Key takeaways
- Sales admin is not just a productivity issue but a cost-to-serve problem that reduces seller capacity, slows follow-up and weakens revenue efficiency.
- Marketing and sales leaders should prioritize clearer workflows, meaningful CRM data capture and AI-assisted guidance that supports human control rather than full automation.
Sales teams are spending too much time managing the process of selling instead of selling. Pipedrive’s report, The Hidden Cost of Selling: How Work Around the Work Shapes Sales Performance, found that 55% of customer-facing professionals describe admin work as frustrating, and 42% say non-revenue-generating tasks eat up at least 40% of their day. That’s a direct hit to pipeline, quota attainment and seller earnings. For B2B sales and marketing teams, the cost isn’t just wasted hours, it’s the revenue those hours could have produced as well as the operational overhead of servicing every customer through more meetings, handoffs and manual processes.
The report digs into the details behind that frustration. There’s the fine line between low-value data entry and the pipeline hygiene that actually feeds marketing attribution, a distinction that determines whether your data drives decisions or just creates more work. There’s the fragmented state of CRM workflows, where 10% of professionals still rely on manual updates and no single standard exists, which weakens the dashboards leadership uses to make calls. And there’s the uneven pace of AI adoption across sectors, with technology teams reporting 34% integrated usage while financial services sits at just 10%.
Sean Evers, VP of Sales at Pipedrive, sat down to work through the findings including how to translate sales admin frustration into a dollar figure leadership will fund, how to build buyer trust in AI-assisted content and selling when prospects share that same skepticism, and why software value propositions have overindexed on capability.
Demand Gen Report (DGR): Pipedrive’s The Hidden Cost of Selling report found that 55% of customer-facing professionals describe admin work as frustrating. For B2B marketers trying to build the case for better tooling, how do you translate that frustration into a dollar figure leadership can act on?
Sean Evers: The biggest mistake is treating admin as a productivity problem rather than a cost-to-serve problem.
Every hour a salesperson spends updating CRM, chasing internal approvals, or preparing reports is an hour they’re not generating pipeline or closing deals. A total of 42% of sales and marketing professionals say non-revenue-generating tasks consume at least 40% of their day (Pipedrive CRM Trends Report 2026). But the cost goes beyond lost selling time. That admin creates operational overhead across the business, resulting in more meetings, handoffs, account management, and support, which increases the cost to serve every customer.
The way I frame it for leadership is simple: calculate how much selling time is lost per representative each week, multiply it across the sales organization, then compare it to the revenue those hours could have generated. On top of that, factor in the downstream costs of servicing customers. It’s entirely possible to win a large deal and still destroy profitability because the account requires dedicated account management, customer success, technical support, and manual processes that erode margins over its lifetime.
For sellers, it’s much more tangible. Admin isn’t just frustrating. It directly impacts their pipeline, quota attainment, and earnings. Every unnecessary task is time that could have been spent prospecting, running demos, or progressing deals. Reducing admin isn’t simply about making work easier; it’s about increasing revenue per seller while lowering the overall cost to serve each customer. That’s a business case every leadership team understands.
DGR: Nearly 58% of respondents spend at least three hours a week on admin. Where’s the line between low-value data entry and the pipeline hygiene that actually feeds marketing attribution?
Evers: The question is whether the data helps you make better decisions or just creates more admin.
Low-value data entry feels efficient in the moment: fewer fields, less friction, faster updates. But the trade-off is visibility. If reps aren’t capturing the right information, you lose the ability to understand what’s really happening in the pipeline, forecast accurately, and know which marketing activities are actually influencing revenue.
On the other side, you can over-engineer pipeline hygiene. If every deal requires endless fields, updates, and documentation, you’ve created a process that takes sellers away from selling. The irony is that you end up with cleaner data but a weaker business outcome.
For marketing attribution, the goal shouldn’t be perfect data. It should be meaningful signal. Capture the information that helps answer important questions: Which channels create quality opportunities? Which campaigns influence revenue? Where should we invest more or less?
The danger is when attribution requirements become so complex that teams build processes purely to satisfy reporting needs. You end up with frustrated reps, slower sales cycles, and data that isn’t necessarily more accurate because it was entered reluctantly.
The best systems make the right behavior the easiest behavior. Capture the few data points that genuinely drive decisions, automate everything else, and protect seller time. Good pipeline hygiene should improve revenue performance, not become another task that competes with it.
How Admin Overload Slows Follow-Up on Marketing-Sourced Leads
DGR: When 68% of sellers feel uncertain about what to prioritize, that uncertainty ripples straight into follow-up on marketing-sourced leads. Did your data show whether this admin burden correlates with slower lead response times or dropped handoffs between marketing and sales?
Evers: We didn’t measure that relationship directly, but we did find that many professionals are spending a significant amount of time on administrative work and navigating competing priorities. When people aren’t clear on what deserves their attention, it’s easy for customer-facing work to compete with everything else on their to-do list.
