How do you get autonomy for prioritizing your roadmap when your sales process is very sales heavy, and sales leadership wants to dictate priorities?

Good framing is essential for effective prioritization, especially in cases where departments have different perspectives on what to prioritize. In many companies, including my own, the sales team is an important stakeholder in the product roadmap. When working with other departments or teams, you want to ensure that there’s a common language in which to communicate. For example, are both departments aligned on the prioritization of high level business goals? Is there a clear ownership model? On ...Read More

Well, I often incorporate multiple sensing mechanisms into the roadmap - the field and sales team are definitely an important lever to drive revenue, which really is why product managers exist.  So, a tactic I use is to show how much of my engineering capacity is dedicated to enabling revenue, technical debt, and long-term vision. The long-term vision is often a "big bet" that is about making a splash in the market or analyst review. Oftentimes, sales and the field are supportive of carving out ...Read More

What are your company goals for the year, and how much is dependent on new sales vs retaining exist customers and growing customers? It's important to know, as It can cost five times as much to attract a new customer, than to keep an existing one. But if there is no clarity on this, ask the execs - What % should we allocate to new sales? An effective leadership team should be representiative of other voices too , like marketing, customer success, support etc. Make sure you reflect that voice bac ...Read More

I like this question because it is such a classic situation. I’ve seen this played out at companies and it’s likely a culture issue that it’s very hard to change unless the Product and Sales leadership teams get together and have a heart to heart about it and come to an agreement on the best path forward. Getting the autonomy you are looking for starts at the top and it has to be a coordinated effort to address the culture and behavior. On the other hand, it’s great to get sales input into your ...Read More

Love this question and have witnessed this scenario often. I'd say try to establish a common framework with your sales leadership so noise doesn't misguide signal when it comes to prioritizing customer feedback. Maybe a feature gets priority if there are X number of smaller customers asking for it or a larger customer (provided we can platformize the feature) is worth Y ROI. Whatever be the framework, you need a common understanding because these requests aren't one off so product and sales lead ...Read More

The simple answer here is prove that you're approach will make them more money. Here are some more tactical suggestions: Build trust and credibility with sales leadership. This means showing them that you understand their business goals and priorities, and that you are committed to helping them achieve them. If they see that you're opinions make it easier for them to hit their quotas, they'll trust your judgement. Frame the conversation in terms of business outcomes. Sales leadership is ultimate ...Read More

Prioritizing only for Sales teams can lead to traps where you are building Product one customer at a time and these products may not speak to each other. On the other hand by not including Sales you will be missing out on a core team that speaks to your customers every day. My recommendation would be to Take Sales and other stakeholders along the journey Conduct joint prioritization sessions with Sales, Customer Success, Strategy, Design and Engineering. Get them up to speed on the strategies yo ...Read More

Reducing sales influence over a product roadmap can be challenging, especially for companies that rely heavily on sales to acquire and retain customers. However, it is critical to ensure that sales directives do not interfere with the company's long-term goals or vision. To gain some level of autonomy, PMs can take the following steps: Revisit the strategy and vision with the executive team and sales leadership. This will help them visualize how sales-directed priorities will impact the ability ...Read More

Autonomy is certainly a desirable aspect of product work, but it comes with time. To gain autonomy, you need to first build trust. Start by not assuming your sales team is wrong (I realize this is blunt, but worth saying). They spend their days talking to users and prospective users and probably have a good idea of their pain points. They may not always be thinking about creative solutions to those pain points, or have a good product sense, but it's unwise to assume those ideas are fundamentally ...Read More

A lot of these situations come down to transparency and inclusion. In my experience, when sales leadership tries to dictate the roadmap (or anyone for that matter), it’s often because they don’t understand how decisions are being made or they don’t feel heard. When that happens, people fill in the gaps themselves, and that usually leads to tension. It’s much better to bring them into the process early, make the criteria visible, and show how input is actually being considered. You don’t have to ...Read More

Sales having a strong opinion about what customers want and being driven to advocate for it is actually a powerful asset! It sounds like where you're struggling is this energy is being directed into specific solutions. Try making time before solutions become an "ask" from sales to do upstream discovery of what they're hearing and are excited about, and work with them to frame their goals as customer problems rather than "build this specific thing". It could be as simple as changing a roadmap phr ...Read More

This is a gross over-generalization, but in my experience, there are two kinds of product development cultures: Sales-led, where you build what you sell. Product-led, where you sell what you build. The former is especially common in organizations that serve large enterprise clients. In those situations, you often find yourself building capabilities needed to close a specific deal or to fulfill a promise included in a particular contract (e.g., 'by the end of the next fiscal year, we'll build thi ...Read More

Here are some ways to collaborate with Sales teams: Ongoing communication of the product strategy, vision and roadmap. Explain the importance of balancing sales needs, customer needs, market trends, metrics impact and technical development. Clarify your prioritization process so that Sales team is bought into your roadmap and what you will ship. Document all Sales feedback to ensure they feel they are being heard Get ongoing feedback and input from Sales teams. Regularly communicate updates on t ...Read More

Let me begin by emphasizing the problem. It's important to prioritize sales yet balance growth with sustainable practices that prioritize customer satisfaction and ongoing innovation within your product teams. How to gain autonomy in shaping your roadmap heavily depends on your organization's culture. Understanding whether sales, product, or engineering primarily influences the company's direction is key. In a product-driven culture, for instance, your product leadership (CPO) can often support ...Read More

When departments have different opinions on prioritization, the product manager needs even more to have a transparent and data-driven prioritization method. Sales is a very important source of prioritization, and the art of product management is to find the right balance between supplying features that will unlock further sales, features that will please existing users, and resolving bugs and tech debt. The old say "it is less expensive to keep an existing user than to acquire a new one" remains ...Read More

When sales leadership wants to dictate roadmap priorities, influence—not authority—is the key. At eBay and Amex, I navigated sales-heavy environments by building trust and aligning product strategy with revenue goals. Here’s how I made it work: 🔹 Start by Listening → Instead of pushing back, I spent time understanding sales targets, customer pain points, and leadership priorities. This helped shift the conversation from “my roadmap vs. theirs” to a shared business objective. 🔹 Validate Alignment ...Read More

In a sales-driven org, an alignment with the product vision is the most crucial. Listening to what the sales team is dealing with, complaining about, wish to have, etc is key here. You can aim to remedy most of that and be open to sensing the changes on the ground and make pivots when needed without harming the product vision. You must also address why what you suggest is ideal for them and can ultimately boost revenue, sales satisfaction and user's. One common issue here that comes often is the ...Read More