According to Salesforce’s State of Sales report, only 28% of a sales rep’s day is spent selling. The rest? It’s eaten up by CRM data entry, prospect research, internal meetings, and participation in coaching or training sessions.
When you break down the numbers, it’s clear that the biggest productivity blockers aren’t necessarily effort or skill—they’re inefficiencies. The more your sales team is buried in busy work, the less time they have for meaningful conversations with buyers.
Continue reading this article to learn about:
- Eye-opening research on common sales reps’ productivity killers
- Five strategies to increase sales productivity and close more deals
- Practical ways to give your team more time to sell
But before we begin, let’s define sales rep productivity to ensure we’re on the same page.
What is Sales Rep Productivity?
Sales rep productivity measures how well your team balances their time across critical tasks to drive revenue.
The most productive reps maximize their time on direct selling activities—like prospecting, presenting, and negotiating—and minimize time lost to manual data entry or tool-switching.
Key sales reps’ productivity metrics to watch:
- Time spent in direct buyer conversations
- Sales quota achievement
- Sales cycle length and close rates
The goal is to streamline processes, so your team spends more time where it counts and less time navigating operational tasks. But that’s easier said than done.
What Research Says About Sales Rep Productivity
Sales reps face significant hurdles when it comes to maximizing selling time. Here’s what the research reveals:
- Productivity is an important focus: According to 83% of sales leaders, productivity is a top concern for their teams (HubSpot).
- Onboarding determines how fast reps start contributing: A formal onboarding process accelerates sales rep productivity—60.7% of reps reach full productivity within six months and 85% within 11 months (Training Industry).
- Sales productivity is a critical KPI for leaders: Sales productivity is the second most important sales metric for organizations (HubSpot).
- Tool fatigue drains productivity: Sales teams use an average of 10 tools to close deals, often leading to “tool fatigue” and frequent context switching. As a result, 94% of sales organizations plan to consolidate their tech stack. When reps waste time switching between systems, it slows down their workflows and reduces time spent with buyers (Salesforce).
- Lack of digital sales training: Forty percent of sales professionals don’t receive the training and coaching they need to sell successfully in a digital-first environment. This points to a significant gap in enablement, especially as more sales interactions move online (Salesforce).
- Top-performing companies generate 2.6x ROI: Companies in the top quartile for sales productivity generate 2.6 times higher gross margins per dollar invested in sales than those in the bottom quartile. This reinforces that investing in productivity-focused initiatives—such as automation, data-driven decision-making, and better processes—pays off significantly. For lagging organizations, this should serve as a clear wake-up call (McKinsey).
- Sales tech usage correlates with quota achievement: 80% of reps who exceed 150% of their quota use sales tech weekly, compared to only 58% of other sellers. This shows top performers treat technology as a strategic enabler, not an occasional convenience. However, it also suggests that many reps still don’t use their tools effectively, which can significantly limit their productivity potential (LinkedIn).
- Sales enablement gaps impact efficiency: 77% of sellers say they struggle to complete their tasks efficiently because sales enablement programs lack behavior-focused strategies and real-time learning support (Gartner).
Research shows that low sales productivity is often the result of technological challenges, fragmented workflows, and inadequate training. A common thread among top-performing sales teams is their ability to overcome these hurdles by streamlining tasks and adopting automation.
In the next section, we’ll break down five strategies to help your team boost productivity and focus more on revenue-generating activities.
5 Ways to Increase Sales Rep Productivity
1. Implement Sales Automation Tools
Sales reps often juggle countless administrative tasks that have little to do with actual selling. Whether it’s updating contact records or scheduling meetings, these responsibilities divert their focus from the conversations that drive deals forward.
Prospect research and call prep are essential, no question. But if your reps spend more time on prep than selling, it’s time to introduce some automation to free them up for deal-making.
These tools can significantly reduce the time spent on repetitive tasks like lead data entry, follow-up emails, and meeting notes. For example, tools that automatically sync email communication to your CRM can eliminate manual data logging altogether.
So, when it comes to sales automation, you should audit your team’s workflows to identify bottlenecks. For instance, if reps spend hours inputting call notes into Salesforce, consider using AI-powered tools like Momentum that auto-generate call summaries and recommend next steps.
The goal is to free your team from tedious, repetitive work so they can focus on higher-value tasks, such as understanding customer pain points and personalizing pitches.
