Why feature factories might be optimal for sales-led companies

🌶️ A spicy take on product culture

I first published this post on LinkedIn last week here (and boy, it got 🌶️ spicy).

I used to think the "feature factory" was a fundamentally flawed product culture. Lately, my thinking has shifted and I see the feature factory as an optimal product culture in a sales-led company (likely b2b).

Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying it's fun or enjoyable to be a PM in a feature factory. I believe product management in an empowered product culture is more strategic & meaningful work.

I'm just skeptical that a sales-minded CEO can truly value an empowered product model.

"Sales-led culture" and "empowered product culture" seem philosophically incompatible.

Sales-led companies are generally run by a sales-minded CEO. These CEOs want to ship ship ship. They want feature parity with competitions to close deals. They want more check boxes on side-by-side competitor chart.
And there's nothing wrong with wanting all of those features! It's the CEO's company and they should run it however they deem necessary in order to win. If they believe a feature factory is the way to win, a feature factory is the right model.

The problem is caused by many sales-led companies still evaluating their PMs by empowered product team standards (e.g. driving the strategic direction of their area). PMs in these companies often have feature requests shoved down their throats without no room for strategic work. When PMs inevitably say no to some features, they make enemies internally. When performance reviews come around, they get feedback about being neither collaborative nor strategic.

The incompatible sales-led culture and empowered team expectations lead to a lose-lose for PMs trying to keep everyone happy while advancing their own career.

So what's the alternative?

This might be crazy but I think sales-led companies should embrace the feature factory culture fully; stop evaluating PMs by their strategic contribution (a weight off the PMs shoulders given they never get time for strategic work anyway) and start rewarding PMs based on how many features they ship that the sales leaders care about. This will align the PMs in your org to think and work the way the sales team (and CEO) wants them to work. It'll kill many unhealthy tensions in the org and get people rowing in the same direction.

Would I want to work in that environment? Probably not.

But most b2b SaaS companies are already sales-led. And there are thousands of PMs in those environments who feel the tension I've described. So I think most b2b SaaS PMs would celebrate their company embracing their feature factory and just calling it what it is.

Ultimately, CEO should incentivize their teams to care about what they care about.

Design-minded CEOs should incentivize great UX (Airbnb, Linear).

Engineering-minded CEOs should incentivize great infra and scale (Meta, DataDog)

Just don't try to be something you're not.