Why Your Sales Team is Leaving

🔍 The Reality: Salespeople today are staying on the job for an average of just 16.8 months (Sales Hacker). Many are trading future commissions for short-term salary bumps and perks, avoiding the long-term grind of building a book of business.

But why? Traditionally, sellers left for better pay, career growth, or personal life changes. Now, dissatisfaction is the driving force behind turnover, and sales organizations must address the root cause—before losing top performers.

Salespeople Are Frustrated. Here’s Why.

A shift is happening in sales. What is the most significant difference between salespeople who love their jobs and those actively looking for an exit? Time spent on administrative work.

📉 Sales reps who are happiest spend less than 3 hours per week on CRM and admin tasks.
⚠️ Most sales teams, however, spend 3+ hours per day on non-selling activities.

According to Pace Productivity, the average salesperson’s week looks like this:
✅ 22% Selling
📑 23% Admin Tasks
🗂 12% Order Processing
📅 10% Planning

💡 The irony? The tools designed to help sellers close deals faster pull them away from selling altogether. CRM systems, approval processes, and internal reporting requirements have turned sales from an extroverted, relationship-driven job into an admin-heavy, introverted role.

The Dangerous Migration of Sales 🏗️

For years, selling has been about human connection—presenting, pitching, and persuading. The best salespeople thrive in conversation, not in spreadsheets. However, as more technology and processes are layered onto sales teams, reps spend more time clicking, updating, and entering data than selling.

This shift has consequences:
🚫 Salespeople feel disconnected from customers.
🚫 Top performers are burning out.
🚫 Quotas are being missed—not due to skill, but due to time wasted on admin work.

The Fix: Less Admin, More Selling 🎯

If your sales team is buried in admin work, they are not selling. Many companies have invested heavily in CRM and sales processes, expecting a return on investment. Instead, they have created costly bottlenecks that frustrate sales teams.

💡 Solution: Senior leadership needs to experience the system firsthand. CEOs, COOs, and managers should log in, use the CRM like a salesperson, and try closing a deal over a week or month.

The CRM NUMBER 1 JOB: Make the sales process better. Most CRMs I look over are a bunch of steps that have nothing to do with closing the deals.

🚀 Key Takeaways:
🔹 The fewer fields required, the better the data quality.
🔹 The more admin steps, the higher the risk of false or incomplete data.
🔹 Freeing sales reps from unnecessary tasks increases job satisfaction and retention.
🔹 Sales success is built on relationships—not data entry.

👉 Bottom line: Want to keep your sales team engaged and performing? Reduce the admin. Let them sell.