📖 Related Read: 8 Tools You Need in B2B Sales Tech Stack
2. Improve Sales Training and Development
Some sales reps struggle not because they lack motivation but because they lack targeted training. Even experienced reps need regular coaching to sharpen their skills and adapt to changing buyer behaviors.
Sales training should go beyond the basics and focus on practical strategies, such as objection handling, discovery questioning, and closing techniques. One of the most effective ways to implement this is through micro-coaching, which involves short, focused sessions based on actual sales calls.
Momentum can make these coaching sessions more impactful by providing real-time call insights and AI-generated summaries highlighting key moments where reps need guidance. Instead of waiting for formal reviews, you can proactively steer your reps throughout the sales cycle with personalized feedback that addresses skill gaps as they happen.
The idea is to create a continuous learning culture where reps receive actionable feedback and stay prepared for real-world sales scenarios.
3. Utilize Data-Driven Insights
Even the best reps can burn time on dead-end leads. And that often happens because they lack the insights to help them zero in on the right deals.
Consider providing your reps with real-time data and delivering it where they already work, whether in your CRM or Slack.
But data alone isn’t enough. It needs to surface the right buying signals at the right time so your reps know what’s worth their attention. Watch for cues that indicate progress—like when a prospect loops in their decision-maker, requests pricing details, or books a follow-up call.
These signals help your team focus their efforts where it matters most. Predictive insights can also highlight when deals are losing momentum, giving your reps a chance to act before an opportunity slips away.
4. Optimize Sales Processes
Sales workflows can be unnecessarily complicated. From redundant data entry to multi-step approval processes, small inefficiencies can pile up and drain your team’s productivity.
Start by identifying the biggest bottlenecks in your process. Are your reps waiting days for proposal edits or approvals? Are they hunting through multiple systems to find sales collateral?
For example, instead of requiring approval for every discount, you should consider setting up pre-approved pricing tiers so reps don’t waste time waiting for sign-offs. Equally, tasks like CRM updates and follow-up emails after meetings should also be streamlined. And that’s something Momentum can help you with as well!
In short, aim to create a frictionless process and eliminate the administrative noise that slows your team down.
5. Centralize Your Sales Content
How much time do your reps spend digging through email threads or messy shared drives just to find a case study or pricing deck? If the answer is "too much," you’ve got a content problem—and it’s costing you.
The solution is straightforward—make your sales enablement content easily accessible!
In other words, centralize your sales content in one go-to location where reps can quickly access what they need—whether that’s a discovery call framework, a follow-up template, or a killer ROI slide. Use smart tagging, such as "pricing objection," "competitive comparison," or "use case example," to make content easily searchable mid-conversation.
It pays off—teams that monitor how much time reps spend searching for content see a +3-point increase in win rates.
By the way, remember to audit your materials regularly. Outdated or inconsistent content can quickly undermine your credibility.
6. BONUS: Leverage Just-in-Time, Context-Based Enablement with AI.
I know we said only five, but we felt generous and wanted to include one that will be seen more this year and in 2025: just-in-time, context-based enablement with AI.
One of the most powerful ways to boost sales rep productivity is implementing AI-powered, just-in-time, context-based enablement. This approach directly provides relevant information and guidance to reps when needed, based on the specific context of their sales activities.
Rather than expecting reps to search for information or remember everything from training sessions, AI can proactively surface the most relevant content, talking points, and recommendations in real time as reps engage with prospects. For example:
- During a sales call, AI can analyze the conversation and provide real-time suggestions for handling objections or emphasizing key value propositions.
- When drafting an email, AI can recommend personalized content and messaging based on the prospect's industry, role, and stage in the sales cycle.
- As reps update deal information in the CRM, AI can flag potential risks and suggest the next best actions to move deals forward.
This "AI goes to the sales rep" approach minimizes time spent searching for information and maximizes time spent on high-value selling activities. It also ensures reps always have the latest, most relevant enablement materials at their fingertips, improving the quality and consistency of their interactions.
By providing contextual support exactly when and where reps need it, just-in-time AI enablement can significantly boost productivity, accelerate deal cycles, and improve win rates.
Ready to Increase Sales Productivity?
Sales aren't won in spreadsheets—they're won in conversations. But for those conversations to happen more often, you need to automate all the admin—and that’s where Momentum can help.
Momentum helps your team do what they do best by automating workflows, providing real-time coaching opportunities, and ensuring pipeline data is always accurate. Chat with our team today to get started!