Is your goal to start out each day checking your email? Many of you need to be honest and say, “Yes.” If you are not saying yes to looking at email first, there is a high probability that you are checking social media. Can I go ahead and scream right now?! Little side note: if you haven’t read my new book, A Mind For Sales, you should because I talk about my “10-Step Game Plan for Managing Your Week.” This has helped a whole lot of people and companies be successful. I think you’ll find it to be valuable for you too! Anyways, nowhere in that list do I tell you to use your valuable selling time checking social media updates.
I am amazed at the number of salespeople I speak to who say they always start each morning checking social media. When I ask them why, their response is that they either want to ease into work or they say it is the only time in the day they have free. Great! Let me follow this logic. The only time of the day I have free is first thing in the morning, so let me waste it on social media. It is time to shift your thinking. If your only free time is in the morning, that is the perfect time to focus on your highest priorities for the day. I am just thinking, but my suspicion is that your high-level activity is not reading what people did over the weekend.
If your goal is not to achieve success, then make it your goal to check social media first thing each morning and especially on Mondays. Hey, why not go ahead and block out the first two hours of every Monday to get caught up on just social media. Just think of all of the stupid emojis you can use when making comments about what other people did over the weekend. If you are starved for fake friends, go and do it. If you think it is a great way to be successful in sales, guess again.
Go ahead and laugh. But the reality is, I know too many salespeople who have as one of their goals to get “x” more connections on LinkedIn or Facebook. They feel if they just get to 30,000 connections on LinkedIn they will never have to prospect again. (Fact: I have more than 10x that number and I am still not exempt from prospecting.) A recovering social media addict confessed to me they had been spending two to three hours a day on social media. They also confessed that they had not made quota in over a year. This person was in recovery because they had just lost their job. Just a correlation? I will let you draw your own conclusion.
You might be thinking, “So when is the right time to check email?” Like I say in my new book, A Mind for Sales:
Email is there for your advantage, not someone else’s.
The worst thing you can do is to have an objective around email. There is nothing wrong with striving to be caught, but do not kid yourself: Most emails you receive are a waste of time. Emails are about reading this, checking that, and following up with something else. These are all good things, but are they essential? They might be essential to someone else, but they are not essential to you. Yes, I am being brutal, I know; but let me share a quote from my new book:
Email is a beast that will consume anything and everything if given the opportunity.
My approach is to scan my email in the morning and only react to those emails I deem truly pressing. All others can and do wait. Three or four times a week I will block out time to speed through the rest. And something else I share often in my keynote speaking that’s also in my new book, A Mind For Sales:
I control email, I do not allow email to control me.
To learn more about how to manage your time which is one of your 3 greatest assets, go back and read my blog. I’ve got a post titled: Your 3 Greatest Assets: Time, Mind, and Network. And I urge you again to pick up my new book, A Mind For Sales. I am so encouraged to hear about the many people it’s helping. I would love to hear about how it’s helping you, too. Drop me a review on Amazon or wherever you purchased the book. If you haven’t purchased your copy, here’s the link to order.
Copyright 2020, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter” Sales Motivation Blog. Mark Hunter is the author of A Mind for Sales and High-Profit Prospecting: Powerful Strategies to Find the Best Leads and Drive Breakthrough Sales Results.
