Feature requests are like marketing leads—not all are good enough to pursue. Just as sales sifts through leads, product managers must prioritize requests that are vital, valuable, and viable.
I’ve accidentally built a reputation for being hard on salespeople. I don’t mean to be, but working with truly great sales teams has a way of lowering my tolerance for... less great ones. Call it standards, call it snobbery—either way, here we are.
My expectations are simple: please sell what we have. Not what we might have someday, not what you wish we had, and certainly not something we’ve explicitly decided not to build. “Sell what’s on the truck,” as the saying goes. And yet, this logic seems to baffle some salespeople.
Consider Kevin, the world’s worst salesperson. During a roadmap presentation (a strategic planning document, not a wish list), Kevin demanded to know where his pet feature request was. His assumption, of course, was that all requests—no matter how ridiculous—would eventually show up on the roadmap.
But here’s the thing: not all ideas are good ideas, and not all requests are viable. To paraphrase a blog post I wrote earlier: You can have (almost) anything; you can’t have everything.
Feature Requests Are Like Marketing Leads
The "Kevin Conundrum" isn’t unique to sales. It’s a close cousin to the way marketing generates leads.
In marketing, a lead isn’t automatically gold. Marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) are like vague promises—signals that someone, somewhere, might be interested. But as any salesperson will tell you, 79% of those leads never convert into sales (thanks, MarketingSherpa). Of the remaining 21%, only about 25% are actually ready to advance (according to Gleanster Research). The rest? Noise. Junk. Tire kickers.
The same goes for product feature requests. Salespeople demand more features. Customers demand more features. Your CEO’s cousin’s neighbor demands more features. But more is not better. Just as salespeople sift through marketing leads to find the real opportunities, product managers must sift through feature requests to find the ones that are vital to buyers, valuable to users, and viable for the business.
The Waiter Analogy (Spoiler: It's Terrible)
Some befuddled product leaders have compared product managers to waiters. The customer places an order, the product manager (the waiter) writes it down, and the kitchen (developers) churns out the feature. It’s efficient in theory and disastrous in practice.
Here’s why:
Customers don’t always know what they need. They ask for faster horses instead of cars. They ask for snow shovels instead of snowplows. When customers ask for a solution, they’re almost always wrong. When they describe a problem, they’re almost always right.
Resources are finite. Unlike a diner with endless coffee refills, product teams have limited bandwidth. So we have to say “no” to some things so we can say “yes” to others.
Imagine the coffee shop in an airport. The line often stretches to infinity. A thousand passengers place their orders with a heroic barista working alone. No matter how fast they brew, the line keeps growing, customers get grumpy and then furious, and no one gets their drink on time.
The solution isn’t to pour faster—it’s to prioritize. Maybe create one line to buy water or black coffee with a credit card and another for special orders. You may stop taking special orders entirely during hectic times, such as that triple-venti-no-foam-macchiato for Kevin.
What to Do About It
The answer to managing feature requests—and sales expectations—is prioritization. Not all requests are created equal, and it’s your job as product managers to sort the signal from the noise, just as sales teams do with marketing leads.
Establish clear criteria. Focus on what’s vital to buyers, valuable to users, and viable for the business.
Communicate trade-offs. Be transparent about the fact that resources are limited and explain why prioritization matters.
Educate your sales team. Help them understand that, like marketing leads, more feature requests aren’t necessarily better. The goal is to deliver value, not volume.
At the end of the day, product management isn’t about saying no—it’s about saying yes to the right things. Meanwhile, “Sell what’s on the truck.” And if Kevin can’t understand that, well, maybe Kevin needs a new truck.
Download our free ebook, How to Achieve Product Success for ideas on being systematic about discovering, developing, and delivering products.