Why are salespeople not spending their time selling and how does this affect sales productivity?
Sales growth is often sought through new channels, better lead generation and working harder.
But one fundamental issue is too often overlooked:
➡️ How much time do our salespeople spend on actual sales and how much on other work?
Research shows that this is not a small phenomenon. ❌
Only 30-40% of salespeople's time is spent on core sales functions and up to 60-70% on support tasks. This has a direct impact on sales productivity, sales team capacity and turnover.
ℹ️ This blog explores why time is wasted in sales, what it costs and how B2B companies can free up a significant amount of time to put back into customer work and create growth.
How much time is spent on non-sales activities?
In many organisations, salespeople's calendars are filled with tasks that do not drive sales forward. According to research:
⚠️ only about a third of a salesperson's working time is customer work
⚠️ up to 70% of time can be spent on administrative tasks
⚠️ sellers themselves consider that they spend too little time selling and too much time on "compulsory routines".
The administrative work involved in B2B sales places a significant burden on salespeople and takes up a large part of their week. In many organisations, this administrative burden is one of the main factors holding back sales productivity and growth.
Where does the sales team spend their time?
The same time slots are repeated in sales teams:
🔴 Customer data entry and CRM updates
🔴 Background work and information retrieval
🔴 Draft offers and contracts
🔴 Internal meetings and coordination
🔴 Reconciliation of emails and calendars
🔴 Reporting and other manual tasks.
These are important tasks in themselves, but if they take up more than half your working week, it's worth stopping and asking:
❓ Why is the seller doing all this himself? And which of these tasks could be automated?
What does wasted time cost in sales?
Time wastage is not shown as a separate line in the budget, but its impact is still directly reflected in the results.
If a company has 10 salespeople and each one spends 15 hours a week on non-sales activities, there will be wasted time:
‼️ 150 hours per week = almost 4 person-weeks.
It is direct sales capacity that remains unused.
When time management becomes just a little bit more efficient:
✅ Increased number of customer meetings
✅ Shorter sales cycles
✅ Clearer sales pipeline
✅ Improved salesperson energy and motivation
➡️ So it's not just about efficiency, it's about better quality and performance.
What about the motivation of the sellers?
Manual work not only takes time. It consumes energy and reduces the meaningfulness of the work.
When much of the week is spent on repetitive tasks:
❌ motivation decreases
❌ frustration grows
❌ risk of error rises
❌ Increased turnover.
Salespeople are not able to do what they do best: meeting customers, building trust and moving the deal forward.
All this load, invisible at first glance, is ultimately reflected directly in productivity.
How to reduce wasted time in sales
Find out where the time goes.
Without data, you can't lead.Identify bottlenecks.
Repetitive routine tasks can often be automated.Automate critical steps.
CRM updates, notes, background work and reporting can be handled with high quality using AI and automation.Monitor the impact.
Even small changes are usually quickly reflected in sales productivity.
💡 Note: Revial enables a turnkey solution for all this, including automated data flow and AI-assisted mapping, questioning and follow-up.
How much time does your sales team spend on non-sales activities?
Try our waste calculator.
Get the result in seconds and see the results in real time:
how much time is wasted
how much this will cost in euros.
Summary: what every sales manager should understand about wasting time.
The use of salespeople's time has a significant impact on sales productivity. Based on research:
60-70% of salespersons' working time is spent on administrative and manual tasks.
Most of the time wasted comes from fragmented, repetitive work such as CRM updates, preparation and internal coordination.
Unnecessary manual work slows down the sales pipeline, reduces the number of customer encounters and undermines preparation.
Reducing time wastage can free up 20-40% more sales capacity without recruitment.
By automating routines and streamlining the flow of information, the quality of sales, customer experience and growth potential are immediately improved.
Understanding and improving time management is one of the biggest untapped sources of growth in B2B sales organisations.
Sources
Salesforce (2024). Sales Statistics: How Great Teams Sell.
https://www.salesforce.com/blog/15-sales-statistics/Forrester Research (2024). Sales Productivity Benchmark.
https://www.forrester.com/resources/sales-productivity/benchmark/Forrester (2024). Using the Forrester Sales Productivity Benchmark to Maximize Reps' Relative Productivity.
https://www.forrester.com/report/using-the-forrester-sales-productivity-benchmark-to-maximize-reps-relative-productivity/RES173725/Fellow.ai (2024). AI Note-Taker for Sales Teams.
https://fellow.ai/blog/ai-note-taker-for-sales-teams/McKinsey (2022). The Future of B2B Sales.
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/the-future-of-b2b-sales
