Today we have a guest editorial from Andy Warren.

No, I was never a used car salesman, but I did spend a few months working Friday nights at the local auto auction and that was an interesting experience. We’d start work around 4 pm on Friday as the cars arrived, the delivery driver would bring it to the gate, and then one of our drivers would park it in the assigned spot and run back for the next one. About two hours of controlled chaos.

At 6 pm we’d shift into display mode. Cars were assigned to different categories based on type and expected sales price, and we’d be assigned to support a category. We had a list of cars to display. Go find the next one (keys in the ignition), turn the radio up, get the AC going, adjust the seats and the mirror, and drive it up to the auction area to get in line. Then you’d just sit in the car, listening to the radio, enjoying the cool air, waiting your turn.

Finally, time to pull up in front of perhaps 50 people in bleach type seating. You’d pull up quickly, put it in park, pop the hood release, wait for the helper to lift the hood, and then rev the engine a few times. Buyers would come over to ask you (now the expert on this car) if it drove ok, if the brakes worked right, etc. Bidding would be done in a minute or so, then the hood would get slammed and you’d race off to park it and grab the next car.

It was an interesting experience. I drove a lot of different kinds of cars, all with the controls placed slightly differently, but after a while you saw the pattern and adjusted without thinking. It was also interesting to watch the buyers make a deal to spend thousands of dollars based on a pre-auction look over and then a couple minutes of the car running as the bidding went on.

The lesson for me? If you want to be good at something, you’ve got to do it a lot, and with a lot of variations. Repetition doesn’t always equal experience, but you never get experience without repetition.