CASE STUDY · OWNERSHIP / HARD CALL
Cut 12 sales plays to 6 and changed what the company leads with.
Twelve product-led sales plays were more than the field could carry, and they led with products instead of the problems customers want to solve. The job was to cut hard and decide what the sales teams would lead with.
The situation.
Oracle was going to market with 12 product-led sales plays. The field could not carry that many, and the plays led with products rather than the customer problems the products solved. The message to sellers was fragmented, and we were leading with what we built instead of what customers buy.
The constraint.
Cutting plays meant telling product teams their product would not be the headline. Every team had an internal case for inclusion, and the politics of de-prioritizing a product owner’s work is exactly where most prioritization efforts collapse. There was a hard annual launch deadline and no room to please everyone.
The decision I made.
I owned the cut. We reduced 12 product-led plays to 6 customer solutions organized around buyer problems, and I delivered the rationale directly to the product teams whose work moved out of the spotlight. I defended the call on what got cut rather than diluting the set to keep everyone happy.
What I shipped.
6 customer-solution sales plays replacing 12 product-led ones.
A clear, problem-first framing the field could actually carry into customer conversations.
Direct stakeholder conversations with the product teams affected, owning the tradeoff rather than deferring it.
The result.
Changed what the sellers lead with: from a product catalog to a focused set of customer solutions. The field got a sellable, problem-first set instead of 12 competing product pitches.