The business development manager of a recruitment agency starts each week with good intentions: call five prospective clients, visit two existing ones, follow up on last month’s conversations. By Wednesday, most of her time has gone on updating the client database, preparing proposals, writing follow-up emails and digging through old notes to remember what a prospect said three months ago. The calls slip to next week, again.
Her experience is common. Many people responsible for winning business spend more of their time on administration than on actual conversations with clients and prospects. AI and better use of data promise to change that, and are already doing so in many businesses.
The opportunity is to automate everything around relationships, so that the people who build them have more time and better information to do it well.
One Like insight: Let AI handle the admin and the research. Spend the time it saves on the conversations only people can have.
Where selling time goes
Salesforce, which sells customer relationship management software, surveys thousands of sales professionals around the world for its regular State of Sales report. In its 2024 edition, salespeople estimated that they spent around 70% of their time on non-selling tasks, such as data entry, administration, meeting preparation and internal meetings. That figure had barely changed from the previous report.
Meanwhile, buyers wanted something different. In Salesforce’s research, 84% of business buyers said they expect salespeople to act as trusted advisers, yet 73% said most sales interactions feel transactional. Many buyers felt salespeople didn’t take the time to understand their business.
The report found that teams using AI reported advantages: salespeople on those teams were more likely to say it was easy to get the customer insights they needed to close deals. But it also highlighted a major obstacle: only around a third of sales professionals said they completely trusted the accuracy of their organisation’s data. AI built on poor data produces poor results.
The research comes from a company with a commercial interest in AI sales tools, and the figures are self-reported. But the core tension it describes is widely recognised: business development is full of administration that keeps people away from the relationship-building that buyers value most.
Using AI and data in business development
Small businesses can apply these ideas with tools many already have.
Start with clean, simple data. Keep one up-to-date record of clients and prospects: who they are, what they need, what was discussed and what happens next. AI is only as useful as the information it draws on. A tidy spreadsheet beats a sophisticated system nobody updates.
Let AI do the research. Before a meeting, AI tools can summarise a prospect’s website, recent news and public information in minutes. Always check the facts, as explored in AI Sounds Sure of Itself.
Draft faster, personalise better. AI can draft follow-up emails, proposals and meeting summaries from your notes, which you then refine with what you know about the client.
Spot patterns and signals. Data from your own records can show which clients are growing, which have gone quiet and which types of client are most profitable, so effort goes where it counts.
Protect client information. Keep personal and confidential data out of public AI tools, and follow POPIA, as explored in What Happens to What You Type Into AI?
Reinvest the time in people. Use the hours saved for the conversations buyers value: understanding their goals and bringing ideas, as explored in Building Strong Client Relationships That Drive Revenue.
[Infographic placement] Where business development time goes. A simple bar: Non-selling tasks about 70% · Selling about 30%. Beside it, two columns. Hand to AI and data: research, data entry, first drafts, meeting summaries, spotting patterns. Keep human: understanding client goals, bringing ideas, building trust, negotiating. Caption: Salesforce State of Sales 2024 (self-reported; vendor research).
Starting small
For two weeks, keep a rough log of how business development time is spent: research, admin, writing, internal meetings and actual conversations with clients and prospects. Then pick the biggest administrative drain and try one AI-assisted fix, such as an AI meeting summary, a drafted follow-up or a quick prospect briefing. Measure the time saved, and deliberately book that time into client conversations.
A few questions can help:
- How much of our business development time is spent talking to clients and prospects?
- Is our client and prospect information accurate and in one place?
- Which research and writing tasks could AI help with today?
- How will we make sure saved time goes into relationships, not more admin?
Which brings us back to the recruitment agency’s business development manager and her disappearing calls. AI could prepare her prospect briefings, draft her follow-ups and summarise each conversation into the client database. That might free a day a week, enough to make the calls and visits that actually win business, and to arrive at each one better informed than before.
Sources
- Salesforce, State of Sales statistics, sixth edition (2024), including figures on non-selling time, buyer expectations and data trust; buyer figures draw on Salesforce’s State of the Connected Customer research.
