Sales professionals are losing an average of six and a half weeks a year completing manual administrative tasks.
According to research from NewVoiceMedia, when applied over an entire inside sales team, this represents a productivity loss equivalent to one and a half reps per year.
The study, conducted by global market research firm Opinion Matters, finds that despite the increase in CRM software spending, automation remains underutilized, and 79 percent of sales reps say their business would benefit from advancing its inside sales technology.
For instance, 68 percent of sales reps must still manually update their CRM record after a call. On average, they spend 32 minutes a day in data entry, which, over the course of a year, amounts to 17 complete workdays. Additionally, the average sales person spends 28 minutes a day manually dialing prospects’ phone numbers, amounting to 15 workdays a year – time that could be focused on closing deals.
“Sales reps who don’t have the best, up-to-date technology often feel behind the curve,” says Dennis Fois, president and COO of NewVoiceMedia. “Our research makes it clear that companies have made definitive efforts to improve their sales processes, but we are surprised at the amount of manual effort many sales people still have as part of their position. Businesses should be investing in automating monotonous and time-consuming administrative functions, so that sales teams can focus more on selling.”
The consequences pile up: The survey also found that only 42 percent of sales professionals can identify corresponding previous interactions with their prospects and customers, and only 27 percent have a system in place to intelligently route callers to the most appropriate team member. About 14 percent of reps reported that they cannot present a local number to their prospect, regardless of the region they are currently calling from, while 29 percent of sales professionals’ lack technology that can show them the hottest leads to follow-up on first.
And, after a lost deal, only 54 percent of sales people solicit feedback every time, and five percent never ask.
