Leadership 101: Do It, or Delegate It, Now!

If you're a sales or finance manager in a busy store, the way you organize yourself or your office can have a serious impact on your bottom line, which also means the dealer's bottom line. The way you organize and manage the flow of your responsibilities, your deals in progress, and your paperwork is a key element of successful management, so stay tuned.

In my life I have learned a ton of lessons that really helped me. Thirty years ago I was not the most organized person on the planet. My first promotion was to Sales Manager. I had a ton of success selling cars, and the move to Sales Manager was easy for me. Desk some deals. Close some deals. Pump up the staff. It was a busy Ford store, lots of managers around. All about selling and closing. Easy. Then one day, an opportunity came up to be a General Sales Manager at a Chrysler store. I took it.

All of a sudden it was an onslaught of paper piling up on my desk. “Andy, line one”, “Take a message!” Pink message slips, service work orders, delivered files, reports and an untold number of various other responsibilities began to pile up in my first few weeks as I scrambled and stressed to catch up. Not only was I the GSM, but I was also the desk manager, desking deals all day long while trying to juggle 100 other things. There was a used car manager flying around- basically it was me and ten sales guys.

If I was going to survive, I couldn’t let things pile up.

Then one day as I sat down at my desk, I’d only been there a few weeks, I stared down at this pile of aging message slips and tons of other paper in front of me, stressed, and the phone rang. “Take a message”, and there it was: one more pink message slip on my pile. It seemed insurmountable. At that moment I had a realization. If I was going to survive, I couldn’t let things pile up, any longer. It was literally sink or swim. So I closed my door and spent the next eight hours working through that mess. Returned every call. Inspected and signed every internal work order. Dealt with every report, issue, and message hanging over me. In the end it was an amazing feeling. A clean desk.

Then a salesperson came in with a deal to work. I was ready. In the middle of it the phone rang, and I took it, I spent a few seconds on the call and returned to the deal. From that day on I would follow one simple rule of management. “Do it or delegate it in the moment. If you can’t, do it in the next available moment. A clean desk.” If the phone rang, I would take the call, every time. If a document arrived for me to inspect it, I would do it right away. If a deal required signing of, I took a moment and I did it.

If you’re a finance manager, your office should have files that are awaiting various things to happen. You could have a group of files that are waiting for answers from the bank. You could have a group of files waiting for customer action. You hopefully have a group of files printed for delivery. But you know what you shouldn’t have? A group of files waiting for you to do something with them. There should be no, “waiting to be submitted” group of files. If you can submit a deal, then submit it. What are you waiting for? Are you in a rush to get home? Does your shift end in one minute? The same applies for deliveries. If it's a done deal, if it's approved by the bank, print the friggin' file. What are you waiting for? For the customer to arrive and have to wait while you print the file? Are you waiting for the morning when there are no customers, except of course customers show up in the morning all the time?

Don’t use some creative office organizational structure that establishes a framework for planned procrastination.

Here’s the thing. There is no pile of things to do, that you can do now. There is no “waiting to be submitted pile,” there is only submitted. There is no “waiting to be printed for delivery” pile or group of files, only ready for delivery. There is a simple set of rules that govern the efficient operation of a busy finance office. One, touch every file every day. And second, move every file forward as far as it can go EVERY DAY! It can’t wait until tomorrow. The busier the office, the more the need for these rules. There is no pile of files waiting for you to action, that can be actioned, except for the one that’s right in front of you. Do absolutely everything, the moment you can do it. Don’t procrastinate. Don’t use some creative office organizational structure that establishes a framework for planned procrastination. If you have one place for things that are ready to be done, and that’s right in front of you while you’re doing them, then you’ll be successful.

If you’re a sales manager, the same rules apply to you, you should be enforcing them with your team. Do it. Now. Stay until it’s done. If you do a bunch of deals on a Saturday, stay and submit them. If the phone rings, answer it. If it’s a problem, deal with it. Do it! Now!

The amazing thing about the whole practice of dealing with everything possible in the moment, or at least in the next available moment, is that over time you become capable of handling a veritable mountain of responsibilities. You become capable of rising to higher levels of management and ownership. You learn at an unbelievable pace. The bottom line is this, if you’re looking at a pile of work in front of you wondering how you will get through it, or you have some work habit that involves putting things off that you could do in the moment, then you are limiting yourself, literally placing limits on what you are capable of instead of excelling. So do yourself and your employer a favour and do it now. Good luck and good selling!