Dr. Jim Anderson

In the end, it all comes down to what your customer wants to tell you about your product. However, how many of us have been taught how to listen to our customers?

What You'll Find Inside:
 • LET’S GO VISIT THE CUSTOMER, PRODUCT MANAGER

 • ARE ANGRY CUSTOMERS A PRODUCT MANAGER’S BEST FRIEND?

 • CUSTOMER LED NEW PRODUCT DESIGN: NOTES FROM THE FIELD

 • YOUR CUSTOMERS ARE IDIOTS & YOU NEED TO TELL THEM WHAT TO DO

If only it was as easy as having our potential customers pick up the phone to give us a call and tell us what they'd like our products to do for them. That never seems to happen so product managers have to take a different approach.

The good news is that information on what our customers want our products to do is out there – we just need to know how to find it. Visiting the customer is a great way to get important product information if you know how to ask the right questions. Additionally, we all collect tons of information on our customers and our products, but knowing what to do with it is another story.

You wouldn't think that an angry customer would be able to help a product manager improve their product, but you'd be wrong. Angry customers will tell you in very clear terms what your product is NOT doing for them.

Your ultimate goal as a product manager has to be to involve your customer in the product creation process. Since your customer is the one who best knows and understands what their needs are, the more that they can contribute to the design of the product, the better your chances of selling it them are.

Finally, depending on how new or innovative your product is, your customers may not understand what it does or even that they have the problem that it solves. When you find yourself in this situation, you've got the job of educating your customer about not only their problems but also the solution that your product can provide them with.

This book contains the answers that you need in order to better understand what your customers are trying to tell you. It's a matter of understanding how to listen to them and then how to understand what they have been trying to tell you. After you've read the book, you're going to be a product manager who understands what your customers are trying to tell you better than anyone else!

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