In respect to the post by Jim Holland today Essential Pieces for Strategic Product Leadership on his blog, I was struck by his comment that product leaders need to gain market authority as one of the essential pieces. Market Authority. I’ve written about this topic before (in a less eloquent way than Jim) but it bears repeating because it is so important.
Everybody loves the sound of their own voice. But, there is a reason why you have been given two ears and only one mouth. Listen! Your customers can provide us, as product managers and marketers, with valuable information into what their problems are, how they think, what want and need.
Pragmatic Marketing‘s Steve Johnson wrote a post a little over a year ago “If you want to be heard, speak in the language of the listener, the buyer persona” in his blog post, What’s a persona? At the same time, Forrester analyst Tom Grant wrote a post for his blog entitled, Listening is hard, in which he said that “Both product managers and product marketers have to be top-notch professional listeners.”
What is all the fuss about listening? We hear about voice of the customer and voice of the market. How will this knowledge get injected into the organization (and ultimately the product) if we don’t spend significant time listening to the market?
When we talk about listening, we tend to focus on meeting the market and customers in face-to-face environments. But, if there is value in listening to the community buzz being created via the social media channels. After the fall season of product camps I was contacted by more than one person who asked me why I engaged in social media activities. I looked right back and asked them why they didn’t. Whether you and your leadership want to believe it or not, your market is online. Somewhere. It is your job to go find where and then listen. Engage if you can, but listening is a must.
I know it is difficult to tear yourself away from the office politics, endless meetings and water cooler gossip but that, we know, is not productive listening. Get out of the office and meet with customers, prospects even non-buyers and listen. Spend time online in the communities your market has built. Gather up data that can be used to refresh road maps, personas and customer communications.
How can we effectively identify and solve market problems unless we correctly identify them by listening to the market? How can we afford NOT to travel in the market, learn and listen? What happens if we do not listen to the market?
Same message.different day. Looking in from the outside, one that merits consistent reinforcement – which I will continue to do until someone listens.
Listening is so easy that people struggle to do it.
But as Scott Sehlhorst at Tyner Blain said, “We don’t want our customers to define our products; we want customers to inspire our products.” Which means, in addition to listening to what they say, we have to understand what they mean.
I couldn’t agree more. And after you listen to what customers say and understand what they mean, you have to **do** the right thing with your products. You need to take action on the things you’re learning from the market that your products can solve.
Jennifer – thanks for the post and reminder that if we turn up the listen, we’ll add more relevant data to almost every situation, professional or not. I can hear my mom’s voice saying, “are you listening too me?”
After all these years, I may be.
Thanks for the post!
[...] in from the outside, you need to rely on your distinctive competence and market knowledge if you want to break free of the Old School. If you don’t, go back to looking at the [...]
[...] in December, I wrote a blog post about the need to listen to the market – not just existing customers, but more specifically [...]