Pub. 6 2016 Issue 3

10 AUTOMOBILE DEALER NEWS ILLINOIS www.illinoisdealers.com CONSULTANT’S CORNER Take Control of Your Activities! BY FRANCIS FAGAN, AUTOMOTIVE DEVELOPMENT GROUP T he “time management” concept has been around for a very long time. There are deluge of books, seminars and podcasts regarding this subject. Someone once said, “You cannot manage time”. Without getting into semantics, this point is correct – time cannot be controlled. Instead, what you can control are the activities you perform at any given time. In sales your world can be a chaotic. There are multiple interruptions that can distract you from your goal. Here are four principles that will help you stay focused on your activities to produce better results – awareness, choice, discipline and com- mitment. Awareness. Have you ever been in a sales situation and to- tally missed it? You were going through your process and were totally unaware that your potential client checked out. Now, think about the time you were physically lost because you were distracted and took a wrong turn. What made that feeling worse is you weren’t sure which direction you needed to travel to get to your destination. In today’s business environment you can easily get distracted by someone’s text or some form of notifica- tion on your phone. Taking action is imperative to achieving your goals. The awareness of what is going on around you is the first step in helping you identify the actions you need to take to