YouTube video clip (Jason M. Lemkin) advising sales leaders—especially CROs and VPs of Sales—not to publicly blame the product for lost deals. Lemkin emphasizes that blaming product is a sign of poor leadership, that every product has weaknesses and competition, and that saying “product sucks” is an easy but unacceptable excuse in sales.
How do you untangle that? Never say this as a CRO. Never, ever, ever in public. Blame the product. That's when you're going to lose your job. Okay. That's a sign of a loser CRO or VP of sales. A loser one. Because anyone that's been around knows that every product has weaknesses. Yeah. Everyone has competition, everyone has gaps. Sales is hard. And what's the simplest excuse? What's the simplest excuse in sales? What's the easiest one to come up with? People don't want the product. Product sucks. Yeah. They don't. Like, yeah, if you had this feature, we could have closed Exxon or whatever, but we don't.
