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 a topic I thought of that morning and 20 handouts that I printed before I ran out the door (I thought that bringing any more than that would be a bit presumptuous!) and lo and behold my topic was chosen by popular vote to be one of the 12-15 afternoon sessions!

When I say ‘spontaneous’, I really mean that…this is the first time I have EVER facilitated a 45 minute session with absolutely NO agenda, just a broad idea of the topic: “Choosing the Right Methodology for Gathering Customer Input”.

We ended up with 30 people all crammed in a small meeting area to explore this topic, specifically focused on using customer input for product development/marketing/launch purposes.  The session was very interactive and one of the things we discussed before getting into the meat of the topic was why product managers so seldom actually integrate any customer research into their work to launch great products.

I came with my own theories, but we had an active dialogue and below is a list of some of the reasons that came up…I’ll be blogging about some of these in the future, but wanted to provide a summary list here:

  • Resistance from Engineering/management (“Customers don’t know what we know”)
  • Too expensive to get enough input to make a difference
  • Time pressures (can’t stop to do research)
  • It’s such an innovative product that customers couldn’t possibly provide helpful input
  • I don’t want to admit that I don’t already know what customers think
  • Channel partners block me from getting in touch with the customers
  • Difficulty in finding the contact info for the right people/target market

We talked about each of these obstacles, and debunked most of them, but it was important to ‘go there’ before talking about how to choose the right tools.  According to The 280 Group’s 2009 Product Management Survey , the top 3 sources of influence on product management decisions are:

1. Face-to-face customer visits

2. Sales and marketing

3. Internal market expert

That means that very few product managers are doing any kind of measurable research to help drive product decisions.  When I was in product management, this kind of regular research was essential to our products’ ongoing success…but there are definitely obstacles that get in the way.  Hoping that understanding these obstacles helps make a shift to overcome these things to start taking steps toward listening to our most valuable advisors: our customers!

For the notes from the entire talk, click here.