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.

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!

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

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

- 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 ….

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.

I cringe whenever I hear someone say that Product Management is the CEO of the product. If that were truly the case, things would run very differently in the company WRT products.

Even CEO’s have constraints though. The BOD can constrain a CEOs ability to run the company in the way he/she sees fit. And certainly there are a number of external pressures that make the CEOs job difficult.

In the end, as a PM, I have a lot of say into what goes on in the product, but there are clear constraints and limits, and no matter how hard I try, a marketing team (for example), who has their own agenda is not going to budge unless the real CEO sets their agenda for them.

Saeed

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