Free calculator
What your post-call work actually costs
Every customer call ends with a list: update the CRM, file the ticket, send the recap, hand off to CS. When that list is manual, you pay for it twice, once in rep hours and again in renewals that slip. Enter your team, your call volume and your churn to see both numbers, and how a full-time hire, a traditional agency and a Mindlyft membership compare.
Your result
You are paying $140,654 a year for 2,024 hours of post-call admin your reps were hired to sell and retain, not type. Add $48,000 of renewal revenue at risk when follow-ups slip, and the leak is $188,654 a year.
Four ways to handle it
Keep it manual
$188,654 a year
The admin time plus the revenue at risk, every year. It grows with every rep you add.
A full-time hire
$179,163 to $288,163 in year one
$132,000 to $241,000 total comp for a senior GTM engineer, plus the leak that keeps running for 3 months while you recruit and ramp. One person, one queue.
A traditional agency
$96,000 to $240,000 a year
Your retainer assumption, times 12. People build it for you, pace tracks their bandwidth, and the knowledge can leave when the engagement ends.
Mindlyft
One flat fee per 4-week cycle
Unlimited requests on a shared board, shipped weekly. We quote the fee on the free 30-minute GTM Engineering Review, once we have seen your stack. No minimum term. Pause or cancel anytime. A human approves every customer-facing write, and every write is logged and reversible.
Hours reclaimed a year
1,2142.4 hours per rep per week
Time value back a year
$84,392At 60% of the admin engineered away
Revenue kept a year
$12,000$96,392 a year back in all, on your inputs
We quote a flat fee on the free review call, against these numbers. If the fee would not pay back on what you get back here, we say so, and the first system should target your biggest single leak rather than everything at once.
The next step
Bring these numbers to a Free GTM Engineering Review. In 30 minutes we tell you which systems to build first, in order.
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Get this breakdown in your inbox, with your inputs and every formula, to share with your team.
The math behind every numberShow the mathHide the math
Formulas
- Hourly cost per role
- fully loaded salary / 2,080 paid hours
- Admin hours per rep per week
- calls per rep per week x admin minutes per call / 60
- Team admin hours a year
- reps x admin hours per rep per week x working weeks
- Cost of that time
- sum over roles of (reps in role x admin hours a year x hourly cost)
- Follow-ups that slip a year
- reps x calls per week x working weeks x promises per call x slip rate
- Revenue at risk
- renewals a year x ARR per customer x gross churn x share of churn caused by dropped follow-through
- Total annual leak
- cost of admin time + revenue at risk
- Hours reclaimed
- team admin hours a year x share of admin engineered away
- Time value reclaimed
- cost of admin time x share engineered away
- Revenue kept
- revenue at risk x share you would keep
- What you get back a year
- cost of admin time x share engineered away + revenue at risk x share you would keep
- Full-time hire, year one
- $132,000 to $241,000 comp + total leak x (ramp months / 12) while they ramp
- Traditional agency, a year
- monthly retainer range x 12
By role
- AEs: 4 x 184 hrs x $72/hr = $53,077
- CSMs / AMs: 5 x 184 hrs x $63/hr = $57,500
- SEs: 2 x 184 hrs x $82/hr = $30,077
- Follow-ups that slip a year: 1,822
Assumptions you can change
- Working weeks a year: 46
- 52 minus holidays, PTO and sick days. Change it to your calendar.
- Follow-ups promised per call: 2
- A recap, a next step, a ticket. Count what your reps actually promise.
- Share of promised follow-ups that slip or land late: 15
- Your honest guess. Pull ten recent calls and check what shipped on time.
- Share of churn caused by dropped follow-through: 20
- Not all churn is fixable. Read your last few churn notes and estimate.
- Share of admin work engineered away: 60
- Below 100 because a human still reviews and approves every customer-facing write.
- Share of at-risk revenue you would actually keep: 25
- Deliberately conservative: better follow-through saves some accounts, not all.
- Months before a new hire ships work: 3
- Recruiting plus ramp. Use your own time-to-productive for technical hires.
- Agency retainer, low end (per month): 8,000
- Quotes vary widely by scope. Replace with a real quote if you have one.
- Agency retainer, high end (per month): 20,000
- Same: the range is a placeholder until you have a quote.
Revenue at risk counts only renewal churn you attribute to dropped follow-through, so it leaves out expansion you never pitched and new deals that stalled. The hire range is total comp only, before recruiting fees. Nothing you enter is stored unless you ask us to email it.
How the numbers work
How does the calculator work out the cost of post-call admin?
For each role (AEs, CSMs and AMs, SEs) it divides the fully loaded salary by 2,080 paid hours to get an hourly cost. Admin hours per rep per week are calls per week times admin minutes per call, divided by 60. Multiply by working weeks and by the number of reps in each role, then by that role's hourly cost, and add the roles together. That is the yearly cost of CRM updates, notes, tickets, recaps and handoffs.
How is revenue at risk calculated?
Customers up for renewal each year, times average ARR per customer, times your gross churn rate, times the share of that churn you believe comes from dropped follow-through. The last number is an assumption you set, because not all churn is fixable. It is deliberately conservative: it ignores expansion you never pitched and new deals that stalled.
Which numbers are assumptions?
Working weeks, follow-ups promised per call, the slip rate, the share of churn caused by dropped follow-through, the share of admin engineered away, the share of at-risk revenue you would keep, hire ramp months and the agency retainer range. Each is labelled as an assumption on the page, has a one-line rationale in the show-the-math panel, and can be changed. None of them is presented as an industry statistic.
How does a full-time hire compare?
A senior GTM engineer costs $132,000 to $241,000 a year in total compensation, before recruiting fees. The calculator adds the leak that keeps running during the months it takes to recruit and ramp, which you can set. The work also queues behind one person.
How does a traditional agency compare?
Agency pricing varies too much by scope to quote a single figure, so the calculator uses a monthly retainer range you can replace with a real quote, times 12.
What does Mindlyft cost, and what does the calculator show you get back?
Mindlyft is one flat fee per 4-week cycle, with unlimited requests shipped weekly, and you can pause or cancel anytime. We quote the fee on the free 30-minute GTM Engineering Review, so bring these numbers to it. What you get back a year is the cost of admin time times the share engineered away, plus revenue at risk times the share you would keep. The page shows both parts separately, so you can see what reclaimed time alone is worth.
Is my data stored?
No. The calculator runs in your browser. Your inputs are only sent if you ask for the breakdown by email.