Takeaway: Understanding what the team is doing and how they are spending their time is valuable, but I don’t think weekly time tracking is an effective approach for Presales.
I’ve had a particularly busy few weeks, working on multiple tasks, both internal and external, and wearing different hats of responsibility. I was feeling busy, stressed and under-valued. I got to a point on Thursday where I wrote a list of everything that had been consuming my time and attention for the past 10 days and sent it to my manager. It was a long list. I didn’t need immediate help, but I wanted my activities and contributions to be known and acknowledged.
My manager promptly replied with a short message, thanking me and also making a nice observation about how my workload is a reflection of people’s trust in me. He also followed up with suggestion on potentially moving one of my responsibilities to someone else. I appreciated his response and it helped me feel positive that my effort was recognised.
The topic of timesheets (or time tracking, or activity tracking) for Presales teams is one I have a close connection with, having spent many years as “management”, trying to get 100 Presales specialists across 9 countries to regularly track the time they spent on different activities. It was time consuming, frustrating, and in the end, I don’t think it was worth the effort. If I was to become a Presales Director again, I would not take the same approach.
The case for time tracking
The best specific example I have of time tracking adding value is a period where our Presales staff were spending a lot of time on post-sales technical support. While some level of post-sale engagement is normal (and desirable), the proportion of time was too high. By tracking time and activities, I had hard data and metrics I could use as evidence to escalate the issue to senior management and the support organisation. Graphs about trends and time breakdowns are more compelling than just anecdotal evidence.
For senior management, the attraction of tracking Presales activities and effort is to get that understanding of what people are doing, and to be able to track and report on KPIs about productivity, utilization and win rates. The VP or Director of Presales is expected to be in control of their team and such data can help with resource planning, justifying additional investment, or showcasing the contributions of the team.
Questions that you might want activity tracking data to help you answer include:
- Are we spending time on the right things?
- Are we working on the right customers and opportunities?
- Are we doing too many POCs? Not enough demos? Too many unqualified tenders?
- Are we winning deals when we do POCs?
Accurate time tracking can definitely provide Presales and Sales management with tangible data, to help make better strategic decisions.
For Presales team members, time tracking provides a way to give management visibility into what you are doing. If you are working 50 hours on a POC, or are juggling 10 opportunities at once, activity tracking provides a clear record. As noted in my introduction, such recognition can be important, whether its simply an acknowledgement of your contribution, or it helps lead to discussions about prioritisation, delegation or even compensation.
The case against time tracking
The biggest issue I have with time tracking is that the value of the data does not outweigh the effort required to collect accurate data. Presales staff are usually very busy and its easy to forget or choose not to record your time. If not enough of the team are filling in their timesheets, then the data you do have becomes less and less meaningul. If the data is not meaningful and statistically relevant, then why expend the effort?
I literally spent years reminding, reporting, auditing and chasing people. And I never succeeded in properly making it a consistent habit. Some people were very diligent while many others were not. Weekly compliance typically ranged from 50% to 75%. My time, and my teams’, could have been spent on more productive things.
For individual contributors and Presales staff, it can be very hard to see the value in time tracking. It feels like a time consuming imposition. It doesn’t seem to help or change anything. At the end of a busy week, it’s easy to forget and the last thing you want to do.
In my current role, as a manager and business consultant, I try to do the right thing and record my key activities. I’m not a fan of it but I believe it is important to be a good corporate citizen. However, I often forget, or I’m working on things for which there is no specific account or opportunity in the system, so the data I do record is an incomplete picture. When I was feeling overloaded last week, it was a lot easier and more satisfying to write a simple list in an email to my manager, and to speak to him, than to take the time to fill in a timesheet.
An alternative approach?
I have three suggestions for Presales managers who are considering timesheets, time tracking, activity tracking or an equivalent.
- Regular 1-on-1 meetings are important. Make sure you provide your team member time to update you on their recent activities and upcoming plans. It will keep you informed and provides them with important acknowledgment. A 30 minute discussion every week is much easier than filling in a timesheet, and provides greater value to both people.
- Focus your activity tracking only on POCs and RFPs. Given the time-consuming nature of a Proof of Concept/Proof of Value and a tender response, understanding how many your team are doing, whether they are well qualified, and if they lead to sales wins is important information. It could help you justify the need for more resources, or push back on sales teams. Instead of trying to track everything Presales are doing, put a process in place to monitor and track only key activities and outcomes.
- Perform a short Time/Activity Survey, every 6 or 12 months. Instead of weekly time tracking, ask staff to record their activities over a 2 week period. A good time for this is in your Q2, when kickoffs and breaks are over, the team is geting into busy mode, and before you get into detailed resource planning for the next year. Such a survey should provide sufficient information to guide planning and strategic discussions, without being an ongoing imposition on the team.
How do you get visibility into what Presales are doing?
Thoughtful Presales 