Most sales managers have noticed that their teams are not actively selling throughout their 8 to 10-hour workday. In fact, many car dealership salespeople spend only about 5-6 hours per day on active selling, while the rest of their time is consumed by other tasks.
The reason? There are many, but it’s important to highlight that it’s not due to ‘laziness’—rather, it’s a series of non-sales activities that take up their day.
Research confirms this: on average, salespeople spend less than 40% of their working time on actual selling [1]. In other words, more than half of their day is spent on tasks like paperwork, data entry, meetings, and other activities that do not directly generate revenue [2].
This article will explore the common reasons behind this limited selling time, analyze how it affects productivity and revenue, and offer practical tips to help your team spend more time selling cars and less time on other tasks.
Common Causes of Limited Active Selling
Even top-performing sales teams struggle to maximize their effective selling hours. Here are some of the most common reasons:
1. Excessive Administrative Work (Paperwork & Data Entry)
Ask any car salesperson about their day, and they’ll tell you about mountains of paperwork and endless records. Financing forms, CRM data updates, email quotes, call logs—these tasks eat up valuable time.
A study found that salespeople spend nearly 6 hours per week just logging activities into CRM systems, and about 25% spend more than 8 hours per week on data reporting [3]. That’s almost a full workday per week just entering information!
All this paperwork (sales documents, DMV forms, credit applications, etc.) reduces the hours that could be spent with customers and closing deals [1].
2. Inefficient Tools & Processes
Many sales teams are overloaded with outdated systems, redundant processes, and a lack of automation. If your dealership software isn’t integrated or requires multiple manual steps that could be automated, your team ends up wasting time on low-value tasks.
For example, if a salesperson has to enter the same customer information into three different systems (CRM, inventory, financing), it’s an obvious waste of time. Additionally, unintuitive CRMs lead salespeople to use alternatives like spreadsheets, doubling their workload [2]. It has also been found that salespeople only spend around 18% of their time using CRM, partly because they find it frustrating.
Internal processes such as getting management approvals or locating inventory can also consume valuable time. One study found that dealing with internal policies and approvals takes up an average of 12.8% of a salesperson’s time [2].
3. Meetings, Training Sessions, and Other Distractions
Salespeople are often pulled into frequent meetings, calls, or non-sales-related activities that disrupt their workflow.
In the automotive industry, it’s common to start the day with a sales meeting, have midday meetings, or attend product training sessions. While these activities are important, excessive meetings cut into selling time. Research indicates that salespeople spend about 15-20% of their time in meetings [2].
Additionally, when salespeople have to manage test drives, coordinate with the service department, or handle paperwork issues, their day gets even more fragmented.
At a dealership, there may also be downtime when customer traffic is low, but if that time isn’t used productively (e.g., prospecting or following up), it turns into wasted time instead of selling time.
The Negative Impact on Productivity and Revenue
When your sales team is only actively selling for 5–6 hours a day, it directly affects your dealership’s performance. Think of it this way: every hour not spent with a customer is potential revenue lost.
Here are some key ways this time imbalance harms productivity and sales results:
Fewer Customer Interactions = Fewer Sales
Less selling time means representatives simply talk to fewer customers, make fewer calls, and conduct fewer demonstrations. This translates to fewer opportunities to close deals.
If a salesperson could serve three customers per day but only reaches two due to other tasks, this represents a significant drop in potential sales over time. As a dealership-focused report states:
“Every hour spent on administrative tasks or data entry is an hour not spent on the showroom floor, interacting with customers, or closing a sale.” [1]
Over weeks and months, those lost selling hours can lead to a significant decline in units sold and missed sales targets.
Low Productivity and Missed Sales Goals
When more than half of a salesperson’s day is consumed by non-selling tasks, their sales productivity (sales per representative) naturally declines. They may struggle to meet their quotas—not because they lack sales skills, but simply because they don’t have enough time to sell.
In fact, these administrative and internal tasks are effectively “killing your sales” by limiting representatives’ sales activities [2].
In this context, it’s no surprise that many sales organizations see only a fraction of their team hitting their quotas in a given year. The less time reps have to nurture leads and follow up, the harder it is to build a strong pipeline and consistently close deals.
Revenue Loss and Missed Growth Opportunities
Small inefficiencies add up to huge costs. For example, if your team collectively loses dozens of hours per week on manual data entry or waiting on slow processes, those are dozens of hours not being invested in generating revenue.
Those hours could have been used to schedule more appointments, make more follow-up calls, or respond faster to online inquiries—something critical in auto sales for closing deals. The impact on financial results can be significant.
One analysis found that companies that successfully recover and refocus their reps’ time on selling experience a 26% improvement in sales productivity compared to their less efficient competitors [3].
Conversely, if your team is bogged down by administrative work, you’re essentially paying for labor that doesn’t translate into sales. Over a year, the lost revenue opportunity for each wasted sales hour can be incredibly high.
Negative Customer Experience
Another downside is a worse customer experience. If salespeople are tied up with paperwork or internal issues, they may take longer to greet customers, follow up on inquiries, or respond to calls and emails.
Today’s buyers expect fast, attentive service. If representatives are too busy, prospects go cold, and buyers feel ignored.
