No it's a failure to get the right people involved at the right time. I'm currently a CTO and I also do product management currently. So, whenever this stuff goes wrong it's actually both my problem and my fault.
My solution is to listen to sales and get involved in early in the sales pipeline to figure out what it is that our customers need and manage our roadmap accordingly. After the deal is closed is too late to do anything. Two things I've noticed with this is that sales people are selling what you don't have and not selling what you do have. Whenever that happens either you have the wrong product or you need to get your sales people up to speed with what the product actually is about. The worst is having features that would solve a problem that sales is simply not aware off or misunderstanding and therefore not selling to the companies they talk to.
The key thing is involving the right people throughout the sales and requirements process and closing deals that align with roadmap & product and ensuring that near future product work aligns with what our sales people need to be able to close deals.
When talking to customers, it's important to realize that the person purchasing is not going to be the person using the software typically. So there's a big risk of a he said that she said that he thinks that's what our users need summarized by the sales person as "the customer needs X, when can you deliver that". Most SAAS products sell a promise to IT managers that don't actually use the stuff directly but instead manage people that manage people that actually have to use the software. With sales in between development and all that, that's four levels of indirection.
Breaking, through that and getting to the core of the issues is important. Having people in the room that understand both the business and technical constraints as well as the actual domain and users is key.
My solution is to listen to sales and get involved in early in the sales pipeline to figure out what it is that our customers need and manage our roadmap accordingly. After the deal is closed is too late to do anything. Two things I've noticed with this is that sales people are selling what you don't have and not selling what you do have. Whenever that happens either you have the wrong product or you need to get your sales people up to speed with what the product actually is about. The worst is having features that would solve a problem that sales is simply not aware off or misunderstanding and therefore not selling to the companies they talk to.
The key thing is involving the right people throughout the sales and requirements process and closing deals that align with roadmap & product and ensuring that near future product work aligns with what our sales people need to be able to close deals.
When talking to customers, it's important to realize that the person purchasing is not going to be the person using the software typically. So there's a big risk of a he said that she said that he thinks that's what our users need summarized by the sales person as "the customer needs X, when can you deliver that". Most SAAS products sell a promise to IT managers that don't actually use the stuff directly but instead manage people that manage people that actually have to use the software. With sales in between development and all that, that's four levels of indirection.
Breaking, through that and getting to the core of the issues is important. Having people in the room that understand both the business and technical constraints as well as the actual domain and users is key.