Don't try to convince your sales team

If you’re in product or engineering you shouldn’t ever try to convince your sales team of stuff.

The “craftsperson” always makes this mistake. “Hey, this thing we’re building is gonna be awesome! It’s gonna do A, B, and C. Everyone will love it, it’ll close so many deals.”

Good enterprise sales people know not to listen.

Firstly, they know they’re not the target audience or the ones to judge what’s viable.

They also know that cool features can be completely unadoptable because of some mundane blocker. Doesn’t fit our workflow, needs a database migration, etc.

Good reps are rightly skeptical.

The way to get them onside is to show it to a prospect and let your rep see how excited they get.

And if you’re just at the idea stage — just don’t waste your breath. No theoretical argument will carry any weight.

Good product teams know this. Everyone else wonders why sales won’t get excited about their roadmap.