I've seen that pattern, too, but I would generalize it a bit. When a whole bunch of individual contributors from outside teams have too much direct pull on the

I've seen that pattern, too, but I would generalize it a bit. When a whole bunch of individual contributors from outside teams have too much direct pull on the product development team's priorities, prioritization suffers and the development team becomes overworked. This happens when it's sales, but also support and consulting roles, or any of a large variety of internal stakeholders. They're all just different flavors of the same problem: too many cooks in the kitchen spoils the soup. There's really only solution I've seen that works: don't allow everyone to be a cook. Designate exactly one person to be in charge of making these sorts of decisions.