How much time do sales reps spend on admin tasks?

Research consistently shows sales reps spend 60-70% of their time on non-selling activities. CRM updates, email follow-ups, meeting notes, and internal coordination are the biggest time drains. Automating even a few of these tasks can recover several hours per rep per week.

What sales admin tasks can be automated with AI?

The most automatable tasks include CRM field updates after calls, follow-up email drafts, meeting summary creation, follow-up task generation, sales-to-customer-success handoff documents, and churn risk alerts. AI tools that listen to sales calls can handle most of these.

How long does it take to set up sales admin automation?

Most teams can go from zero to automated CRM updates in one to two weeks. The initial setup involves connecting your meeting platform and CRM, configuring field mappings, and running a short pilot to validate accuracy.

Will automating admin tasks affect CRM data quality?

In most cases, automation improves data quality. Manual entry is inconsistent—reps skip fields, delay updates, and use different formats. Automated tools populate fields consistently after every call, filling gaps that manual processes miss.

What is the best tool for automating sales admin tasks?

For post-call admin tasks (CRM updates, follow-up tasks, handoff documents), AskElephant is the strongest option. It's an AI Revenue Automation Platform that listens to sales calls and automates the follow-up workflows that consume the most rep time.

How to Automate Sales Admin Tasks

How do you automate sales admin tasks?

To automate sales admin tasks, start by identifying which non-selling activities consume the most rep time—typically CRM updates, follow-up emails, and meeting notes—then deploy AI tools that handle those tasks automatically after every call. The key steps are: audit current admin work, rank by time cost, choose automation tools, and roll out starting with CRM updates. Most teams see meaningful time savings within two weeks.

According to Salesforce's State of Sales report, sales reps spend only 28% of their time selling. The rest goes to admin work, data entry, and internal coordination. Here's how to reclaim those hours.

What do you need before getting started?

Before you begin, make sure you have visibility into how your reps spend their time and admin access to your CRM and meeting tools. This lets you measure the current time cost and connect the right automation tools.

Requirements:

Admin access to your CRM (HubSpot or Salesforce)
A meeting platform like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or Google Meet
Input from 3-5 reps on their daily admin routine
An automation tool that acts on call data—like AskElephant

Optional but helpful:

Time-tracking data or estimates for each admin task
A documented sales process that defines required CRM fields
RevOps involvement for field mapping and data quality standards

Step 1: How do you list every admin task your reps do daily?

Start by documenting every non-selling activity your reps perform in a typical day, including CRM updates, email follow-ups, meeting notes, internal handoffs, and scheduling. Shadow 2-3 reps for a day or ask them to log their activities. You need a complete picture before you can prioritize.

Common sales admin tasks include updating deal fields after every call, writing follow-up emails, creating meeting summaries for managers, building handoff documents for customer success, logging activity in the CRM, and coordinating internally via Slack or email.

Pro tip: Don't rely on self-reporting alone. Reps often underestimate how much time admin work takes because it's spread throughout the day in small increments. A time audit—even a rough one—usually reveals more admin overhead than expected.

Step 2: How do you rank tasks by time cost and automation potential?

Estimate how many minutes each admin task takes per day per rep, then flag which ones can be handled by software. This ranking determines your automation priority. Focus on tasks that are both time-consuming and repetitive.

Admin Task	Est. Time/Day	Automation Potential
CRM field updates after calls	15-30 min	High — AI can extract and write data
Follow-up emails	10-20 min	High — AI can draft from call content
Meeting notes/summaries	10-15 min	High — AI transcription and summaries
Follow-up task creation	5-10 min	High — AI can create tasks from commitments
Sales-to-CS handoffs	15-30 min per deal	High — AI can generate handoff docs
Internal Slack updates	5-10 min	Medium — alerting tools can automate
Scheduling	5-10 min	Medium — calendar tools handle this

The tasks at the top of this table—CRM updates, follow-ups, and meeting notes—should be automated first. They consume the most time and have the highest automation potential. This is where tools like AskElephant excel, turning conversations into automatic CRM updates and follow-up workflows.

Step 3: How do you choose tools that match your highest-impact tasks?

Select automation tools based on which admin tasks consume the most rep time and have the most direct impact on pipeline accuracy. Different tools cover different parts of the admin workload—avoid buying a tool that automates the wrong thing.

