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The Product People Don’t Care About You— A Lesson I’ve Learned After Transitioning to Software Sales

The egocentric maniacs in charge of the specs will never know what the user actually wants.

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Photo by Luke Chesser on Unsplash

I’ve been a product designer for years. Transitioned early on after working as a technical writer and software engineer. I wanted to dabble in the world of UX design. And so I journeyed further in exploring my craft and stumbled upon product design as a creative outlet for my passion.

That was connecting with people and designing solutions for their problems.

It was a good 4+ years journey where I evidently made a ton of progress. Over the course of my brief experience. I’ve come across plenty of different archetypes of product owners, managers, designers, and specialists.

However, you only learn the real truth, once you take a step and see these roles from a distance.

Do you truly realize the egocentric nature of product people as a whole?

— And how it affects the overall product sales lifecycle!

There’s a catch-22 when it comes to product sales.

  • If you create shit while overpromising it and underdelivering it to your customers;

A salesperson isn’t somehow magically going to make it better for you.

However, they will sell your shit.

They are not to blame for the churn that comes from customer dissatisfaction afterward.

That’s yours to get blamed for.

But you’re gonna rub that into customer success and avoid the confrontation of owning up to your mistakes for shipping a product customers can hardly use.

Plus the customer is locked into a contract, which now they have to pay for with the billing cycle they agreed upon.

You’ve got them where you want them.

They’re stuck with you, until and unless you keep going back & forth till their contract time runs out. Or they eventually give up and move on to another option.

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Riku Arikiri
Riku Arikiri

Written by Riku Arikiri

It’s never black or white. Sometimes there’s a bit of spicy red in there as well.

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