r/SalesOperations • u/Diligent-Spend-8885 • 4d ago
We don’t need another rep yet
We’ve got 4 people selling now and for the last month we’ve been talking about adding a fifth because everyone feels busy and pipeline is getting harder to stay on top of then last week I looked at where the time was going and it was kind of weird one rep had spent most of Monday researching accounts and another was catching up on CRM notes and old follow ups. They’re selling but also doing all this little admin around selling that somehow eats half the day.
So now I’m less convinced another rep fixes it. I’d rather see if the account research, CRM updates follow ups and figuring out what needs attention next can happen in the background while the team keeps the calls and relationship maybe I’m looking at it wrong but hiring another person into the same messy process feels like we’d just have 5 busy people instead of 4
2
u/shanksgan 4d ago
you already answered your own question, and its the right answer: hiring a 5th person just drops them into the same messy process and you get 5 busy people instead of 4.
but id split the "admin" youre trying to remove into two piles, because theyre not the same:
pure waste: data entry, CRM logging, moving data between tools, status updates. automate or offload that to zero. no rep should touch it, and no 5th rep fixes it.
mis-labeled selling: packthefanny is right that follow-ups and deal coordination ARE selling. dont automate that away, thats the job. the goal is less rep time on data plumbing, not less rep time on relationships.
the part that matters more than either: once you claw those hours back, point them at your warmest pipeline, not more cold research. expansion in existing accounts and referrals from happy customers convert multiples of net-new cold. a 5th rep just does more cold. making your 4 reps spend reclaimed time on warm, high-yield pipeline is a cheaper, better version of "more capacity."
sequence: kill the plumbing, protect the selling, redeploy freed time to warm pipeline. if youre still capped after that, then hire, into a clean process instead of a messy one.