Totally agree, but it takes a really strong product manager to stand up to a sales person with $10K in revenue from an enterprise buyer "if we just add this one feature they want".
The fact that the enterprise buyer doesn't actually need the feature, or could do it easier/cheaper/better is immaterial. A Purchasing Department worker in the enterprise is looking at your product and Product X, and Product X has that feature that some manager somewhere in the purchasing process said they'd like to have. They really like your product, but they can't justify picking it over Product X without that feature.
Telling salesfolk that they have to walk away from the sale they spent months cultivating is hard, and there are often board-level ramifications to doing it. The entire company has to be behind "Keeping it Simple", including the directors and shareholders. This is why these companies (and products) are rare.
Product managers also need to stop living in idealized bubbles and actually understand their users and customers. What they want can at times can be dirty or ugly, and require PMs to challenge engineering stakeholders. There needs to be give and take there. Often PMs are getting crunched in the middle and don't have the wherewithal to deal with these situations.
Requirements also change over time and PMs can end up chasing a vision that doesn't exist. If PMs get out of their bubble and acknowledge this more they'd be trusted since there would be alignment on the long-term value for the customer and therefore sales. There are times that PMs need to show backbone when dealing with sales, or leadership, on features that might derail the product, but this doesn't have to be the default.
>Totally agree, but it takes a really strong product manager to stand up to a sales person with $10K in revenue from an enterprise buyer "if we just add this one feature they want".
Lol, let's be realistic. If a PM is in the situation to decide that and does so, in a few days he'll find himself in a meeting with some higher ups to discuss how to find a way. (Unless of course 10k is insignificant for the company and there's already a hard roadmap for higher value projects.)
The fact that the enterprise buyer doesn't actually need the feature, or could do it easier/cheaper/better is immaterial. A Purchasing Department worker in the enterprise is looking at your product and Product X, and Product X has that feature that some manager somewhere in the purchasing process said they'd like to have. They really like your product, but they can't justify picking it over Product X without that feature.
Telling salesfolk that they have to walk away from the sale they spent months cultivating is hard, and there are often board-level ramifications to doing it. The entire company has to be behind "Keeping it Simple", including the directors and shareholders. This is why these companies (and products) are rare.