time you would normally spend doing absolutely nothing. If you don’t have 30 minutes a day of that kind of time, then you don’t have time for social media.

Where I’m going with this is I want to make a strong point. I see too many salespeople leaving social media sites open on their computers all day long. They claim how little time they spend on these sites but if that were the case, then why do they keep them open all day long? They leave them open and more frequently than they will ever admit, they’re on them checking out the latest updates, etc. All the while, they sit there saying how it’s not taking them any time and what they’re really doing is prospecting. Come on, get real! It’s not happening! It’s a giant waste of time.

If you’re a sales manager, get firm with your people on this issue and this includes getting firm with people who have web enabled phones with social media sites. Social media has a place, but in every case, it must be done to a degree of time that holds people accountable.