Sales reps spend only about 40% of their week actually selling. The rest of their time disappears into CRM data entry, quote-building, planning, and dozens of other tasks that don’t directly contribute to moving a deal forward.

The Problem of App Switching

Apollo analyzed data from Salesforce, Forrester, Okta, Harvard Business Review, Bain & Company, and Microsoft to come up with key solutions to this common pain point. Based on Salesforce’s State of Sales report, reps now spend 60% of their time on nonselling tasks, which is down from 70% in the previous year.

Research published in 2022 by Harvard Business Review on 137 workers across three Fortune 500 companies found that the average worker toggles between apps and websites around 1,200 times per day, adding up to nearly four hours a week or 9% of total work time.

Solutions to the Problem

Companies are looking for solutions to this problem. One possible solution is to consolidate tech stacks into fewer, more unified platforms. According to the Okta report, 84% of sales teams now say they plan to consolidate their tech stack into fewer, more unified platforms.

Bain & Company’s Technology Report 2025 projects that AI could roughly double selling time for those who redesign their workflows around it. However, the gains will only go to firms that redesign how work gets done, rather than just slapping an AI tool on top of an already over-sprawling tech stack.

Original reporting: El Paso News (HLL/CB) — read the source article.