Why Sales Reps Are Only Spending 35.2% of Time Selling (Infographic)

This was published originally on Forbes.com. Subscribe to my content here.

Sales reps are only spending one-third of their time selling. That just can’t happen. We can’t have sales leaders only surviving 18 months in their roles and only 53% of reps hitting quota and not be panicking about this deplorable stat.

Today’s salespeople spend the majority of their time on activities other than sales.

How do I know this? We asked 721 reps to tell us how they spend their time. These were their numbers, which speak for themselves. They spend 35.2% of their time selling and 65% on everything else, but not selling.

Let me put this in dollars and cents. The average field sales rep is paid $105,482 a year. If 64.8% of the time is spent on non-revenue generating activities, the typical company spends $68,352 per rep per year to pay him or her for tasks they were not hired to do.

I realize I'm partially to blame for this stat. I push reps to have a better sales cadence, better pipeline management, and a better forecasting strategy while salespeople haven’t yet mastered the fundamental skill of sales, which is time management.

You don’t think time management is one of the fundamental skills required for sales? Stop reading now and we’ll agree to disagree. One of my favorite books is “The Ultimate Sales Machine” by Chet Holmes. In the book, Chet lists multiple skills and strategies for salespeople to master, but he starts with time management. Why? Because if you can’t get that right, you can't get nothing right.

Therein lies the fundamental problem. Yes, 61.3% of sales reps reported having some kind of time management system in place for themselves, but only 23% said they actually followed it. Is that a problem? It sounds like an issue to me. It means most sales reps just “try to hit their number.” Hope is a not a plan. Unfortunately, there is not a lot of great technology to support this task as 70% of reps are not using any kind of software to manage their time.

The reps who actively manage their time through a specific time management philosophy are spending 18.9% more time selling than the people who don’t. That increases the 35-percent-selling number to 54%. I can assure you that the more time you spend selling, the better chance you’ll have at hitting your number and goal.

It’s not that reps don’t want to spend more time selling, they tell us, it’s just they struggle to get through “the crap.” What is the crap?

Administrative tasks dominate sales reps’ time. In fact, 14.8% of an average week is spent on these tasks. I followed up with a handful of reps who took the survey to inquire further. Their response?

“I deal with a lot of product issues.”

“Sometimes, to get things done, I have to get so many internal approvals it’s crazy.”

“The number of internal policies I have slows me down.”

Thankfully, the second task that dominates reps’ time was customer meetings (14%) and third was research (11.6%). A great deal of time is spent researching, and it’s hurting the reps ability to sell. Again I asked a few reps to elaborate further:

“Nobody helps me find the accounts I should target, so that’s all on me.”

“I want to prepare for meetings, so I spend as much time as needed to do that.”

I don’t know about you, but these are things that could and should be fixed to make it easier for reps to sell.

Sales is a complicated profession. But based on the data, the 35.2% of the time reps spend selling is leading to just 53% achievement of their quota revenue goals. 

What if some of these time wasters were reduced and time spent selling improved to 50% of a typical work week rather than 35.2%? How much would quota attainment—and therefore revenue—increase? The answers should be obvious.

Rather than just asking, “How easy are we to work with?” from a customer's perspective, organizations should be asking, “How easy are we to work with?” from a sales rep perspective as well.

If you are interested, the full study is available here.