If You’re Not Tracking Activity, You’ll Get A Hole In Your Ceiling
Activity Tracking is a controversial subject in sales engineering. I have to confess that I’m not sure why. SE Managers that I’ve worked with in the past have said to me that they believe that activity tracking is too much to ask a team to do. The SEs are so busy — it’s really quite inconvenient to ask them to record what they’re doing. It’s just useless micromanaging that really demotivates them. The data they gather would be inaccurate and useless anyway. SEs that are asked to do it always groan. They feel like management is spying on them. Like somehow if they don’t fill in the right kind of activity or enough activity, that puts a target on their back. Or their attitude is that they’re too busy building demos and helping to close deals. And if they’re closing deals, what good is that activity tracking anyway? Does it really help them, or is it just something to help a manager feel like they have a purpose?
I know you SEs and SE managers just want to do demos and POCs and be left alone. You want to bask in the glory of yet another big deal and not constantly be questioned about what you did to accomplish it. But it doesn’t work that way. And you need to accept that.
My first response to all of this is to put my head in my hands. These managers aren’t managing their teams. Or their business. These SEs…
