I worked for a FAANG where this was part of my job. I would often come into rooms and question why the client was spending money on a product that didn't appear to suit their needs.
This was incredibly effective, as it meant that the client actually trusted us when we said something would work.
That being said, I'd normally avoid calling our products crap (even when they were) and just push the client to use something that wasn't crap.
This only worked though, because we had a separate reporting line to sales, so any VP pressure had to go through our VP (which happened, but not as often as you'd think).
My understanding is that they changed this after I left, with predictable consequences.
That’s the problem, isn’t it: Sales is a short-term metric (quarterly?), whereas client retention is long-term (multi-year, depending on contract length).
I had the pleasure of carpooling with some random owner of a small tech firm, and he flat out said it was difficult to keep on top of salespersons.
Meaning they were pretty shifty by nature and hard to trust.
One of the worst times I had as a developer was when my direct supervisor was a salesperson, who put me on a project that she had sold, and she was also the PM on the project. I thought I was going to die.
This was incredibly effective, as it meant that the client actually trusted us when we said something would work.
That being said, I'd normally avoid calling our products crap (even when they were) and just push the client to use something that wasn't crap.
This only worked though, because we had a separate reporting line to sales, so any VP pressure had to go through our VP (which happened, but not as often as you'd think).
My understanding is that they changed this after I left, with predictable consequences.