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Bad Sales Advice? Lying about Product Roadmap

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“This isn’t live in production, but definitely in our roadmap”

How many of you are guilty of roadmap selling at least once in your sales career? How many of you got your hands burnt later?

In this edition,@sahil discusses whether leveraging product roadmap for closing a deal is bad sales advice or not...

People don’t buy your product, they rent it! Which means if you’re roadmap selling, you’re simply deceiving the customer.

Using a roadmap to sell a bigger picture is one thing. Using it to sell a table stake feature is another. Later, when promises are broken, the customer loses trust and churns. You end up losing credibility for the rest of your life (and their life).

Be radically honest and transparent to your customers or it will end in tears. Try and strike a conservative balance instead, looking at the criticality of the feature being demanded by the customer.

Sell the Product, not the Roadmap!

Bad Sales Advice?

PS: Do check out other videos from Bad Sales Advice series:

1. Internal Champion not= Salesperson

2. Demo and Discovery: together or apart?

👑 Sales Strategy

17

13 comments

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Sunbunny31

Arsonist

6

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

Your reputation is very important - so honesty is critical.

boredAnti

Tycoon

5

That One Guy

Being new-ish to sales or at least in a selling role(wrapping up year 1) I have seen some of the "experienced" reps do shit like that and I have seen how fast it has exploded in their face. I just keep it one hunnit and coast on the truth.

CuriousFox

WR Officer

4

🦊

Transparency and open communication are key - in my rule book anyway. 🤷‍♀️

Pachacuti

Politicker

3

They call me Daddy, Sales Daddy

Many of us here sell SaaS and the whole point of SaaS is that its ever-evolving. Selling the roadmap is selling SaaS. However, there are things which are real and things which are vaporware.

I'm a big fan of letting the customer know things and then letting them make their own decision. If I tell them, based off the information provided to me, that a feature will be ready by the time they'd go live - I don't have a problem selling it.

If its going to be ready in a year, and just added to their solution then, I can sell that too. Or if its an add-on cost - again, no issues.

I will always set their expectations and then let them make the decision.

punishedlad

Tycoon

0

Regional Partnership Manager

I just have a real hard time trusting product roadmaps. I'd never sell based on a dev/product-promised timeline.

Pachacuti

Politicker

1

They call me Daddy, Sales Daddy

That’s easy to say here. It’s harder when it’s “that one thing” the prospect wants and you’re under quota.

punishedlad

Tycoon

0

Regional Partnership Manager

I'd rather be up front that I can't guarantee deliverability, but we are working on it than promise a feature that might not be there.

punishedlad

Tycoon

1

Regional Partnership Manager

I will never understand why anyone does this. Say you do convince someone to move over, you've just promised features/services that either don't exist yet or never will. Good luck with that.

hola

Valued Contributor

1

sales consultant

this is so true!! my previous CEO was constantly roadmap selling and lying about capabilities to prospects. None converted into any opps

Diablo

Politicker

1

Sr. AE

Being transparent and communicative are so important for sustainable business!

BrianTracysLoveChild

Fire Starter

1

Account Manager

"People don’t buy your product, they rent it!Which means if you’re roadmap selling, you’re simply deceiving the customer."

In SaaS - sure, that's probably true.

For me, I won't introduce roadmap sellingunless
- it's long sales cycle customer
- sales cycle lines up with our development timeline
- my product/R&D teams have regularly delivered on published roadmaps in the past

fuzzy

Notable Contributor

1

CMO (Chief Meme Officer)

As a product manager and salesperson, if I catch any of my salespeople lying about what it can do or what we will do, I’ll be putting them on a shortlist to be fired.

You are totally encouraged to tell product teams what people are looking for. You are not encouraged or entitled to tell people what product teams should be doing.

Gasty

Notable Contributor

0

War Room Community Manager

well said !

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