Would you pay a lawyer to paint your house?
Of course not.
So why are companies paying highly compensated salespeople to perform tasks that should be handled by lower-cost resources?
The Sales Productivity Problem
Sales 101:
More customer-facing time = More sales.
More sales = More revenue.
More revenue = More profit.
Yet one of the biggest obstacles to sales growth is how much time your sales team spends not selling.
Let’s break it down with a simple example:
- A salesperson earns $100,000/year. Add benefits, vehicle allowance, payroll costs = $150,000/year total cost.
- 2,000 working hours/year = $75/hour cost to the company.
- That same rep generates $3,000,000 in sales/year.
- But only about 1,000 hours/year are spent on actual selling (the rest is admin, travel, meetings, etc.)
That means $3,000/hour in revenue when they’re actually selling.
At a 25% net margin, that’s $750 in profit per hour of selling time.
So ask yourself:
- Would you pay $750 in net profit per hour for someone to write up a quote?
- To track a shipment?
- To chase down an internal approval?
- To enter CRM notes?
Absolutely not. Yet many companies do this every day.
Now imagine your top rep making $250K+ a year and managing a $10M+ portfolio. The cost of distraction is even greater.
What Salespeople Are Doing That Isn’t Selling
Here are just a few non-sales tasks that commonly eat up a rep’s week:
🛠 Operational & Customer Service Tasks
- Taking customer orders instead of inside sales taking the order
- Solving delivery issues or doing deliveries
- Tracking down internal approvals or custom requests
📋 Administrative Tasks
- CRM updates, call logs, follow-ups
- Expense reports and travel forms
- Internal reporting and summaries
- Formatting quotes, proposals, or slide decks
🧑💼 Internal Communication Time Wasters
- Non-strategic meetings (especially mid-day)
- Excessive internal emails (this is a big one)
- Helping other departments like marketing or finance
🔍 Manual Research & Planning
- Building their own contact lists from scratch
- Searching for pricing, marketing materials, or customer info
🖥 Tech Troubleshooting
- Fixing CRM issues
- Learning new tools without support
- Dealing with broken phones, laptops or tech problems
The Real Cost of Distraction
It’s not just time lost — it is revenue lost.
Some studies show that 50–75% of a salesperson’s week is spent on non-sales activities.
Do the math on the revenue and profit that’s walking out the door. You may be shocked!!
The Takeaway
✅ Let your salespeople sell.
✅ Remove as many non-sales activities from their day as possible.
✅ Use lower-cost support roles and tools to maximize selling time.
✅ Don’t pay a lawyer to paint your house.
It’s time to stop wasting top-tier talent on low-value tasks — and start unlocking serious growth.
Need to perform a sales team activity analysis? Margin Growth Group Inc. can help. DM to discuss further.
