CASE STUDY
Redirected 4,000+ hours a year from admin work to selling
An avionics OEM sales organization lost 42% of manager time to administration. Mapping 30+ activity streams returned 4,000+ hours a year to selling and lifted revenue per manager more than 10%.
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2 min read
Sales managers were losing 42% of their week to admin. Mapping 30+ activity streams put 4,000+ hours a year back into selling.
Sales managers at an avionics OEM were spending close to half their week on everything except selling. A new CEO wanted bold change in a sales organization that had come to treat volume as something customers decided. Before anyone could sell more, the team had to find the time to sell at all.
The challenge
The organization was reactive by habit. Managers lost roughly 42% of their time to internal communication, meeting preparation and administration, and no one could say which of those activities earned their place. Revenue targets rose while selling time shrank.
The approach
The team mapped more than 30 activity streams through time studies and an organizational design review, tracing where each hour went and who was best placed to do the work. More than half of the non-value-added workload moved to Finance, Customer Service and Sales Support, the functions built to carry it.
The same data showed which activities most reliably drove revenue. Those practices were written down and taught across the team, so core and lower performers worked the way the best already did.
The results
More than 4,000 hours a year went back to selling. Revenue per sales manager rose by more than 10%, and the organization gained a working definition of what good selling time looks like.
What it means now
Time studies used to take months. Today, activity data from CRM, calendar and email systems can show the same picture in weeks, and AI assistants can absorb much of the administrative load outright. The discipline is unchanged: measure where the hours go before deciding what to automate.
