How does one automotive sales professional sell 130 cars a month while another only sells 9.6? Your results, your team’s results, and the dealership’s results are a direct reflection of where people spend their time. There are only 86,400 seconds in a day. Once they are gone, they’re gone. It doesn’t matter how hard dealership team members work, their intent, or how many hours they put in. It’s about the end result and the organization’s gain. Unfortunately, with the average salesperson selling only 9.6 cars per month, many automotive professionals are underperforming. This makes management unhappy, and it’s because the members of the dealership are spending their time in the wrong places. It’s easy to spend your time in the wrong places in the dealership environment while feeling overwhelmed and like nothing has been accomplished. Maybe there are too many distractions, little direction as to where to spend time, and tasks are not assigned according to priority levels with too many fires to put out. Teach your people how to put the most important things first, and eliminate distractions disguised as opportunities. Watch how your dealership will be transformed! Below you will find the most common time maximization and organization challenges that exist in the automotive sales industry today, and if applicable to you and your dealership, we can assist in solving the challenges:
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The Top 5 Challenges Plaguing My Time Maximization and Organization:
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1. Work by Default, Rather than by Design
Most automotive professionals arrive at the dealership each day and allow the day to take them wherever it goes. They have no real plan identified based on mission and goals. They have no weekly strategy for a wide view and no daily strategy for accountability to fulfill smaller tasks that drive larger tasks that eventually fulfill goals. Most salespeople have no monthly goals and projections for the number of units they want to hit. When asked their goal for the month and how that goal unit was decided, the common answer is usually “I don’t know, because it is a couple more than I did last month”. Then when asked where they are going to get those units from, they don’t know that answer either. Lastly, when asked how they are going to reach that number, the answer is usually work hard. If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there and this is the reason why goals fall flat, profits fall short and turnover is high.
If working by default, rather than by design is a challenge for you, Dealer Synergy can help:
- Create a dealership mission statement
- Create individual mission statements
- Create a weekly task roadmap
- Create a daily task roadmap
- Create monthly goals and projections
- Create management accountability measures
2. Don't Understand How to Prioritize your Weekly Planner
An overwhelming amount of automotive professionals work on what they “feel” is most important, rather than what actually is most important. They work on the “urgent” rather than the “important” and a lot of that decision has to do with misdirection from management. A team member is asked to complete a task and then 5 minutes later they are asked to do something else and they drop what they are currently doing to accomplish the newly assigned task. However, had the two tasks been assigned priority levels, there would be no guessing which of the two should be finished first. Another issue commonly seen in the dealership environment is automotive professionals working on lesser important items than most important items first. Again, because no priority level is assigned, the professional is left to make that decision. Often times, when given a choice, people in all industries will discriminate against tasks and complete the things they enjoy doing most first. Instead of putting “first things first”, they may put second, or third or fourth things first.
If failing to prioritize tasks is a challenge for you, Dealer Synergy can help:
- Teach the dealership how to use the time matrix to filter tasks
- Teach the dealership how to assign tasks by ABC order
- Teach the dealership to be mission-driven, not task-driven
- Teach the dealership to use priority-specific cues and language
- Teach management to communicate deadlines and importance
- Create a personal time matrix for each team member.
Help My People Work By Design and Understand How to Prioritize.
3. Distracted by Things Disguised as Opportunities
Without clear direction, it is easy to become sidetracked by distractions disguised as opportunities. Just because a new project seems like a good opportunity, if it isn’t moving the company mission and goals forward, it deserves zero focus. Any time spent on that opportunity is purely a waste of time. Each dealership member should be mission-driven, rather than task driven. Even something as simple as manually constructing emails to prospective customers at a less than 3% read open rate can be a distraction disguised as an opportunity, as opposed to making phone calls that provide a much higher return on investment. Time Maximization can sometimes be as simple as understanding when tasks and projects are a distraction and having the discipline to pass or turndown the task or project.
If getting distracted by things disguised as opportunities is a challenge for you, Dealer Synergy can help:
- Teach your people the time matrix
- Design career development paths for each team member
- Teach your people how to develop mission-driven discipline
- Teach your people the power of “no”
- Design a mission and goal-driven master task list
- Create product approval accountability via management
4. Lack of Consistency
Being consistent drives effectiveness and effectiveness drives success. The first step in creating consistency is determining which daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly tasks are needed to meet and exceed goals for each position in the dealership. Once all important tasks are listed, they must be organized on the same day each week or date each month, quarter or year and completed accordingly. This will ensure that the most important tasks are being completed not just here and there, but over and over again. Being truly effective is defined as getting the same desired results time and time again and the key to being effective is being consistent. Each automotive professional within the dealership should have a concrete weekly and daily plan to ensure consistency. By doing the same tasks over and over again, habits will be created and each dealership member will be able to accomplish more in less time.
If a lack of consistency is a challenge for you, Dealer Synergy can help:
- Create a weekly time maximization roadmap
- Create a daily task list roadmap
- Define the “big rocks” for each position at the dealership
- Identify which days, weeks, months and quarters to assign tasks
- Hold your team accountable for completing assigned tasks
- Provide sample task lists and recaps
Help My People Stay Focused and Be Consistent.
5. Time Management Spent in the Wrong Places
Our results are a direct reflection of how we spend our time. Therefore if time is being spent in the wrong places, it will be evident in the results. Some automotive professionals have been known to spend time whining and complaining, causing and perpetuating drama, gossiping, distracting others with talks of sports and celebrities, the weather, what’s for lunch and everything in between. How can anyone be productive spending their time in those scenarios? Or taking excessive smoke breaks, sleeping in demos, or surfing the web? How about useless meetings that could be solved with a simple company email, or constant needless interruptions? None of these activities is going to help the dealership sell more cars. Where is the accountability? Having the right time maximization measures in place will help create an environment where time is spent in the right places that will leads to selling more cars, more profitably and more often.
If spending time in the wrong places is a challenge for you, Dealer Synergy can help:
- Teach your team the time matrix
- Create a “stop doing list” for each team member
- Your team identify distractions disguised as opportunities
- Your team eliminate wasteful activities at the dealership
- Your team spend time “sharpening their saw”
- Train your team on the 5 Choices to Extraordinary Productivity