The missing link between great features and great revenue

I just published one of my favorite podcast episodes ever.

My guest is Heather Inocencio, a product strategist who’s driven some incredible growth stories — like taking The RealReal from $100M to $400M in revenue (leading to a $1.6B IPO) and scaling Haute Look to 4M members before Nordstrom acquired it for $270M.

But our conversation wasn’t about growth hacking or scaling tactics.

We talked about something much more fundamental: why brilliant products often fail to sell, even when customers desperately need what they offer.

Heather calls it the “German to French translation problem.”

Product teams speak in features, specifications, and technical capabilities. Marketing teams need to communicate benefits, outcomes, and emotional value. Sales teams require proof points, competitive advantages, and objection-handling ammunition.

Most companies treat these as separate languages they hope someone will figure out how to translate later.

That “later” never comes — or it comes too late to save a struggling launch.

In our conversation, Heather reveals how she identifies this disconnect immediately when working with new clients. Her point is not about product roadmaps or feature priorities.

It’s about alignment: When your product team builds something, does marketing immediately know how to position it? Does sales understand how to best demonstrate its value?

The answer is too often an agonizing no.

This creates what I call the “impressive demo, no sale” syndrome.

The product works beautifully.

Prospects nod enthusiastically during presentations.

Then they don’t buy.

The problem is NOT the product — it’s the chasm between what you built and how it’s being communicated.

In I Need That, I discuss how successful products must trigger genuine need in customers’ minds, not just admiration for clever features. That transition from “impressive” to “essential” happens through messaging, positioning, and sales conversations that connect technical capabilities to emotional outcomes.

Heather’s approach embeds product thinking with marketing reality from day one. Instead of building features and hoping marketing can sell them, her teams build features with positioning already baked in.

The difference shows up immediately in conversion rates, sales cycle length, and customer adoption speed.

She shared a simple diagnostic you can use tomorrow: connect with your product, marketing, and sales folks separately. Ask each one to describe your latest feature in one sentence, focusing on customer value.

If the answers sound like they’re describing different products, you’ve found your problem.

Today’s Action: Listen to my full conversation with Heather (or watch the YouTube version) for her specific framework on building product-marketing integration that actually works. Her delivery style is a joy to listen to, and she shares tactical insights from 30+ years of making awesome products sell better.

Plus, she reveals the one question that immediately identifies whether your product team is building for marketability or just building for the sake of building.

Have you experienced the frustration of a great product that just won’t sell?

Hit that reply arrow and share your “German to French translation” challenges.

Or reach out to my team of product-marketing integration experts at Graphos Product.