Last month we focused on Covey’s first habit of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: “Be Proactive” This month we are going to tackle the second habit: “Start with the End Result in Mind.” I walk into dealerships all over the United States and ask Internet sales managers, coordinators and directors how much money they want to make. For the most part, people in this business wind up here by accident or by circumstance. But we are all here to make a living. And that is what I love about this business. You really can make as much as you can earn.

Again and again, I see dealers who tell me their stories of how they started out selling cars, and now own multiple dealerships. Personally, I was a BDC director for more than five years; now I am the CEO of a national company. I love the car business, but how do we get there?

How do we go from ordinary to extraordinary?

Sean V. Bradley, CEO of Dealer Synergy, an international automotive training organization, has been active with Dealer 20 Groups sponsored by both NADA and NCM over the last few years. He has spoken before over 45 of these groups and has addressed 1100 dealer principals and general managers from some of the top automotive dealerships in the industry.  Sean has also been a speaker at the JD Power and Associates Internet Roundtable event in 2007, and has been a general session speaker at the Automotive Association of Internet Sales Professionals conference.

Dealer Synergy has also built and developed the very successful Synergy Sessions Event, which is a two day training program featuring some of the top speakers and industry experts, sharing new information and best practices with dealers looking for cutting edge solutions.  Last year Sean V. Bradley initiated the Internet Sales 20 Group column in the monthly magazine, AutoSuccess which is distributed to 25,000 owners and managers at dealerships in the United States.  The column took many of the ideas from the actual 20 groups and expanded on them to provide incredible insights to the magazine’s readers.

These are truly exciting times! Two main topics for this month’s column:

• 7 Habits of Highly Effective Online Dealerships
• Internet Sales 20 group’s Internet Director Immersion Program

Last month we discussed the awesome success of the Synergy Sessions and I promised to go over my interpretation of Stephen Covey’s book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I have had a tremendous amount of feedback in regards to the Franklin Covey and Dealer Synergy “7 Habits of Highly Effective Online Dealerships”.

I have come to realize that there is no way I can do Dr. Stephen Covey’s book any justice by a simple article so I have decided to turn it into a 7 part series. Each month I will focus on one of Covey’s “7 Habits”. This month I will begin the series with the first habit “Be Proactive”. There are several interpretations for this, but for this article we will focus on one, and that is take initiative; don’t wait on things to “just happen”.  

This was the first major event in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina, and, rest assured, New Orleans is definitely a great place to attend a show. The W hotel is a nice, modern hotel and they did a great job putting the event showroom together.

There is so much to go over, I am smiling as I am typing out this article I had so much fun there! Let’s start with a special thanks to Jeff Kershner from Dealer Refresh (www.dealerrefresh.com). Jeff allowed Dealer Synergy and AutoSuccess to post a contest on his blog here (http://www.dealerrefresh.com/my_weblog/2008/03/win-a-free-trip.html). The contest was to get managers and dealers to post ideas to Dealer Refresh on what they thought would make the Synergy Sessions the best possible event in the automotive industry for Internet sales, BDC and technology. We received a lot of feedback and a lot of great ideas.