10 Red Flags Your Sales Team is Unofficially Steering Product Management (And the Risks Involved)

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In my 20 plus years of experience in the tech industry, I've witnessed countless product successes and failures. One pattern I've seen repeatedly is the gradual shift of product management responsibilities to the sales team.

While sales input is crucial, allowing sales to dominate product strategy can lead to short-term thinking and misaligned products. Let me share some real-world red flags I've encountered.

1. Feature Promises Without Product Team Involvement

I'll never forget the day our top salesperson burst into the office, beaming with pride. "I just closed our biggest deal ever!" he announced. Our excitement quickly faded when we learned he'd promised a feature that would take months to develop and wasn't on our roadmap. This scenario played out repeatedly, creating a constant tug-of-war between sales promises and development realities.

2. Roadmap Driven by Individual Client Requests

During a product review meeting, I once saw our roadmap transform into what I called the "squeaky wheel wishlist." Every item corresponded to a specific client's request, with our largest accounts dominating the list. While we were busy fulfilling these requests, our competitors were innovating and capturing market share.

3. Lack of Long-term Product Vision

In a previous role, our quarterly planning sessions became a series of short-term feature negotiations. "What do we need to hit this quarter's numbers?" was the primary question. The result? A product that felt disjointed and lacked a coherent vision, making it increasingly difficult to market and scale.

4. Minimal Focus on User Experience

I once joined a company proud of its feature-rich product. However, user interviews revealed a different story. "It does everything," one user told me, "but I can't figure out how to do anything." Our sales-driven development had created a Frankenstein's monster of features without considering the overall user experience.

5. Pricing Structures That Don't Align with Product Value

At a SaaS startup, I watched our pricing model change with almost every major deal. Sales would come back with, "If we just change the pricing this way, we can close this account." Six months in, we had a pricing structure so complex that even our sales team struggled to explain it.

6. Neglect of Non-sales-facing Product Areas

In one of my roles, our admin interface became so outdated and bug-ridden that customers started to churn. Why? Because all our resources were poured into front-end features that helped close deals. We learned the hard way that customer retention is just as important as acquisition.

7. Frequent Emergency Feature Requests

I still chuckle remembering a dev team meeting where our lead developer sarcastically suggested we rename our sprints to "Sales Fire Drills." Every week brought a new "must-have" feature to close a deal, derailing our planned development and leaving us with a patchwork product.

8. Lack of Cohesive Product Messaging

At a marketing strategy meeting, we realized our product had five different value propositions depending on which salesperson was pitching. This made creating coherent marketing materials nearly impossible and left customers confused about what our product actually did best.

9. Over-customization for Individual Clients

I once inherited a product that had been customized for each of its 50 enterprise clients. Maintaining it was a nightmare, and adding new features meant navigating a labyrinth of client-specific code. Scaling this product nearly bankrupted the company.

10. Metrics Focused Solely on Sales Figures

In a previous company, our dashboards were a sea of sales metrics. Customer satisfaction? Usage statistics? Churn rates? Nowhere to be found. It took a major client threatening to leave for us to realize we had been flying blind, focused only on new sales at the expense of product health.

Why It Matters

These experiences taught me that while sales teams provide valuable market insights, they shouldn't be the sole driver of product strategy. Here's why:

• Short-term Focus: I've seen products lose market relevance because we were always chasing the next deal instead of anticipating market trends.
• Feature Bloat: One of my products became so bloated with sales-driven features that we had to rebuild it from scratch, costing millions.
• Market Misalignment: By catering too much to individual clients, I've watched products become so niche they lost broader market appeal.
• Scalability Issues: The over-customized product I mentioned earlier? We eventually had to sunset it, losing several major clients in the process.
• Reduced Innovation: Always playing catch-up with sales requests left no room for true innovation, allowing smaller, more agile competitors to disrupt our market.

By addressing this issue, organizations can create a more balanced approach. In my current role, we've implemented a process where sales insights inform, but don't dominate, our product strategy. The result? A more coherent product, happier customers, and, ironically, easier sales processes.

Remember, the most successful products arise from a collaborative effort where sales, product management, and development work in harmony. It's not about sidelining sales input, but about creating a balanced approach that serves both short-term sales needs and long-term product health.

I encourage you to reflect on your organization's product development process. Do you see any of these red flags? If so, it might be time to reassess the balance between sales input and strategic product management. In my experience, finding this balance is key to creating products that not only sell well today but also build lasting value and market leadership for years to come.

Paul Kennard is a seasoned sales and marketing consultant with over two decades of experience in startups and corporate environments. He specializes in helping companies in the insurance, payroll, PEO, and financial sectors optimize their go-to-market strategies.

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