What does the latest selling-time benchmark reveal, and how should account teams use it without turning a survey average into a target?
MethodWe reviewed the 2026 Salesforce State of Sales survey of more than 4,000 sales professionals. We separated reported survey findings from our operating recommendations and did not treat respondent averages as causal evidence.
Key findings
- Surveyed sellers reported spending an average of 40 percent of their working time selling.
- Gen Z respondents reported 35 percent selling time and about two hours a week of manual data entry.
- A team-level time study is more useful than adopting the survey average as a universal goal.
What the benchmark says
Salesforce reports administrative friction as a constraint on selling time. The figures describe its respondent group, not every account team. Account complexity, role scope, sales cycle, and system design can all change the result.
The useful question is where local work goes and whether each activity needs account-manager judgment. A benchmark can prompt that investigation, but it cannot supply the answer.
Run a practical time study
Choose a representative period and classify work consistently. Useful categories include customer interaction, research and preparation, internal coordination, record updates, administrative work, travel, and interruption recovery. Record duration, trigger, system, required decision, and whether the work could be prepared by a support role.
Use the study to find repeated preparation, duplicated entry, unclear ownership, and preventable rework. Do not use it as hidden employee surveillance or assume that every noncustomer minute is waste.
Set decision boundaries before delegating
Support can assemble approved records, prepare meeting material, update routine fields, track follow-up, and route exceptions. Account leaders should retain customer strategy, pricing, concessions, sensitive communication, and other consequential decisions.
A task is not ready to delegate until its inputs, output, access limits, reviewer, and escalation path are clear. Moving ambiguous work may shift the interruption rather than remove it.
Interpret improvement carefully
Compare the same team and comparable periods. Track rework, missing evidence, review time, reopened items, and customer-facing errors alongside time allocation. A higher selling-time share is not automatically better if preparation quality or record integrity falls.
Treat changes as operational signals. The study can show where to investigate, but it cannot prove that a workflow change caused revenue or retention.
Method and limitations
This brief uses reported findings from Salesforce's 2026 survey of more than 4,000 sales professionals. Salesforce is a commercial technology provider, and its report discusses markets in which it participates. Virtual Account Manager did not independently reproduce the survey and does not promise that a team will reach the reported average.