Honest and Open Roadmaps
GAI generated thanks to Canva’s Magic Media
Roadmaps…the term elicits different feelings depending on your past experience with business to business (B2B) product managers. Unfortunately, many customers have been sullied by inaccurate, incomplete, or borderline fabricated roadmaps. Throughout my career I’ve made it a focus to always deliver honest and open roadmaps to new and existing customers, ensuring my team always presents these plans with their customers’s mission in mind. And avoiding a sales pitch at all costs.
Why do we even provide roadmaps?
B2B sales are often more expensive than a cup of coffee - Our products are not impulse purchases. Often, the product in the purchase is part of a larger strategy involving multiple vendors. The customer needs to understand how your product will evolve over time in order to ensure they are still operating on the right internal strategy with the rest of their vendor ecosystem.
For example, let’s say your company builds and sells inventory software and you’ve been down-selected for purchase with a large retailer. They then call you in for a roadmap to understand the next 12-24 months because once they purchase this software they are onto the next phase of their acquisition strategy to purchase a point of sale system update. They need their inventory software and their point of sale system to interoperate seamlessly together, and want to see who you currently partner with and your roadmap plans to integrate into others - specifically into the vendors they are evaluating.
Here you can see, even if your offering was the best software for managing their inventory, if you didn’t also integrate with their POS they would not be able to move forward with a purchase. Even if you’ve proven integration within their existing tooling in the proof of concept, the customer is thinking strategically on their plans beyond the current environment. They need you to fit their long term strategy, not just their immediate needs.
Like any long term purchase, they want to ensure that your solution is the right fit for challenges that exist now and that it will also continue to be the right choice as they evolve over time.
Roadmaps can also serve as an opportunity to explain your strategy to a customer who may be focusing solely on what you have at the moment. While I am staunchly opposed to selling futures (trying to win a sale based on what you might do), I do believe it is important to explain the “why” behind your strategy. You may find that a point they were concerned with becomes a non-issue when they hear about your direction and how other customers are solving similar problems in a different way.
To be successful with roadmapping you need to remember three core points:
Your roadmap is one of many they are evaluating to determine their internal plans over the next 12-36 months (or longer).
You represent your entire company in every roadmap meeting.
Not everything can be “on the roadmap” - maintain honesty over all else.
Your roadmap is one of many
Customers manage numerous vendor relationships, and are constantly reviewing roadmaps and evaluating potential changes or additions to their vendor strategy. This means when you are speaking about your product plans, customers are trying to understand how your vision fits into their vendor ecosystem and understand how your changes will impact their plans. For example, if you are planning to expand your offering with new functionality the customer was looking to acquire this year they may pause those acquisition plans and wait for you to deliver the capabilities.
However, this also means something you claim is on the roadmap or “coming soon” that is not actually delivered may severely impact them if they decide to change their budgetary plans expecting you to release the capability. Now, that does not mean everything you say in a roadmap is a commitment. What it means is you need to be extremely open and honest in the delivery. If roadmap items are nothing more than areas of exploration, state that. It is completely acceptable (and on my team, an expectation) to tell the customer if a roadmap capability is considered but not resourced.
Remember, B2B sales are not a “one and done” sales process. You are building long-term partnerships with your customers.
You represent your company
It is understandable, especially in large businesses, that one person will not know the roadmap details across all the product lines. However, always keep your customer’s point of view in mind. When they set up time for a roadmap with you, they are expecting to talk about your company’s strategy in relation to their business. They do not know, nor should they, the internal organizational structure in your company or who runs what part of the business. When you are presenting to a customer, you represent your company - not just your product line.
Often I have seen junior product managers get asked about something outside of their subject area and state things like “I don’t cover that functionality” or “a different team in my company manages that”. While true, this statement needs an additional statement. Yes, you are not the subject matter expert on the topic and yes, you made a wise decision not to speculate. However, the best way to address it is something like the following:
“That question covers functionality outside of my expertise, so I’ll take some notes on the request, connect with the right members of the team, and ensure we get back to you soon. In fact, if it would help we could do a follow up on this topic.”
The point here is you are not dismissing the request or pushing the task back to the customer to find a way to answer this themselves. What you are doing is being honest while maintaining responsibility for providing an update on the roadmap.
The customer should not have to know about your internal org chart. When you are with the customer, you are responsible for getting them an answer - not answering; just getting them an answer.
Not everything can be “on the roadmap”
This last point is a pet peeve of mine, and something that contributes to the negative connotation of roadmaps. At some point in your career you will come across a PM that simply cannot accept something coming up they have not thought of previously. You will hear statements like “yes, we’ve looked at that” or “of course that is something we are considering and is on our roadmap”. As you approach the end of the meeting you have heard about a dozen plus items the PM now says are on the roadmap that you are pretty sure you’ve never seen written down before. This comes about because this PM incorrectly assumes their role in front of the customer is to appear to be the expert in all things in the product line. The misguided belief that telling a customer you know all the things they are bringing up will somehow earn their trust actually has the opposite reaction. Customers are savvy and can see through the “it’s all on the roadmap” type of meetings.
Instead, what customers are looking for is honesty. Roadmap items do not exist if you have not documented them with an estimated timeframe for delivery. Roadmaps are not a wish list of everything you want to do, they are scoped delivery lists based on the realities of your strategy, resourcing, and time. As mentioned above, they are not concrete and customers will appreciate the things you tell them are not a guarantee, but if you are not willing to provide at least a calendar quarter estimation you should not claim something is on the roadmap.
Instead, build credibility with an honest approach like these examples:
“That’s an interesting thought. No, that’s not on our roadmap, but we’d love to follow-up with you to learn more to see if it might belong there.”
“That’s a great suggestion. We don’t have that on our roadmap, but we have heard that request from other users, and have had some initial brainstorming discussions. Would you be interested in sharing your thoughts about this with us in a follow-up session?”
You are building long-term relationships in the B2B market. Document what you present, and refer to that when you roadmap to the customer again. I promise you, showing them items checked off the list that have been delivered from the previous conversation will build more trust than any attempt to claim “it’s all on the list”.
In the end, just be open, honest, and passionate about what you are delivering. Happy roadmapping!
Special thanks to contributing author Michael Paquette.