Wasted Time

Automotive Salespeople spent only one-quarter of their time selling last year. The average time not in front of a customer is 5.5 hours a day.

Yikes. That’s pretty rough.

Why do we continue having our sales staff come in just to wait around when they should be focused on setting appointments? As an industry, $6.15 billion is spent on advertising aimed at driving droves of customers to dealerships as the sole source for hitting new revenue targets. Advertising is certainly necessary, but let’s not forget that increased sales productivity is a simple solution that provides more sustainable revenue growth.

In fact, sales productivity has emerged as one of the greatest concerns among businesses today. Sales productivity is the rate at which a salesperson acquires revenue for an organization. Rather than salespeople working harder, have them work smarter by having salespeople use their time more effectively.

Don’t misunderstand what I am saying, working hard is a requirement and there is no way around that. Having serious hustle is mandatory. If you’ve ever heard the saying, “work smarter, not harder,” then I’m sure you’ve been a bit upset at the idea that someone might be discrediting the value of hard work. I’m not.

You need both. I know that, on the flip side, some dealers have discredited the idea of “working smarter” because they don’t feel it really matters if you hustle your way out of a problem; THAT is a problem. If that’s your strategy, and you think that you work hard solely because you put in unbelievable hours each week, then I’m here to tell you that you’re lazy.

Allow me to explain. Lazy is defined as someone “characterized by lack of effort or care.” Everyone loves to focus on that first part. Putting in the time, giving it your all, that’s all you need right? Well, what about “care?” If you care about something then you give “serious attention or consideration to doing something correctly,” and no one could argue the importance of that characteristic for any employee. Yet there are managers that are, by definition, at least partially lazy all around the country.

So why does that matter? It matters because the leadership team at your dealership drives sales productivity or idleness. Couple that with the entire point of this article, which is that increased sales productivity is a simple solution that provides sustainable revenue growth, and you have your answer. You need your management driving sales productivity, or else you will have idleness in sales.

Here is a simple place to begin if you find yourself behind the curve. Consider the average time with fresh walk-ins, 1.5 hours, versus the average time spent with an appointment, which is 2.5 hours. Extremely boring numbers, until you pair it with the fact that only 14% of walk-ins are being closed compared to 50% of all appointments!

Keep in mind that the point is not to start ripping apart walk-ins to increase that 14% closing ratio, but to INCREASE the number of appointments that your salespeople are driving to your dealership. This will increase your revenue, and do so much more.  Going back to the first statement, salespeople have 5.5 hours a day to make them.

It’s about finding the right combination of productivity and hustle, and I’m confident that as an industry we are heading in the right direction.