How to stop Sales from selling vaporware

🎙 Episode Summary

Host: John Fontenot

Topic: How to stop sales teams from selling vaporware (promising unbuilt features)

💡 Core Problem

Sales teams often promise features that don't yet exist (a.k.a. vaporware) to close deals. This creates chaos for product and engineering, derails the roadmap, and sets poor expectations with customers.

🧩 Why It Happens

• Lack of vision and strategy at the leadership level causes misalignment between product, marketing, and sales.

• Without clear guidance on:

  • Who the ideal customer is

  • What value the product provides...
    …sales operate independently and promise features reactively.

• Sales are under intense pressure to close deals and may overpromise to hit quotas.

✅ The Upstream Fix

• Founders and product leaders must define a clear vision and strategy, including:

  • Product strategy (value prop, differentiation)

  • Go-to-market strategy (target customer, positioning)

• Enablement is key: Marketing and product must empower sales to recognize good vs. bad-fit prospects.

🛠 Tactical, Downstream Solution

When a feature is promised post-sale:

1. Don’t drop everything to build it.

2. Ask to talk to the customer to understand the why behind the request.

3. Reframe the conversation with sales:

   “Let’s explore the real need and maybe we can deliver something better that helps you close more future deals.”

4. Collaborate to design a more effective, differentiated solution.

5. Bring customers into the process: this creates partnership, not just transaction.

⚠️ Contracts often include promised features that are never built and unless the customer feels misled or cheated, they’re rarely enforced.

🤝 Building a Healthier Process

• Establish a norm where product gets involved before a feature is promised.

• Sales can say:

  “That sounds doable. Can we loop in our product team to better understand your goals?”

• If your org values honesty and customer success, this approach will resonate.

• If not, it may be a sign to consider other opportunities.

💬 Final Thoughts

• You can shift from feeling powerless as a PM to becoming a true strategic partner.

• This approach builds trust with both sales and customers.

• Ethical, aligned organizations will benefit from this collaboration.