For marketing and sales leaders, it’s an important reminder that improving performance isn’t always about generating more demand. It’s also about reducing the friction that gets in the way of acting on opportunities. A lot of times, the challenge isn’t the process itself, but actually making sure people have the time and clarity to focus on the work that creates the most value.
DGR: The report says 10% of professionals still rely on manual CRM updates and there’s “no dominant workflow standard.” If the CRM is the shared source of truth marketers pull reporting from, what does this fragmentation mean for the accuracy of the dashboards we present to leadership?
Evers: It really comes back to how that data is being captured in the first place. As I mentioned before, people are recording and managing customer information in a lot of different ways, and there isn’t one standard workflow everyone follows.
That can make it harder to maintain a consistent view of the customer, so before relying on a dashboard, it’s worth taking a step back and asking how that information is getting into the CRM in the first place. If everyone’s recording information differently, the insights you’re looking at may not tell the full story.
DGR: IT and technology reported 34% integrated AI usage. Financial services managed just 10%. What’s driving that three-fold gap?
Evers: The gap likely comes down to where each industry is in its AI journey. Technology companies are often closer to the development and adoption of new tools, which gives teams more opportunities to test them and identify where they can add the most value in their day-to-day work.
In industries like financial services, integration can move more slowly because teams need greater confidence around accuracy, security, and how these tools fit into existing workflows. The Hidden Cost of Selling report found that trust and a lack of clear guidance are two of the biggest barriers to adoption, so it’s clear that the opportunity isn’t just giving people access to new technology, but helping teams understand where it can solve real challenges, improve how they work, and support better outcomes.
Building Buyer Trust in AI When Prospects Are Skeptical
DGR: You found trust, not technology, is the biggest obstacle, with 25% saying it’s hard to know when AI output can be trusted. For marketers building AI-assisted content and personalization at scale, how would you recommend we earn buyer trust when our own prospects share this skepticism?
Evers: The key is remembering that trust isn’t built by simply using more technology, but by showing people how that technology is being used and where it actually adds value. For marketers, that means being transparent about where AI plays a role, keeping human oversight in place, and making sure the experience still feels relevant and personalized.
Our report shows that people aren’t necessarily rejecting AI. They’re just looking for more confidence in how it works. 21.5% of respondents said they simply haven’t used it enough to form an opinion, which tells us there’s an opportunity to build trust through practical use cases and by showing people the value firsthand. The companies that succeed will be the ones using AI to strengthen human connection, not replace it.
DGR: The clear preference was for AI that drafts for review (43%) over full automation. How should marketing teams frame AI-powered products so the messaging leads with control and oversight rather than replacement?
Evers: The biggest shift is to stop talking about AI and start talking about what people can accomplish with it. People are looking for support that helps them work more effectively, rather than handing over control to AI entirely.
For marketing teams, that means positioning AI as an assistant, not a replacement. The strongest messaging will focus on how these tools handle repetitive work while giving people more time to apply their judgment, build relationships, and focus on higher-value tasks. Right now, “assist” is a much stronger message than “automate” because it reflects how people actually want to work. That may change over time, but that’s where the market is today.
DGR: The single biggest request was “knowing exactly which deals and tasks to prioritize each day” (19%). Does this tell marketers that our value propositions have overindexed on capability and underinvested in focus and guidance?
Evers: I think there’s definitely a case to be made for that. For years, software companies have competed by adding new capabilities, but when we asked people what would have the biggest impact on their results, the top answer wasn’t another feature. It was clarity.
To me, that’s a reminder that marketers should lead with outcomes, not capabilities. When buyers are asking for guidance, leading with a long list of features can miss the point. Sometimes the most valuable product isn’t the one that does the most. It’s the one that helps people decide what to do next.
Why Slow Follow-Ups Cost You Deals, and How CMOs Can Fix It
DGR: Almost half of respondents say follow-ups take longer than 24 hours. Did you measure how this delay affects conversion or deal velocity, and what would you tell a CMO trying to build the business case for fixing it?
Evers: We didn’t measure the direct impact on conversion rates or deal velocity in this survey, but the finding highlights a broader operational challenge: when important customer interactions are followed by manual work and delays, teams risk losing momentum and valuable context.
For CMOs, that reinforces the value of reducing friction throughout the sales process, giving sales professionals more time to engage with customers and less time tied up in administrative work. The goal is to create a process that helps teams stay focused on the activities that drive the most value.
DGR: If you were briefing a B2B marketing team tomorrow, which one finding would you tell them to build their entire campaign narrative around, and why that one over the rest?
Evers: I’d tell them to focus on the idea that sales teams are spending too much time managing the process of selling instead of focusing on the customer. The biggest takeaway for me is that the challenge isn’t a lack of tools or effort. It’s the growing complexity that surrounds the sales process.
What makes that finding so powerful is that it connects so many of the themes throughout the report. The time spent on admin, uncertainty around priorities, and desire for AI assistance all point to the same thing: people need more clarity and more time to focus on the work that actually drives results. For marketers, that’s a stronger story than leading with another feature or automation message because it starts with a problem people already recognize in their day-to-day work.
