Having a sales team incentivized to the extent where it can demand engineering time for features that are specific to one customer -- and not benefit the product and customer-base long term -- is not too dissimilar to an organizational software security vulnerability.
You have to build the organization to be resilient to the types of incoming requests that it will receive. Some sales leads could -- intentionally or accidentally -- lead your organization and product down a path that limits future potential or causes cultural damage.
One of the ways to counter this is simply to spend more time collecting requirements and discussing the topic both internally and externally. Benevolent partners shouldn't want to rush to determine the shape of a feature.
Another slightly-less common counter would be to make the entire process more transparent. That could be difficult for some partners who might want to collaborate on the basis of creating a unique advantage that they'd like to achieve ahead of competitors. However, increasingly, I think that the cost to hide or obscure such plans is becoming greater than the benefits.
(and yep, none of this suggests anything about whether product manager roles are required or not: I think that's more to do with the size of the organization and whether specialization is required. my point is mostly that, regardless of scale, the organization needs to guard itself against misaligned incentives)
You have to build the organization to be resilient to the types of incoming requests that it will receive. Some sales leads could -- intentionally or accidentally -- lead your organization and product down a path that limits future potential or causes cultural damage.
One of the ways to counter this is simply to spend more time collecting requirements and discussing the topic both internally and externally. Benevolent partners shouldn't want to rush to determine the shape of a feature.
Another slightly-less common counter would be to make the entire process more transparent. That could be difficult for some partners who might want to collaborate on the basis of creating a unique advantage that they'd like to achieve ahead of competitors. However, increasingly, I think that the cost to hide or obscure such plans is becoming greater than the benefits.
(and yep, none of this suggests anything about whether product manager roles are required or not: I think that's more to do with the size of the organization and whether specialization is required. my point is mostly that, regardless of scale, the organization needs to guard itself against misaligned incentives)