Pipedrive Report: Clarity, Not Automation, Is Becoming Sales Teams’ Biggest Productivity Advantage

Pipedrive’s latest whitepaper reveals hidden productivity drain costing customer-facing teams hours each week and what they actually want from AI

Pipedrive, the easy and intelligent CRM for small and medium-sized businesses, today released its new report, The Hidden Cost of Selling: How Work Around the Work Shapes Sales Performance. This examines how administrative burden, fragmented workflows, and unresolved AI skepticism are quietly undermining productivity for customer-facing professionals, and what it would actually take to fix it.

The findings show that nearly 58% of working professionals spend at least three hours per week on administrative tasks that directly pull away from customer work, such as updating systems, writing summaries, and logging notes. More than half (55.4%) describe the administrative side of their role as frustrating, yet the problem runs deeper than frustration: it is structural. Customer interactions may last minutes, but the preparation and follow-up surrounding them can consume hours.

“Sales teams today are equipped with more tools and data than ever, yet a significant share of their week is still spent on work that doesn’t directly move deals forward,” said Paulo Cunha, CEO of Pipedrive. “The findings make clear that the real productivity challenge in sales is the hidden cost of everything surrounding the actual selling. Reducing that friction, and giving people clarity on where to focus, is where the real opportunity lies.”

Additional findings include:

• Uncertainty about what to prioritize is a daily challenge: Nearly 68% of respondents experience uncertainty about what to prioritize at least a few times per week, including 24.6% who feel uncertain multiple times per day.
• Preparation and follow-ups consume more time than most realize: More than 71% of respondents spend at least ten minutes preparing for every customer call, and nearly 47.2% say follow-ups or CRM updates take longer than 24 hours to complete.
• AI adoption is growing, but trust hasn’t caught up: Only 25.2% of respondents say AI is fully integrated into their daily workflow, with the top barrier being uncertainty about when AI-generated output can be trusted (25.3%).
• Professionals want a co-pilot, not an autopilot: The most desired AI capability is having it draft emails, summaries, and notes for human review (43.3%), and a combined 22.4% say they are uncomfortable with AI completing tasks autonomously without review.
• Clarity beats automation: When asked what single improvement would most impact their results, respondents ranked knowing exactly which deals and tasks to prioritize each day first (18.9%), ahead of spending less time on post-call administration (14.3%) and reducing tool switching (14%).

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