An Automotive Professional’s Most Valuable Investment & Most Powerful Resource Is Time

The primary difference between effective and ineffective automotive professionals is how and where they spend their time. The number of units sold, the number of phone calls made, the customer experience, CSI scores and customer reviews, all predicated upon how time is spent at the dealership. Most automotive professionals begin their day with no plan. With no end in mind. They end up leaving the dealership feeling exhausted from the constant grind, feeling frustrated and unaccomplished. Some feel that working more hours to compensate for the lack of results is the answer, while others feel working harder is the answer. Neither is correct and more often than not, still yield the same results. The key to being effective is to work smarter, not harder, have a weekly roadmap preloaded with the most important activities, daily accountability, to have discipline, be consistent and always be aware of your surroundings, along with your mission, vision and goals. 

Step one in maximizing your time is awareness. As you are performing tasks, you should ask yourself, “is this particular task taking me closer to my goals, or is this particular task taking me away from my goals?” When it comes to time, you can’t have both. Time can’t be kept, it can only be used, or wasted. There are 86,400 seconds in a day, once they are gone, they are gone. You will never get them back. You will never have a second opportunity to live any one moment twice. The choice is completely yours to seize it, or let it dissipate. You need to first make the decision to commit to dedicating your time to the important, not the urgent or useless. You see, the mind initiates action and action initiates results, therefore always being cognizant of where you spend your time is the foundation to getting more done and achieving your highest priorities. In addition to the question above, a more tactical way to analyze time spent and create deeper awareness is by using Franklin Covey’s “the time matrix”.

This quadrant has also been known as the quadrant of deception because if not properly categorized, tasks can appear to be falsely important on the surface. In the lower right hand corner, write “Quadrant 4”. This quadrant is known as the quadrant of waste and is composed of those activities that are neither urgent, nor important. Lastly, but certainly not least, and in fact is the absolute most important quadrant, is in the upper right hand corner, write and star or highlight “Quadrant 2”. This quadrant is known as the quadrant of effectiveness and productivity. This is the quadrant that you want to attempt to spend most of your time in. These include activities like training, professional development, studying your craft, working out, reading, relationship building, enhancing the showroom experience, proactive lead generation, process development, etc. Can you imagine if you spent all of your time in quadrant 2? Tons of amazing things will happen as a result! Unfortunately, this quadrant is the most neglected because you must “proactively” make time for activities in quadrant 2 because again, they are important, but not urgent. Let’s define the difference between urgent and important. Urgent activities are those activities that are demanding your attention. For example if someone approaches you with the new gossip of the dealership, even though it isn’t important, it is seeking your immediate attention. This would be a quadrant 3 activity (a distraction).  Quadrant 1 activities, like an angry customer, is both seeking your immediate attention and is also very important. The first example should be ignored, while the second example should be acted upon immediately. Some other examples for quadrant 3 (the quadrant of distraction) are useless meetings, useless emails, useless phone calls, gossip, whining and complaining, and all activities that are distractions disguised as opportunities. Some quadrant 4 activities would be random social media engagement, excessive smoke breaks and bathroom breaks, sleeping in demos, binge watching Netflix, and any other activity that equates to a complete waste of time and is an utter distraction to personal, professional and company goals. 

Now that you understand the time matrix and how it functions, I task you to fill out your own time matrix based on your specific activities, tasks and environment. For quadrants 3 and 4, I want you to identify specific activities and tasks that are currently taking you away from spending your time in the right places. As for quadrant number 2, I want you to fill up that quadrant with all of the activities that you should, want, or wish to be spending your time doing. Those activities should serve your mission, purpose, goals, and relationships. Once you are done creating your own time matrix, it should act as your time compass.  Remember to live above the line by completely eliminating quadrants 3 and 4, and living and working in quadrants 1 and 2. 

Your completed time matrix will not only guide you in WHAT to do, but what NOT to do. Specifically, I suggest you create a STOP DOING LIST. Sometimes it’s not necessarily about what we need to do, but rather what we need to STOP doing. You can simply take all of your quadrant 3 and quadrant 4 activities and put them in a list. Hang it near by as a constant reminder of what NOT to do with your time. Maybe even consider hanging your list next to a photo of an important person, or people in your life, to act as a symbol for what matters and as a deterrent to distractions and waste. 

GI Joe says “knowing is half the battle”. Now that you have the knowledge, you must execute. The second step in time maximization success is growing your discipline muscles. Having discipline is doing what you need to do, rather than what you want to do. The more you work your discipline muscles, the more they will grow and the easier it will become to spend your time in the right places. 

The third step is to work each day by design, rather than default. This can be accomplished through weekly planning. You want to plan the week ahead on a Sunday or Monday morning PRIOR to the day starting. This process should take you about 15-20 minutes. However, prior to doing your weekly planning, it is imperative to first identify a few things. One, what is your personal and professional mission? Two, what is most important to you personally and professionally? Three, who are the most important people to you? Prior to planning your week, you will want to remind yourself of these things so that when reviewing your weekly activities almost EVERY activity should serve your personal and professional mission, your relationships, and what is important to you on a personal level and professional level. You then need to determine the different roles you play at home and at the dealership. Once your roles are identified, you need to identify the tasks/activities that are going to have the greatest impact on those specific roles for the week and plot them on the calendar for the week. You should treat each activity like a doctor’s appointment that you wouldn’t miss. After all, what gets scheduled, gets done!

Karen Bradley is the CEO of Dealer Synergy, an Award Winning Sales Training, Consulting and Accountability Firm. She has over 13 years automotive sales experience and has directly helped over 1,300 roof tops and tens of thousands of automotive sales professionals evolve personally and professionally. She is a Franklin Covey official partner and a world-renowned time maximization expert.