Product Manager
Our head of sales asked us to add a custom feature for one of his largest prospects, and he wanted it on the roadmap that week. The feature was specific to one customer's workflow and would have cost us about six weeks of engineering time. I told him I needed twenty-four hours before answering. I came back with three things: an estimate of the cost, a list of two roadmap items it would push, and a counter-offer — a configuration option we already had that solved seventy percent of the problem with one day of work. He pushed back hard. I held the line and offered to be on the customer call. The customer accepted the configuration option. The deal closed at the original price. Two months later that head of sales asked me to sit in on more deal scoping calls because the counter-offer had worked. The pushback only worked because I came with a real alternative, not just a no.