A first-person look at how sales professionals are spending their time, where deals fall through the cracks, and what they actually want from AI.
Sales professionals spend more time managing inboxes than closing deals — and most of them know it. Our study of 49 sales practitioners revealed a workforce stuck between high-volume email demands and the stubborn persistence of manual work. Over 85% spend at least 25% of their day on admin tasks. Email quality is seen as mission-critical, yet the tools in place aren't intelligent enough to keep up. AI adoption is cautious but growing — and the demand for smarter automation has never been clearer.
Ask any sales rep what's eating their week and the answer is almost never "selling." The administrative burden — writing emails, logging CRM updates, tracking threads — consumes the majority of working hours for most respondents. The pipeline suffers silently as a result.
When over half of a salesperson's day disappears into administrative work, the compounding cost is enormous — not just in hours, but in deals that go cold while responses sit unsent. Writing emails alone was flagged by 71% of respondents. This isn't a time management problem. It's a structural one.
"I just believe it would take too long, so to expedite this and get the matter resolved more quickly, I opted to reach out for help."
"I had a lot of other important work that I needed to attend to immediately so that is why I couldn't keep doing it manually."
When we asked how respondents track what needs a reply, the most common answers were folders, reminders, and memory — none of which scale. Deals stall. Opportunities expire. And when it finally does happen, the reaction is almost always the same: scramble.
31% of respondents say they have never missed a meaningful follow-up — but 22% have missed one within the past two months, and nearly half describe a miss that was either longer ago or difficult to pin down. That ambiguity is itself telling: when the timing of a missed follow-up is hard to recall, it's a sign the system for tracking them isn't working. Meanwhile, 79% say they can connect a new CRM tool without IT involvement — meaning the integration barrier is lower than it seems.
"Last week. I lost the sale unfortunately."
"It has been over a year and I lost the opportunity that was available at the time."
The vast majority of respondents identify as tech-forward — yet actual AI usage in sales workflows tells a more nuanced story. Most have experimented with tools like Gemini or ChatGPT, but few have integrated them deeply. The appetite exists. The right tool hasn't arrived yet.
59% of respondents are self-described early adopters, yet 27% haven't tried any AI tools for sales. Of those who have, most default to Gemini for its accessibility rather than purpose-built sales AI. The comfort breakdown is telling: 37% want draft-only control, but a combined 36% are open to rules-based or full automation. The market is ready — it's waiting for the right experience.
"The gap is automation with real intelligence — tools can send emails, but they don't truly personalize, time follow-ups perfectly, or think like a human about when and how to engage."
"An AI that predicts buying intent and automates personalized mid-funnel follow-ups, ensuring that no high-value deals ever go cold again."
Sales teams shouldn't have to choose between keeping up with their inbox and focusing on deals. Spara brings intelligent automation to email follow-ups, CRM updates, and outreach — so your pipeline stays active even when you're heads-down elsewhere.
See Spara in Action →Research design, respondent composition, and data notes
Survey conducted via conversational AI interview (Gather platform). All percentages calculated from unique respondents per question. Multi-select questions (Q14) may exceed 100% in aggregate — each option is shown as a percentage of total respondents who selected it. Responses with invalid or incomplete data were excluded from individual question calculations.