Sales ROI Calculator: The Effect of Your Sales Process on Sales Efficiency

Sales efficiency measures how well your team performs with the resources they are given. This look at the Sales ROI Calculator explores how much your sales process—and the time it consumes—affects that efficiency.

Calculating Sales Efficiency

Sales efficiency measures “your team’s performance with the resources they are given” according to Gong.io. The higher the revenue generated relative to sales costs, the more efficient the operation.

To calculate your sales efficiency ratio, divide your sales revenue by the amount it costs to make those sales. Scribe recommends taking new revenue from the current quarter and dividing it by sales and marketing costs from the previous quarter.

Any result between 1 and 3 is considered good, though higher is better. Increasing sales efficiency means growing revenue while cutting the costs to win deals. The Sales ROI Calculator helps identify one significant cost: your sales team’s time.

Sales Spends Less Than 30% of Their Time Actually Selling

According to Salesforce’s State of Sales 5th Edition Report surveying over 7,000 sales professionals, sales teams spend less than 30% of their time actually selling. This raises critical questions:

• How is sales spending the other 70% of their time?
• What is this costing from a sales efficiency perspective?
• How much more revenue could the team win with more selling time?

The survey found sales spends significant non-selling time on manual data entry, administrative tasks, and generating quotes, contracts, and proposals. Based on these percentages, the average sales rep spends approximately 7 hours per week on non-selling tasks.

Cost Impact Example

For a team of 25 sales reps:

• 7 hours/week × 25 reps × 4 weeks = 700 hours per month
• 700 hours × $58/hour = $40,600 per month

This means manual data entry and administrative tasks cost this team $40,600 monthly. Larger teams with higher average hourly rates face even greater costs.

Growing Sales with An Optimized Sales Process

Sales leaders should care about time allocation because optimizing processes directly impacts deal closure rates. Freeing teams from mundane tasks like data entry, administration, and call scheduling allows them to operate at higher potential levels.

The question becomes: how much additional revenue could your top account executive close with 5, 7, or 10 additional hours weekly?

By reducing time spent on non-selling activities to just one-third of current levels through process optimization, sales teams could reclaim significant hours monthly and generate substantially more potential revenue.

The Sales Efficiency Big Picture

SaaStr notes that “efficiency is back in fashion,” but growth remains the ultimate objective. Revenue growth goals matter because they attract venture capital for future funding rounds.

However, ignoring sales process inefficiencies perpetuates high operational costs and prevents reaching revenue potential. Now is the time to prioritize sales process efficiency so teams can focus on selling and accelerate business growth.