A prospect might send an online inquiry and not receive a response for hours because the salesperson is in a meeting or entering data; by then, the customer may have lost interest or gone to a competitor.
Thus, limited selling time can indirectly lead to lost sales due to slow responses and decreased customer satisfaction.
Sales Team Frustration and Burnout
A key issue is that spending most of the day on non-sales tasks demotivates salespeople. Most sales professionals thrive on interacting with customers and closing deals—that’s what they enjoy and excel at. If, instead, they find themselves buried in forms and reports, frustration builds.
Over time, this can hurt morale and even increase turnover within your team [4]. Talented salespeople may choose to leave for an environment where they can sell more and do less administrative work.
High turnover, of course, brings its own costs and productivity losses. Keeping your team in a low-selling-time situation can create a vicious cycle: their work becomes less rewarding, which can push them to leave, further damaging sales performance.
How to Increase Your Sales Team’s Active Selling Time
It may not be possible to eliminate all non-sales-related tasks, but there are many strategies to maximize the time salespeople spend selling.
Automation for Routine Tasks
One of the quickest ways to give your salespeople more selling time is to automate repetitive administrative tasks whenever possible.
Identify time-consuming activities that don’t require creativity or human persuasion (such as data entry, activity logging, routine follow-up emails, etc.) and explore tools to handle them automatically.
For example, you can use software or CRM features that automatically log emails, calls, and customer interactions so that salespeople don’t have to manually take notes after every contact [1].
Many modern CRM systems allow integration with phones and emails to automatically capture these touchpoints. Similarly, consider using automated scheduling tools for test drives and appointments, allowing customers to select an available time online, which is then automatically added to the salesperson’s calendar without unnecessary calls.
You can also automate follow-up communications: set up predefined email or text message templates that trigger after a visit, so the system sends a thank-you note or a financing reminder on behalf of the salesperson.
Use Your CRM (and Other Tools) More Efficiently
For most dealerships, the CRM is the main tool for managing leads and sales activities, but it’s only as useful as its proper utilization. If your sales team is underutilizing the CRM or finding workarounds, it’s a sign that the tool may need optimization or that the team needs better training.
Make sure your CRM is truly supporting the sales process instead of hindering it. This could mean customizing fields or workflows to better fit your dealership’s needs, avoiding cumbersome data entry. It could also mean integrating the CRM with other systems (inventory databases, email platforms, etc.) to prevent double data entry.
Encourage your team to fully adopt the CRM as their sole source of customer information, avoiding spreadsheets or physical notes that end up consuming more time. Provide training on CRM shortcuts and features, as salespeople often overlook tools that could save them time. For example, teach them to schedule task reminders within the CRM instead of using sticky notes or how to use tags and filters to generate quick follow-up lists of potential customers. The goal is to make the CRM a time-saver rather than a task generator.
It’s worth noting that salespeople generally spend only a small portion of their time on the CRM (approximately 18%) [2], partly due to inefficiencies, which indicates room for improvement.
Provide Training to Improve Efficiency
Sometimes, the problem is not what tasks are being done but how they are being done. Effective training and coaching can significantly improve your team’s time management and responsibilities. This includes training on newly implemented tools or processes (to fully leverage automation and CRM features) as well as reminders on time management techniques.
Simple practices like time blocking (e.g., setting specific times of the day for administrative tasks versus client calls) can help salespeople stay focused and work more efficiently, but they may need guidance and support to adopt these habits. Also, consider training on the sales process itself; a well-trained salesperson can handle customer interactions more smoothly, reducing the need for prolonged follow-ups and preventing them from getting stuck on a single deal.
In fact, companies that prioritize employee training experience significant productivity improvements: a global study found that organizations are 17% more productive when employees receive the training they need [4].
In a dealership, this could translate into more cars sold per salesperson. Additionally, training boosts morale (employees feel the company is investing in them) and reduces the need for constant supervision.
Redesign Workflows to Prioritize Selling Time
Critically analyze your team’s daily workflow and eliminate unnecessary steps or distractions that pull them away from selling. Often, a few adjustments in policies or processes can free up a significant amount of time.
For example, if salespeople are handling tasks that could be managed by support staff or sales assistants, consider reassigning those responsibilities. Some dealerships hire documentation specialists who manage most of the paperwork once a deal is closed, allowing the salesperson to move on to the next customer.
Even if you don’t have a dedicated role for this, perhaps finance managers or the administrative team can take on more paperwork after the sale, so salespeople don’t spend hours printing forms.
Digitizing paperwork is also a major improvement: use electronic forms and digital signatures for credit applications and purchase agreements. This way, customers can complete forms online in advance, and the information is uploaded directly into your system, avoiding manual data entry [1].
Final Thoughts
Increasing your team’s active selling time won’t happen overnight, but by tackling these issues step by step, you can make a significant difference.
A motivated and productive sales team with enough time to properly serve customers will generate more repeat sales and referrals, creating a positive cycle of success. Let’s boost those active selling hours—and with them, your sales results!
Sources:
[1] How to Reduce Administrative Work for Your Dealership’s Sales Team
[2] Sales Reps Only Spend 36.6% of Time Actually Selling
[3] Salespeople Spend on Average 5.9 Hours Per Week Manually Logging Data into CRM – NEW
[4] Employee Training Statistics, Trends, and Data in 2025
