Main idea

Large accounts' requirements around audit, security, traceability and control are experienced in product teams as friction: work that brings nothing to the user and delays what matters.

They are not friction, they are a characteristic of the market — just like volume, budgets and contract duration. You cannot want the latter while treating the former as annoying details.

Deciding to serve that segment therefore means deciding to absorb its governance. Refusing that constraint is not a product position, it is a change of segment that doesn't say its name.

Why it matters

This turns a recurring complaint into an explicit arbitration. As long as these requirements are seen as nuisances, they come back on every deal and get re-debated every time; framed as a characteristic of the market, they are handled once, upstream.

And it exposes a frequent inconsistency: targeting large accounts in the commercial plan, and calibrating the roadmap as if you were selling to small organizations.

Nuances and limits

Absorbing the governance doesn't mean accepting every request: you still have to tell a structural requirement apart from one contact's preference.

And the calculation can come out unfavourable. Concluding that the cost of that governance exceeds what the segment brings in is a valid conclusion — provided it is drawn, and not merely endured.

Open questions

• How do you price the cost of a segment's governance before having sold into it?