It’s a frustrating fact: sales reps spend more time on non-selling tasks than actually selling. In fact, research from CSO Insights shows that sales reps only spend 39% of their time selling (SPOTIO). But what if your team could reverse this trend? We’ll show you how to maximize selling time and balance essential—but non-revenue—tasks more efficiently.
The Importance of Time Management for Sales Reps
Sales reps have one major goal: closing deals. However, managing the different responsibilities throughout their day—from prospecting new leads to following up with contacts—can be challenging. Without effective time management, sales reps can lose valuable hours to tasks that don’t directly contribute to revenue generation.
41% of a sales rep’s time is spent on prospecting or generating sales orders, while only 36% is focused on building relationships or contacting customers. Another 20% is used for providing customer service, and just 10% for on-time planning and focus. This breakdown shows the need for prioritizing time spent on revenue-generating activities, such as interacting with customers and prospects.
One key to managing time effectively is maintaining a consistent cadence with tasks. Sales reps need to balance activities like prospecting, follow-ups, and administrative work while ensuring they spend the majority of their time selling. Without clear time blocks for each task, reps may lose momentum and fall behind on their primary goal—closing deals.
Breaking Down a Sales Rep’s Day
Sales reps have various tasks throughout the day, each playing an essential role in developing their sales pipeline. Here’s a breakdown of how time is typically spent and where improvements can be made to maximize efficiency and selling time.
Prospecting and Sales Generation
Prospecting is essential for filling the sales pipeline, but it takes up a large portion of a sales rep’s day—41% on average. This includes searching for leads, making cold calls, and sending outreach emails. While necessary, prospecting can become time-consuming and detract from time spent on more immediate selling opportunities By implementing strategies such as outsourcing prospecting or using automated lead generation tools, reps can reduce the time spent on this task while maintaining a steady pipeline.
Learn More: How to Improve Your Prospecting Strategy
Selling and Client Interaction
A significant part of the sales process involves nurturing relationships and maintaining client contact. 36% of a sales rep’s day is spent meeting with or contacting customers. This time is well-invested, as building relationships is key to long-term sales success. However, reps should ensure that the time spent in meetings and customer communications is efficient and purposeful, avoiding unnecessary or unproductive interactions.
Customer Service and Followups
Customer service is another important aspect of a sales rep’s role, accounting for 20% of their time. This includes addressing client concerns, providing product or service information, and resolving any issues. While this is a necessary part of the job, optimizing the customer service process—such as by leveraging support teams or streamlining communication channels—can free up more time for active selling.
Administrative Tasks
Lastly, 10% of a sales rep’s day is spent on planning, organizing tasks, and focusing on high-priority items. Although this is a relatively small portion of their day, time planning is crucial for maximizing efficiency. Sales reps should dedicate this time to organizing their day strategically, ensuring they prioritize revenue-generating tasks and maintain a clear focus on their targets.
If you’re looking to free up your sales team and focus on closing deals, partnering with a B2B lead generation service can help. With tailored solutions from Abstrakt Marketing Group, you can streamline sales rep training and build a healthy pipeline while keeping your team focused on what they do best.
How Much Time Should Reps Be Selling?
Sales reps spend their day managing a variety of tasks, but the critical question is: how much time should they actually spend selling? Ideally, the majority of a sales rep’s time should be focused on revenue-generating activities like engaging with prospects, conducting demos, and closing deals.
Experts suggest that sales reps should aim to spend at least 60-70% of their day actively selling. However, research shows that the reality is often very different—most sales reps spend only 35-39% of their time on direct selling tasks. The remaining hours are typically devoted to prospecting, administrative work, and meetings.
Exploring the Pareto Principle
A useful framework to consider here is the Pareto Principle, or the 80/20 rule, which suggests that 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts. For sales teams, this means that a relatively small portion of the day—ideally, the time spent directly engaging with clients—should account for the majority of revenue. The goal is to maximize selling time and minimize distractions from non-revenue tasks, such as data entry or attending excessive meetings.
To achieve this, sales teams should focus on improving efficiency with tools like automation, outsourcing non-selling tasks, and better structuring their day to prioritize revenue-driving activities.
Balancing Selling With Other Key Activities
Achieving the right balance between selling and other necessary activities is like juggling—you need to keep all the balls in the air, but not let any one ball dominate your attention. This is among the common mistakes made by reps. Sales reps need to prioritize revenue-generating tasks while ensuring that essential but non-revenue tasks, like CRM updates or internal meetings, don’t consume too much of their time.
