Time-Consuming Processes: How Manual Tasks Slow Down Sales & Service — and How Automation Relieves Dealership Teams

Why Salespeople Spend Only Around 28% of Their Time Selling

If you ask a salesperson why they entered the automotive trade, you rarely hear: “Because of Excel reports.” Yet for many sales managers, that is everyday reality.

According to the latest State of Sales Report by Salesforce, sales representatives spend on average only 28% of their workweek actually selling. Administration, internal coordination, data maintenance, and reporting consume most of their time.

In dealerships, teams spend more than 70% of valuable working time on tasks other than consulting, test drives, closing deals, or active follow-ups. In other words, there is barely any time left for the activities that actually generate revenue.

This is not an individual employee problem. It is a structural issue.

A Typical Day in Dealership Sales

A sales manager at a mid-sized dealership might start the day at 8:00 a.m. by reviewing new leads.

These come from manufacturer portals, the internal CRM, third-party platforms, and the dealership website. Unfortunately, the systems don’t capture all data properly. The systems create duplicate records, and they often miss phone numbers.

By 9:30 a.m., the sales manager is updating campaign lists. This means exporting data from the CRM, reconciling it in Excel, cleaning it up, and re-importing it.

These steps take time — and now it is already 11:00 a.m. The sales manager prepares a report for management. Unfortunately, the DMS provides different data than the CRM. The employee must manually consolidate the numbers.

At 2:00 p.m., a prospect calls. The team documented the last interaction only in the manufacturer portal, which leaves the history incomplete. The sales manager must fill in the gaps and possibly ask for information again.

At 4:30 p.m., the sales manager is following up with prospects. However, follow-up reminders are maintained manually. Important information gets lost, and appointments are forgotten.

The result: high effort, high error rates, and too little time for what truly drives revenue.

Tool Overload Instead of Productivity

The excessive workload is not only caused by individual tasks, but by system fragmentation.

According to Salesforce, sales teams today use an average of around ten different tools. The Salesforce report also confirms that navigating so many systems is challenging: 66% of respondents say they feel overwhelmed by tool diversity. At the same time, 94% of sales organizations plan stronger system consolidation to work more productively in the future.

Although these figures are collected across various industries, they reflect the dealership reality as well. Generally speaking, car dealerships use the following tools:

Each system makes sense individually and provides value. But together, they create a patchwork landscape that increases workload and error susceptibility.

The core pain point in dealerships is multiple data maintenance. A customer is created in the CRM, exists simultaneously in the DMS, and also appears in the manufacturer portal. When changes are made, they are not synchronized everywhere.

This leads to:

Multiple data maintenance ultimately costs time, that is missing in customer conversations, and revenue.

Automation in Dealerships: Where Real Relief Is Possible

The question is not whether processes should be digitized — in most cases, they already are.The key question is whether they are automated and integrated.

1. Automate Lead Routing

Many dealerships still distribute leads manually or semi-automatically. This consumes time and can create friction.

Automated lead routing assigns inquiries based on defined rules, such as brand, location, model, or workload. This reduces response times and increases transparency.

2. System-Based Follow-Up Management

Follow-ups are one of the strongest revenue levers, yet they are often neglected.

Automation can simplify follow-up processes at car dealerships. Automated workflows can:

• Trigger reminders for sales staff,
• Send automatic follow-up emails,
• Escalate to team leaders if leads remain unattended.

This ensures that no contact is overlooked.

3. Automate Service Communication

Reminders of general inspections, maintenance intervals, or seasonal checks are often prepared manually. Automation in dealerships can simplify this as well.

Automated journeys can trigger service campaigns based on mileage, vehicle age, or last workshop visit.

This not only relieves marketing teams, but also stabilizes workshop utilization.

4. Consolidate Data Sources

Without clean data, automation cannot function properly. A centralized customer record that combines CRM, DMS, and other sources reduces duplicate maintenance and improves data quality.

This is the greatest lever for minimizing time-consuming processes.

VEACT as an Enabler of Integrated Workflows

This is exactly where platform solutions like VEACT come in.

Instead of manually planning campaigns and maintaining Excel lists, processes are modeled as end-to-end customer journeys.

With a drag-and-drop journey builder, you can define fully automated workflows:

• Lead routing upon entry
• Automatic welcome and follow-up communication
• Service reminders
• Reactivation of inactive customers
• Data updates when statuses change

The goal is not to replace people, but to free employees from repetitive administrative tasks so they can use their time more effectively.

The benefits for dealerships are clear: less manual list maintenance, fewer system breaks, and fewer errors.

That way sales managers have more time for consultations and closing deals.

Why Now Is the Right Time to Act

The automotive sector faces major challenges — and they are just increasing:

• Growing competitive pressure
• Expanding complexity through electromobility and new sales models
• Higher customer expectations for response speed and personalization

If salespeople continue to spend only 28% of their time selling, dealerships are wasting significant revenue potential.

Automation and system consolidation are therefore necessary productivity initiatives. They must go beyond technical implementation and instead examine and potentially redesign all processes.

Concrete Next Steps for Your Dealership

1. Conduct a process inventory: List all recurring administrative tasks affecting your sales and service departments.
2. Measure time expenditure: Realistically estimate how many hours per week are spent on data maintenance, reporting, and manual campaigns.
3. Analyze your system landscape: Create an overview of the tools in use and identify areas of duplicate work.
4. Define priorities: Start with processes that occur frequently and can be clearly standardized.
5. Pilot instead of launching a large-scale project Begin with a clearly defined workflow, such as automated lead routing or general inspection reminders. Then expand step by step.

Conclusion

If more than 70% of working time is spent on administration, reporting, and tool operation, salespeople have too little time to sell. Revenue losses are often not due to a lack of motivation, but to inefficient, time-consuming processes.

At the same time, many teams feel overwhelmed by system complexity. This is why the trend is increasingly moving toward tool consolidation.

Those who automate processes and integrate systems gain one crucial asset: time.

That time can be invested profitably in customers, consulting, and closing deals.

If you want to assess where the greatest automation potential lies in your dealership, take a structured look at your workflows. Sustainable efficiency improvements start exactly there.