Based on my experience you should focus on the following: 1. Open Dialogue: Facilitate a conversation between sales and engineering teams to understand each side's perspective. Encourage transparency and collaboration to align on realistic capabilities and expectations. 2. Unified Goals: Reinforce the shared objectives of both teams by highlighting that successful project delivery requires cooperation. Promote a culture of collective responsibility for client satisfaction and long-term success. 3. Adjust Expectations: Work together to develop a feasible plan that addresses any discrepancies in client promises. Communicate this plan to the client honestly, offering alternative solutions to maintain trust and confidence.

This may be also be caused by a systemic lack of trust between the two departments. In addition to an open dialog and transparency, focus on the following: - Diligent documentation: Sales and especially sales engineering should thoroughly document if anything out of the ordinary is promised about the product in it's future state. Some prospects require a commitment on the roadmap capabilities to make a decision. Such scenarios should be documented and communicated through the right channels between sales and product teams - Setting expectations: Set proper expectations both internally, with the engineering team and externally with the prospect. Fully understand the impact of such expectations on the customer journey and experience.

This hits at the heart of Sales Engineering's value to the sales process. While there are many, many amazing salespeople; Sales, left unchecked, is more prone to overpromise...either due to lack of detailed product knowledge or the desire to close business at all costs. Sales Engineering's role should always be to serve as the "voice of truth", ensuring customers are aware of exactly what your solution does...and does not do. The SE or SE leader in this situation needs to bridge the gap between all parties, and ultimately help protect the integrity of the sales process, the customer, and the business.

Yes, I'm ready to address this situation by fostering clear communication between engineering and sales to set realistic client expectations and ensure alignment on project capabilities.

What not to do! ~ Take sides ~ Disparage/minimize another team's contribution The first question I would have would be, where does this assumption come from? Is the engineering or service team overburdened by fire drills or smoothing a pissed off client over? That's bad for business. That can cause employee burnout, turnover, and poor customer sat. The flip side could be, the product isn't where it needs to be for a market fit and the sales person might be leaning into the future to close more clients. Maybe there is an opportunity to revisit the product roadmap and be more proactive about feature add ins. No sales, and no one has a job anymore, so that's bad too.