This balance comes down to strategic time blocking—dedicating specific parts of the day to each task. For example, reserving mornings for outreach and afternoons for follow-ups or admin work can help ensure that selling is the priority during the most productive hours of the day.
Strategies to Maximize Selling Time
Maximizing selling time requires a combination of tools, processes, and smart delegation. Here are a few strategies that can help:
Automate Repetitive Tasks
Sales reps can spend countless hours on tasks that could be automated, such as data entry, scheduling meetings, or even some follow-ups. CRM systems and sales automation tools can help free up time by automating these tasks.
Think of automation like self-driving cars—it handles the repetitive journey so the driver (sales rep) can focus on the destination (closing deals).
Outsource Sales Development Efforts
One of the biggest advantages of having an outbound BDR (Business Development Representative) team is that it allows sales reps to focus more on closing deals rather than prospecting. When BDRs handle lead generation and initial outreach, sales reps can dedicate more time to nurturing relationships and driving revenue.
In this way, outsourcing prospecting is like having a sous chef prepare all the ingredients, so the head chef can focus on creating the perfect dish.
Streamline Internal Processes
Sales teams need streamlined, efficient processes in place to minimize time spent on non-selling activities. Simple changes, like fewer internal meetings or better CRM integrations, can free up significant time for selling.
These strategies are like tuning up a machine—by cutting down friction, you get a smoother and faster performance.
Measuring and Improving Selling Time
To optimize selling time, you need to measure it. Many sales teams use metrics like sales velocity (how quickly deals move through the pipeline) or time-to-close to assess how efficiently reps are using their time. Another key metric is tracking the actual hours spent in direct selling activities, which can be done through CRM data or time-tracking tools.
By measuring these metrics, you can identify areas of improvement, such as reducing time spent on low-quality leads or administrative tasks. In essence, improving selling time is like a personal trainer measuring progress—by understanding where the inefficiencies are, you can make targeted improvements.
Lead Quality vs. Lead Quantity: How to Balance Both
The debate between lead quality and lead quantity is like choosing between a net and a spear—one gives you more radius, and the other gives you more precision. Sales reps need to strike a balance between focusing on a high volume of leads (quantity) and pursuing leads that are more likely to close (quality).
Here are some tangible ways to balance your leads:
- Implement Lead Scoring: Assign a value to each lead based on engagement level, demographic fit, and behavior, helping sales teams prioritize high-potential leads while maintaining volume.
- Automate Lead Qualification: Use automation tools like chatbots, forms, or email marketing systems to pre-qualify leads, allowing sales reps to focus only on the most promising ones.
- Refine Targeting Criteria: Adjust your marketing targeting criteria by refining customer personas and focusing on attracting leads that fit the ideal customer profile (ICP).
- Regularly Review and Adjust Lead Sources: Track which lead generation channels produce the highest quality leads and adjust your strategy based on those that result in the most closed deals.
- Outsource Lead Generation: Use business development representatives (BDRs) or outsourced lead generation services to handle prospecting, ensuring that sales reps focus on closing deals with qualified leads.
- Create Better Content for Lead Nurturing: Develop content that addresses specific pain points or needs of high-quality prospects to attract more qualified leads while filtering out less relevant ones.
If reps spend too much time chasing high-volume, low-quality leads, they end up wasting valuable selling time. On the other hand, focusing exclusively on high-quality leads can leave gaps in the pipeline. By balancing both approaches, sales teams can maintain a steady flow of prospects while also closing deals more efficiently.
Key Takeaways
Ultimately, the key to success for any sales rep is not just how hard they work but how smart they work. By strategically managing their time, focusing on selling activities, and leveraging tools and outsourcing when appropriate, sales reps can maximize their productivity and hit their targets.
Maximizing selling time is essential for driving revenue. Sales reps should ideally spend 60-70% of their day on direct sales activities, but studies show that most only manage 35-39%, with the rest of their time consumed by administrative work, prospecting, and meetings. Balancing these tasks is crucial to improving productivity and efficiency, enabling sales reps to focus more on building relationships and closing deals.
To achieve this, sales teams can implement strategies like lead scoring and automating lead qualification to ensure only high-quality leads move through the pipeline. Investing in technology and processes that streamline administrative work and improve efficiency can help free up time for more valuable selling activities. High-performing teams use nearly three times the amount of sales technology as underperforming teams, making tech adoption a key driver of success.
At Abstrakt, our outbound BDR services help internal sales teams focus more on closing deals by taking on the time-consuming tasks of prospecting and lead generation. By outsourcing these efforts, your sales reps can spend more time on what they do best—selling—while still maintaining a strong, consistent flow of high-quality leads into the pipeline.
