Are You “Really” Market-focused?

We all have heard the buzzword for years, “market-focused,” but what does it really mean?

Does it mean that you are focused on delivering the products to your market? Are you focused on developing products that your market seeks? There is a difference between these statements – read carefully. Or, are you so tuned in to your market, that you understand them better than you know yourself at times?

When we think of market-focus, as a term, what elements come to mind? How do you measure a company to determine its market-focus? How does this measurement translate to verifiable – and profitable – results?

I think that there are some core elements that must be inherent in any market-focused company. These are:

• Vision – a shared understanding of your company’s strategy, roadmap, innovation ability & desire, communication – internal & external; and, most importantly, the ability to execute.
• Development – does the rightdev process work in your organization? Do you have a roadmap that sets a direction? Do you meet scope – and at what intervals? Can you deliver promises on time? Do you have a real and formal change management process? What is the development team’s collaboration model?
• Marketing – Start easy, do you have a strategy? Have you refined it recently? Are you visible in the marketplace? Does your marketing efforts enable or stall sales? What is your lead generation process? It is iterative? Do you have formal product launches, with repeatable elements that are evaluated and measured? What was the success of your last product marketing/launch efforts?
• Operations – How sound are your business processes? Are your financial systems predictive or responsive? What about the effectiveness of your IT organization and systems? How do you on-board a new client? How does your client satisfaction affect your operations? How do you measure client satisfaction to start? Who measures it?
• Support – Do you have a real client resolution process? Do you listen to your client’s problems, or solve issues? Can you track and measure the reported issues? Do you have a process to resolve them? Is your support organization enabled with tools and automation? Are they effective? Do you train your support teams in product resolution? Do you train them in client relations? Do they communicate effectively with your clients? Are you sure?

What I’m asking is, what are the right elements when you look at a market-focused organization? How do we, as product management/product marketing know we are succeeding? Should this matter?

Looking in from the outside, if we believe in product management that the market is at the core of our world – products, marketing, sales and support – shouldn’t we build an organization that starts with the market in the center of our business model as well?