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Let's say sales is making requests directly to engineering, how would you deal with that situation?

Ibrahim Bashir
Amplitude Vice President, Product ManagementJuly 7

This does happen, and it's usually the result of a communication / execution dysfunction. To start with, no salesperson wakes up and says let me go around and undermine the PM - they usually have trying to follow a process that doesn't work and eventually take matters into their own hands becuase they are accountable to the business for real revenue. Some of the things I'd diagnose if faced with this situation:

  • is there a documented process for sales to make product requests?
  • does any follow up with sales to confirm receipt of requests?
  • is sales pulled into research / design around the requests?
  • is there a way for sales to see progress against the request?
  • is there a way to categorize requests by urgency / importance?
  • is something going in sales where product requests vs the existing produxt are more important to closing / renewing deals?
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