I overheard a lively conversation between a group of Sales Engineers and their manager last week. The topic wasn’t compensation, bad salesreps, lousy technical support, endless RFPs or any of the usual suspects. The conversation was about the requirement that they track their time and enter it into a CRM system by activity.
“Why do I have to record my time? It’s like Big Brother watching over me. Don’t you trust me to do my job?”
The manager immediately became very defensive, and replied “it’s now a job requirement. You better get used to it.”
The conversation kept going for a few minutes more without a satisfactory conclusion. It occurred to me that it would be a great Talking Point article for November. Why is it so important that the SE organization tracks its time when Sales doesn’t? So stay tuned.
The policy wouldn't be so bad if it were typically also used to reward and/or remunerate "overtime" - But in my experience that's rarely the case. I think these metrics are simply used to feed the HR system and try to correlate with sales/performance metrics at a later time. It does have a punishing effect, in my experience.
ReplyDeleteJerome - you hit upon one of the premises of my article. That the time metrics should be used to reach up and outside of pre-sales as opposed to being used to kick-down on individuals. The right metrics can be powerful data in engaging with customer support, development, marketing and even sales. Again - stay tuned for the November Talking Point.
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