Module
Module 4 of 6Lesson 1 of 2~14 min

Handle requests from sales and other stakeholders

How to take in a feature request from sales or an executive without letting it rewrite your roadmap. You learn to trace it back to the real need, size what is at stake and keep each stakeholder informed at the right level, which preserves the trust of both the sales team and your own team.

Take this lesson: your first course is freeSee the full syllabus

Lesson objective

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to turn a feature request into a quantified problem (who, what, how many, what is at stake), record it in a single log, and organize how stakeholders are kept informed according to their role.

Topics covered

  • feature requests
  • stakeholder management
  • request log
  • stakeholder mapping
  • product and sales alignment

Where it fits

Stakeholders and requests

How do I handle requests from sales, support and leadership without losing either direction or trust?

Lessons in this module

  1. Handle requests from sales and other stakeholders (this lesson)
  2. Say no, or not now, without closing the door

What you will learn in the course

This lesson is part of the course Prioritize and build an outcome-based roadmap

  • Tell outputs, product outcomes and business outcomes apart, and phrase a team's goal as a measurable change in behavior it can influence.
  • Write useful OKRs (a qualitative objective, measurable key results, guardrails) and spot their common failure modes.
  • Choose and apply a prioritization method suited to the question at hand (RICE, ICE, Kano, opportunity scoring, cost of delay, WSJF), taking its limits into account.
  • Handle requests from sales, support and leadership starting from the problem behind them, and say no or not now with reasons.
  • Build a Now, Next, Later or theme-based roadmap tied to measurable outcomes, with external commitments shown separately.
  • Communicate uncertainty and dates according to horizon and audience, and review the roadmap on a written rhythm and set of triggers.
  • Use AI to synthesize roadmap inputs (feedback, requests, data) while keeping evidence traceable and the decision human.

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