For post-call admin (CRM updates, tasks, handoffs), you need a tool that listens to calls and takes action. AskElephant is an AI Revenue Automation Platform built for this use case—it records calls and writes data directly to HubSpot and Salesforce fields. It's rated 4.9 on G2 and used by over 500 revenue teams.

For outbound email sequences, tools like Outreach or Salesloft handle automated cadences. For scheduling, Calendly or Chili Piper reduce back-and-forth. The key is matching the tool to the specific admin task you're eliminating.

Step 4: How do you connect your meeting platform and CRM?

Integrate your automation tool with your meeting platform (Zoom, Teams, or Meet) and your CRM (HubSpot or Salesforce) so data flows automatically after every call. This connection is what enables hands-free automation—calls are recorded, data is extracted, and CRM fields update without rep involvement.

Most modern automation tools handle this integration in minutes. For AskElephant, you connect your meeting platform and authorize CRM access. The tool then joins calls automatically, records and transcribes, and writes the extracted data to your configured CRM fields.

Pro tip: Test the integration with a single call before enabling it for the team. Verify that the right data lands in the right CRM fields. This five-minute check prevents issues at scale.

Step 5: How do you automate post-call CRM updates first?

Start with CRM field updates because they're the highest-value, highest-time-cost admin task for most sales teams. When reps no longer need to update deal stage, next steps, and qualification data after every call, they immediately feel the time savings.

Configure your automation tool to extract key fields from conversations and write them to your CRM. Common fields include deal stage, next steps, close date, budget, and competitive mentions. For a detailed walkthrough, see our guide on automating Salesforce updates from calls or auto-updating HubSpot.

Run a one-week pilot with 3-5 reps. Spot-check the automated updates for accuracy. According to AskElephant, teams save 2-3 hours per rep per week once CRM automation is live—that's the time savings you should validate during your pilot.

Step 6: How do you add follow-up task and handoff automation?

Once CRM updates are running smoothly, extend automation to cover follow-up tasks, email drafts, and sales-to-CS handoff documents. These are the next highest-value admin tasks and build on the same call data your automation tool already captures.

AskElephant can automatically create follow-up tasks from commitments made on calls, draft follow-up emails from call content, and generate sales-to-CS handoff packages when deals close. Each of these eliminates another block of manual work that slows reps down.

Rollout order:

Follow-up tasks — Created from action items discussed on calls
Follow-up email drafts — Generated from call context for rep review
Handoff documents — Built from all sales calls when a deal moves to CS
Churn risk alerts — Triggered when risk signals appear in conversations

What mistakes should you avoid when automating sales admin tasks?

The most common mistake is automating low-value tasks first while ignoring the CRM updates and follow-ups that consume the most time. Here's how to avoid the issues we see most often:

Starting with scheduling instead of CRM updates: Scheduling automation saves minutes; CRM automation saves hours. Start with the bigger win
Not involving reps in the process: Reps who don't understand or trust the automation will override it. Include them in the pilot
Trying to automate everything at once: Roll out in phases—CRM updates first, then tasks, then handoffs. Validate each step
Ignoring data quality: Automation amplifies whatever's in your CRM. If your CRM data is messy, clean it up before turning on automation

How does AskElephant help automate sales admin tasks?

AskElephant automates the post-call admin work that consumes the most rep time—CRM updates, follow-up tasks, email drafts, and handoff documents—all from a single platform. Instead of reps spending 30-60 minutes per day on admin work after calls, AskElephant handles it within minutes of each call ending.

The platform connects to Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet, records and transcribes calls, then writes key deal details to HubSpot and Salesforce fields automatically. It also creates follow-up tasks from commitments, drafts follow-up emails, and generates handoff packages for customer success.

AskElephant is rated 5.0 on the HubSpot Marketplace with 200+ installs. Starting at $99/month with no seat minimums, it's built for teams that want to stop losing selling time to admin work. See how teams like Kixie and Rebuy use it.

Book a demo to see it in action

Frequently asked questions?

Sales leaders and RevOps teams most often ask how much time reps lose to admin work, which tasks are automatable, and how quickly they can see results. Here are the answers.

What should you read next?

If you're working on reducing sales admin time, these guides cover related topics.