40%.
That’s how much of the week the average seller spends selling, according to Salesforce’s 2026 State of Sales report, a survey of 4,050 sales professionals. Gen Z reps are at 35%, and they lose about two full hours a week to manual data entry.
Salesforce’s small business write-up of the same research puts it the other way around. Reps spend 60% of their time on non-selling tasks like manual data entry, lead research, and constant tool-switching.
I call that 60% the admin tax.
Not all of it is admin. Some of it is prospecting, which is real work wearing a different hat, and the same survey says sellers give it nearly a full day a week. But a lot of what’s left is the work every deal leaves behind. At an IT MSP, the deals leave behind more than most.
I build Go Fig, the sales admin for account executives at IT MSPs, so I think about this tax a lot. How we take it off an AE’s plate is on our IT MSP page. This post is about the tax itself: where it comes from, which parts software can take, and how to measure your own.
What is the sales admin tax?
The sales admin tax is the work every deal carries that isn’t talking to a buyer. Updating the CRM. Logging the call. Writing the follow-up. Setting the next step. Moving the close date when the client pushes.
None of it is hard. It’s endless.
And it’s the first thing to slip when the week gets busy. The CRM drifts out of date, follow-ups go out late, and deals stall for reasons that have nothing to do with the client.
Where does an MSP account executive’s week go?
Here’s a typical week, sorted by where the admin comes from. Your mix will be different, but the pieces will look familiar.
Monday: the pipeline review
Before the sales meeting, every deal needs a current stage, a real close date, and an amount. If the CRM drifted last week, Monday morning is when you pay for it.
Discovery calls with new prospects
A good discovery call produces a lot. The client’s environment, their pain, who else is involved, and what you promised to send. All of it has to land in the CRM and in a recap email the same day, or it starts to fade.
QBR prep and follow-up
QBRs (quarterly business reviews) are where an MSP keeps and grows an account. They’re admin-heavy on both ends.
Before the meeting you pull service history out of the PSA, check the agreement, and build the deck. After it you write the notes, assign the action items, and send a follow-up that commits to the next project.
Renewals
Managed services agreements come up for renewal on a schedule. Someone has to see the date coming, open the conversation, and keep the renewal deal current in the CRM while it’s negotiated.
Project upsells
A firewall refresh. A migration. A new office. Each one means scoping with your engineers, a quote in your quoting tool, and often a proposal or statement of work. Then the deal sits in the pipeline waiting on a next step someone has to chase.
The handoff to onboarding
When a deal closes, the work isn’t over. The kickoff email, the onboarding plan, the account notes, and setting up the new client in the PSA all have to happen before the service team can start.
The chasing
Then there’s the follow-up nobody sent and the deal that went quiet weeks ago. Nobody plans time for this. It happens on Friday afternoon, or it doesn’t happen.
Why is the admin tax heavier at an MSP?
Three reasons.
- Two systems. Sales lives in HubSpot or Salesforce. Service lives in the PSA (professional services automation) system, like ConnectWise, Autotask, or HaloPSA. Every account has a foot in both, and keeping them straight is somebody’s job.
- Relationships that keep producing work. A one-time sale ends at the signature. An MSP account produces QBRs, renewals, and project upsells for as long as the client stays, and every one of those leaves admin behind.
- Technical deals. Scoping a project means pulling in engineers. Every handoff between sales and engineering creates notes and next steps that have to land somewhere.
None of that is a reason to sell less. It’s a reason to stop doing the admin by hand.
Which parts of the admin tax can software take?
More than you’d think, and less than some vendors claim. Here’s my honest split, using Go Fig as the example because it’s the one I can speak for.
| The admin | Can a sales admin take it? | How Go Fig handles it |
|---|---|---|
| Morning triage | Yes | A daily brief with who is waiting on you, which deals went quiet, and what’s on your calendar |
| Call notes and next steps | Yes, with your OK | Drafted from the call onto the right record in your CRM |
| Stage, close date, and amount | Yes, with your OK | Staged as a deal update you approve |
| Follow-up after a call | Yes, with your OK | Drafted in your voice and sent from your own inbox after you approve |
| Pipeline cleanup | Yes, with your OK | A nightly check for deals with no next step, close dates that passed, and missing amounts |
| Onboarding handoff | Partly | The kickoff email, onboarding plan, and account notes are drafted. PSA setup stays with your team |
| Proposals and statements of work | Partly | Drafted from email, the CRM, or a PDF on the Team plan |
| Quotes | No | Quoting stays in your quoting tool or PSA |
| QBR service history | No | Go Fig has no PSA connector, so ticket and agreement data stays in the PSA |
| Prospecting and list building | No | Go Fig works the pipeline you have. Finding new leads is a marketing job |
Call notes come from what’s already logged on the deal, or from the transcript if your team records calls in Fathom or takes them on Dialpad. Drafts go out from your own Gmail or Outlook, and the deal updates land in HubSpot or Salesforce.
Everything marked “with your OK” starts out waiting in your Feed for approval. Once you trust a specific action, like logging a note, you can let it run on its own and keep client emails waiting for you. Here’s how the agents work for an MSP sales team.
The “No” rows matter as much as the “Yes” rows. When a vendor tells you their AI takes your whole admin tax, ask them which rows of this table they’d mark No.
How do you measure your own admin tax?
Don’t take Salesforce’s number, or mine, for your team. Measure one week.
- Tag your time for five days. Use four buckets: selling, admin, prospecting, and internal meetings. Rough blocks are fine.
- Time the gap after each call. How long until the CRM was updated? How long until the follow-up went out?
- Audit the pipeline on Friday. Count the deals with no next step, the close dates in the past, and the missing amounts. Each one is admin that slipped.
- Sort the admin into three piles. Work a draft could handle with your approval. Work that needs your judgment. Work that belongs in another system, like the PSA.
The first pile is the tax you can cut. The second pile is your job. The third pile is a process conversation about which system owns what, and it’s worth having.
If you want a quick outside read first, the Agent Readiness Assessment asks six questions about your sales system, including how much of your team’s week goes to admin.
What changes when the tax comes off?
I won’t promise you a number of hours. There’s no figure I’d stand behind for MSP account executives specifically, and I’d rather you measure your own week than borrow my claim.
What changes is the shape of the job:
- You read and approve instead of writing from a blank page. The note, the deal update, and the follow-up are drafted when you get to them.
- You find out the night it slips, not on Monday. The nightly check flags the deal with no next step before the pipeline review does.
- The handoff doesn’t wait for a free hour. The kickoff email and onboarding plan are ready the day the deal closes.
The selling stays yours. The admin doesn’t have to.
See where your week goes
A solutions engineer connects your CRM and inbox with you in a 30-minute demo. You see the brief, the call notes, and the follow-up drafts on your own deals.