What are the best ways to communicate the limitations of a solution to a client?

It all starts with discovery. You should be using that first call you are on as the SE to discover as much as you can, including but not limited to, finding out exactly what their pains are and what their long-term perfect environment would look like and be able to do. Once you have that information, you will know where the limitations are and can properly set expectations. Outside of that: - Be honest and genuine - Help them find a different way to tackle a limitation - Understand your product roadmap and if those limitations might be bridged in the future

There is no value to selling features and capabilities that you do not have - customers end up losing trust and it damages your reputation in the market. What is key is to do good discovery and understand the requirements of the customer both technical and business to see how your solution could help solve them - and if there are gaps what alternatives you could present in process change that would ameliorate those.

This speaks very much to being open and honest with your customers when proposing a solution. As long as you do that this will win you more of their trust and some mind share. Also if you speak on roadmap items that could bridge the gap, make sure that you preface it multiple times that these are roadmap items and could move or slip.

Generally, when suggesting a solution and its overall deployment - there is also an aspect of suggesting process change that would maximize the benefit of the solution for the customer while offering a better way to implement their goals.

Telling the story and communicating the overall vision is key here. You should have at least one or two customer stories to tell anytime you are approaching a solution. This will help you bring its strengths to light and telling a relevant story will always capture their attention. Having at the ready several potential reference customers will also be very helpful as it will show you have the knowledge off-hand who runs your product and has been successful.

After you've identified a limitation, it's worth asking your client how much of a requirement is that particular feature. If it's important, address it. Sometimes it's enough to solve for 90% of the problem and advise them on how to solve for the remaining 10%. This is how you become a trusted advisor.

Follow-up should always be done after any meeting just to keep a "paper" trail or receipts, is that still the new slang? But in the follow-up to the meeting where limitations come up, instead call them constraints. The word limitations itself sounds very limiting. Constraints on the other hand sounds a little better. It also helps to have a plan of action for those constraints listed out for each one of them and properly setting their expectations.

A limitation is , at most of the scenarios, a perception game. At times , instead of narrowing down focus only to what gap or missing piece is being at radar, answers reside at out of focus sections. Instead of being bogged down by 'limitation' of solution, it is critical to have strong understanding of the underlying realities of the solution, and various alternatives to address use cases.