Customers: They’re Not Who You Think They Are
Posted by: Ivan Chalif in Communication, CustomersI went to visit a customer a few weeks ago as part of a commitment to myself (and my products) to get out into the field more often. My goal with them and with all of my planned visits to the field was to talk about how they use my product, what business challenges they face and what they see for the future in terms of their own growth and what they would want and need from my product. I got what I was looking for…and a whole lot more.
Unlike many of my colleagues in Product Management (at least in software Product Management and in the Silicon Valley), my educational background is not in Business, Marketing, or Engineering. Both my undergraduate and graduate work were in Psychology and Counseling Psychology. I didn’t learn a lot about financial models or the 4 P’s of Marketing or how to write Java code (though, I did learn about the Internet, primarily through it’s forebearer, Gopherspace), but I did learn the importance of listening.
One of the primary tenets of Psychology, be it clinical, research or counseling, is that you have to listen more than you talk. If you are working with experimental subjects, you have to listen and document their responses. If you are working as a Psychotherapist, you typically spend 40.5 of the 50 minutes of the “therapist hour” listening to your client. And not just listening to what they are saying, but listening for the hints and hidden messages behind what they are saying and deciphering their context and meaning, which is the key to successful talk therapy.
As a result, listening is a skill that was hammered into me repeatedly for 6 years and has come to be a valuable tool for me as a Product Manager. When talking with customers, prospects, Engineers, Salespeople, or the Executive team, I listen first. I make sure that I understand not only what is being said, but why it is being said, the context and whether there is or might be any sub-context (which is really just another way to say “reading-between-the-lines”). Once you start listening, you’ll realize that the person or people talking are giving you much more information than you originally thought.
Which brings me back to my original point about the customer meetings. As I mentioned earlier, I was just looking to get some very high-level information that I could normalize with all of the customers that I was planning to meet with. I had never met with this customer before, but had reviewed some of their past and current support tickets to get a cursory understanding of some of the issues that they faced. I had also talked with members of the Support team to get their view of what type of customer they were and the relationship that they had with our company.
Based on the preliminary data I had collected, I was prepared for a somewhat painful meeting with the customer. I didn’t think they were a very good fit with the characteristics of our “ideal” customer and the features they were asking for and the issues they brought up with Support were considered by me and others to be edge cases.
The original plan was for me and one of our founders and the VP of Engineering to visit this customer, but due to some last-minute scheduling conflicts, it ended up being just me. I thought about changing the meeting, but it had been hard to coordinate in the first place, so I decided to see it through. When I got there, however, and started talking with the team, my perceptions about them started to change.
First, after about 30 minutes, I had a better understanding of their business, which was considerably different than what I thought it was before the meeting. Having that understanding made many of their issues seem less like edge cases and put them more in line with some of the challenges that other customers might have. That gave me some ideas about how to tackle some of the challenges in the near-term and also what I would need to do in the future to address areas which I thought were well outside of our sweet spot, but now see as being more integral.
Another thing that happened was that while the meeting initially had a somewhat adversarial tone to it (we started the meeting by getting some of their issues out on the table, even though I had tried to steer the conversation away from that area), as I let them talk and asked only a few questions to spur the discussion, they started to discuss more about their vision and how they saw my product fitting in to that vision.
What I found was that they had many ideas on how to use my product that I hadn’t considered. They wanted to use my product in a way that it wasn’t currently being used, but that made a lot of sense when they spelled it out. It was an “A-ha!” moment for me.
Finally, through the discussion, I got insights into how another organization operates. What their processes are. How they build their product. What they spend their time and money on to increase success. What type of people they have on staff and in what roles.
It’s easy to become insulated in one’s own organization and I sometimes find that I limit myself to the same patterns of interaction and process that I have become accustomed to. Hearing the stories of this customer (and others) helps me to lift my head up from looking at my feet while I walk and take a fresh view of the world.
Plenty of Product Management texts and resources recommend talking to your customers in order to build better products, but there’s also a good possibility that just listening to customers can help build better products and better Product Managers.
