Only 28% of Sales Time Is Spent Selling — Here’s How to Fix That

Fixing Time Management for Sales Teams

Salesforce reports that sales reps spend only 28% of their time on actual selling. This is a well-known stat that haunts both reps and managers. They know they should be focused on closing deals, yet many are losing hours to non-revenue tasks like data entry, scheduling, travel time, and CRM updates. Admin overload isn’t just a minor annoyance. It hurts growth and morale, slows CRM adoption, and leaves sales teams wondering if they’re hired to serve spreadsheets or customers.

The problem isn’t that tasks aren’t important. Pipeline updates, deal tracking, meeting prep and follow-up: all are necessary. But when manual data entry gets in the way of closing deals, it’s time to reduce sales admin time. In this blog we tackle the key time-consuming admin tasks impeding sales efficiency. We explore how sales AI assistants like Donna can automate these processes and help reclaim time for revenue-driving activities.

Pre-Meeting Prep

The Sales Reality: Researching the account and stakeholders by digging into LinkedIn profiles, company websites, press releases, and prior communications takes time. Reps must also piece together data from multiple tools including CRM notes, past emails, call transcripts, and pipeline data. Context switching slows them down even more, especially when having to jump between platforms and hunt for updates. Verifying information eats up hours along with having to create customized agendas.

The Fix: Sales AI assistants like Donna solve this by pulling everything into one place. She integrates with the tools reps already use, including CRM, email, calendar, call transcripts, and note apps, and gathers the right pieces of data. Everything is organized by account or opportunity and presented as a clear, contextual briefing in seconds. Instead of hopping between sources, reps automatically get a single, hyper-personalized briefing that surfaces the latest account updates, past interactions, stakeholder details, and deal context. Donna can also make suggestions for potential talking points that keep conversations strategic.

What Changes:

• Sales reps speed up CRM logging without hours of manual admin
• Freshly captured details that improve data quality and insights
• Sales reps feel more focused, energized, and motivated for the next meeting
• Managers get access to accurate data for forecasts, insights, and reporting

Customer Follow-Up

The Sales Reality: Meeting follow-up is a major time drain. Drafting recap emails, logging action items, creating opportunities and quotes all eat into selling time. The bigger challenge is remembering every detail in the middle of a packed schedule, which often leads to delays, missed tasks, or forgotten next steps.

The Fix: Donna ensures every deal and every meeting is followed up on. She even sets reminders for the next action and drafts follow-up emails. Donna can nudge reps to send (and draft) a tailored thank-you message, prepare a quote, and book the next meeting with automated personalized communication tailored for every customer.

What Changes:

• Faster follow-through and fewer missed tasks
• More time focused on selling
• Opportunity to build customer trust through timely, personalized updates

Lead Capture

The Sales Reality: At events, reps juggle conversations, networking, and scanning badges, making it hard to capture lead details accurately. Notes end up rushed or incomplete, often scattered across business cards and apps which leads to slower follow-up.

The Fix: AI sales assistants like Donna let reps snap a quick photo of a badge or business card at an event. She then automatically extracts the details, creates a new contact, and syncs it to the right account in the CRM.

What Changes:

• Reps get instant, accurate contact capture on the go
• No typing or manual data entry needed
• Leads never go missing and follow-up is more efficient
• Reps stay fully present at events, free to network, engage, and build stronger connections

Manual CRM updates

The Sales Reality: The problem starts with manual data entry. Every call or meeting means typing up notes, moving deals to new stages, updating lead statuses, and logging next steps. But reps often delay these tasks because the process is tedious and time-consuming. The bigger issue is consistency. Updates are often rushed, incomplete, or delayed, which damages data quality and makes pipeline visibility unreliable for managers.

The Fix: Whether from a voice call, voice note, written note, a live or recorded meeting, Donna captures up to 10x more insights with zero added effort. She enriches the CRM by syncing sales data in real time, and CRM updates happen automatically in the background. Meeting notes, deal stages, and lead statuses are instantly logged without reps losing hours.

What Changes:

• 75% reduction in visit prep and post-visit admin time
• Cleaner, more consistent data and accurate pipeline visibility for managers
• Reps stay focused on building relationships and closing deals

Sales Efficiency Wins: The Future of AI-Powered Sales Execution

Real selling happens in conversation, negotiation, and follow-up. Admin tasks slow that down. Manual CRM updates are a productivity killer that translates to fewer closed deals and lost revenue, because it leaves only a third of a rep’s time focused on selling. But reducing manual admin isn’t just about saving time; it’s about increasing selling capacity.

AI sales assistants like Donna solve these challenges by handling tasks automatically, from managing schedules to automating CRM entries to drafting emails. These tools speed up CRM logging and transform how sales teams work. With Donna, reps see a 10–20% improvement in follow-up quality and deal progression, while managers get greater pipeline accuracy and forecasts based on real data.

Curious how it works? Ask Donna to call you, she’ll run a simulated meeting debrief that takes less than two minutes.