LordBusiness

Chief Revenue Officer

Roadmap Selling?

How much do you rely on "the development/feature" roadmap when selling your product? Its funny how the thing the client "wants" is always visible in the road map, but also not in production. Do you sell the value without the "its on the come" or do you leverage the roadmap to try and get the deal to close?

What say you WR?

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17 comments

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BmajoR

Arsonist

Account Executive

Never roadmap sell, unless you know it’s coming for a fact and coming soon. I’ve seen one of my coworkers lose a deal over this.

CaneWolf

Politicker

Call me what you want, just sign the damn contract

I had a SVP of Sales and Product guarantee a customer that something would work. It did not. It was not good.

Edit: Not sober.

Prunetracey

Fire Starter

VP Growth

"How much do you rely on "the development/feature" roadmap when selling your product?" - I don't.

CaneWolf

Politicker

Call me what you want, just sign the damn contract

I've used roadmap selling quite a bit but I've also worked in enterprise products that had so many features that it wasn't an arbitrary reach that a bunch of new ones would all get done on time.

I feel like that's tougher when the product is more basic. Saying you're going to add SMS to an email marketing solution is way more of a leap than adding a WIP module to an ERP system.

sales7

Politicker

Commercial Product Enablement

DON'T SELL ROADMAP. all that awaits you is tears

barney2021

Tycoon

Account Executive

Some of my competitors roadmap sell and are successful sometimes against me. The amount of clients who come back to me saying it never came or asking me to help them get of their contract is amazing. DONT DO IT and remember “they always come back”

FromaBlankPerspective

Politicker

District Manager

I try and avoid this as much as possible unless it’s already been announced it’s in the next quarterly release. I might tell them it’s on the roadmap, but I’m sure to be very clear that that doesn’t really mean anything, haha

braintank

Politicker

Enterprise Account Executive

You sure you're a CRO? Only sell what's on the truck, unless you want to look like an ass when product shits the bed (again).

LordBusiness

Politicker

Chief Revenue Officer

I'm pretty sure? Let me check.......yeah sure. The reason for my post is that I was having a heated debate with one of my leaders about "casually mentioning what's coming" on calls - he was for it. I was against it as I think it causes more "lets talk when that's ready". I figured I'd take it to the community.

braintank

Politicker

Enterprise Account Executive

Good call. Pull rank and tell him to sell it when it's ready.

SaaSguy

Tycoon

Account Executive

Don't do it! Was at a company that did this, all it does it get you a lot of churn.

pretengineer

Politicker

Head of the crumpets

Only use roadmap to sell the big picture. Never the feature. Noooothing in alpha / internal betas. Been burned. However when used right - in juicer deals, roadmaps come in very handy to paint the story of how you make decisions as a product, north stars etc as they purchase multi-year contracts with your software.

ThomasRCallahanIII

Politicker

Enterprise Account Executive

Never sell on roadmap but use it as a tool to to counter any objections on your company’s longevity and innovation. Bring the product team in to deliver that conversation.

AZ_Seller

Good Citizen

Director

There is a right way and a wrong way to roadmap sell. At a startup currently and literally all we have is roadmap. But it is about being radically honest and transparent to your customers or it will end in tears 💯 of the time.

GDO

Politicker

BDM

I would not do it. Will end up with broken promises that leave a bad taste. Also it will kill your name in the market.

eman

Politicker

Account Executive

getting clients buying into the roadmap is good, relying on it is a no-no

Cyberjarre

Politicker

BDR

LeadIQ coupled with Sales Navigator and Lusha.

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LordBusiness

Roadmap Selling?

17 comments

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