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Tags: challenges, customer, Engineering, executive team, feature, Marketing, process, Prospects, software product management
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Good article. Talk does imply listening, and the old rule of about 1 mouth and 2 ears is absolutely valid in this case.
I like the fact that you mention psychology in your post. That’s one topic that is rarely mentioned in any product management discussion.
Although my background is technical, I have been told I am a good listener. I have found on many occasions that customer visits, particularly those where I go alone, without sales people or other sr. staff, are the most beneficial. Customers seem to open up in ways that they wouldn’t normally.
Maybe it’s because I’m not there asking them to commit to signing a PO or to extract some other concession out of them.
While it is hard to do given internal workloads, getting out of the office and meeting face to face with customers and partners is probably the most enjoyable part of the job for me.
Saeed
@Saeed
Thanks for the comments. I think there’s a lot of pressure for PM’s when we go to a customer or be on a prospect call to provide information, rather than collect it. There’s clearly a benefit in that type of interaction, but as Product Managers, we have to work harder to get the opportunities to just listen.
Meeting customers is indeed part of the activity that I enjoy the most, but I’m always facing two disturbing behaviours (or behaviors??)
- they start by asking me if I’m their new sales rep (?!?), eventhough I did introduce myself as coming from the Product Development Team / Marketing team
- I end up coming back to the office with whole list of cases for which they’ve been waiting for an answer (from the service team, or from the operational marketing folks, …) since a few weeks … I do not mind helping them at all, but I always have the feeling to be the bad guy when I come to my colleagues asking them updates on cases with which I have nothing to do in the first place ….
Ivan,
Great post. I used to correct my direct reports (and even myself) whenever I used to hear them say that they want to go on a customer visit to talk to a customer - I used to say don’t - go instead to listen to the customer.
I have had customers who were shocked that someone wanted to come and visit them to listen to their challenges, pain points, ideas etc - this is because until then they were only talked to - by our own sales people, by competitor’s sales people, everyone telling them “here is our great product, here are the exciting new features, why we are better than competition etc.”
Barthox,
You can avoid the situation you find yourself in, by setting expectations of the visit - what it is and what it is not - before you get there. I have written an article titled Understanding market needs through customer visits in the Pragmatic Marketing’s magazine
Ivan, I appreciate your insight on the psychology behind good listening practices. I have also found that customers open up with me and other product managers when we go with the intent to listen. They usually appreciate me coming without the sales rep.
Another aspect I’ve found that customers appreciate is the opportunity to give feedback. It helps them feel like they are a part of the team and gives them satisfaction knowing they’re helping the product(s) progress. When PMs take this approach they gain the trust of the customer. And when we have the their trust they will open up and provide truly valuable information.
Visiting customers takes money and time, but always pays off in the end.
Michael
@Gopal
you’re right of course with the expectations. I actually do it, but they are so used to receiving only sales reps, that they forget why you’re coming. FYI, I’m dealing with “mere” sales people in stores who are mostly not business educated, so most of them do not even know much about marketing (’that’s the ads business, right?’), and even less with product management).
Thanks for the link to your article, it looks great, I will read it right away!
Great post! As the husband of a Psychologist, and the son of 2 Psychologists (I must have a deep need to be analyzed), you are right on that Psychology is all about listening. Awesome listening skills are a requirement for PM.
The ability to set your own ego aside, and express empathy for the customer’s situation allows you to walk a mile in their shoes. It amazes me, but not everyone has that skill! I find myself in meetings w/ development often, explaining a new use case or requirement to them and I hear comments like “OUR product isn’t designed to do that.” or “well the customer isn’t using it right!!!!” Actually, if the customer is having a problem - that is OUR problem, not theirs!
In retrospect, it’s better that your Executives didn’t tag along to your customer meeting. As a general rule, Exec’s like to talk alot, which reduces your time to listen. Execs also make excuses and promises to show the customer that they are “responsive,” then you get to implement those promises later. I know lots of PM’s who blindly accept mandates from the Exec team and shuffle off to go implement some DOA idea. Get that Voice of the Customer so you can feel comfortable pushing back.
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