The Power of “I Don’t Know”

Early in my prior life as a product manager, I realized that guessing at what customers want and need from products was not a sound strategy. That’s when my passion for soliciting insights from customers directly was born vs. taking a stab in the dark when faced with tough decisions. I’ll never forget one particular meeting I was in where we [...]

Why Do Some Companies Avoid Research Like the Plague?

In a previous post about obstacles to win loss research, I talked about the fact that some companies just don’t do ANY research. Some of the reasons that companies don’t do research: Don’t trust their customers’ perspectives: Some companies are skeptical about their customers’ ability to be objective/overcome their biases.  Other companies consider their technology/concepts to be beyond their customers’ limited imagination.  [...]

Top Obstacles to Win Loss Research

I recently had a great conversation with a client who is championing win/loss research at his company and we explored win loss analysis: what is it, why do it, what are the obstacles, how to overcome them, and more. Win loss analysis is one of the lowest hanging fruit for organizations, providing a relatively easy and quick way to get invaluable [...]

Customer Input During the Product Life Cycle — What Gets in the Way?

Yesterday I spoke rather spontaneously during the final session of the 2010 Silicon Valley PCamp- the third annual Silicon Valley 'un-conference' focused entirely on Product Management topics/issues. Spontaneous talks are not uncommon at an un-conference...the whole concept is that anyone can submit a topic for consideration and attendees vote on what they are most interested in. I came to the conference with [...]