Francois Wolf's Marketing Blog

Companies talk a lot about being more customer-driven, but it mostly remains just talk. It makes for good PR internally and externally. The question is whether a transition has really been made away from being mostly product-driven. Here is a selection of practical signs that indicate that a focus on products is preventing your company from unlocking real value for customers.

In most technology industries, the prevailing culture emphasizes a product-focused discussion between the company, its partners and its customers. While that may be to a large extend natural, letting a product focus monopolize all internal creative and problem-solving abilities is sure to leave many profitable opportunities unexplored.

So, when do your products cut you off from your customers?…

1. When product managers can list a plethora of product features but struggle to clearly articulate benefits for customers.
2. When company executives mostly describe the company’s wins in terms of products rather than citing the customer successes enabled by the company.
3. When there is only a handful of customers whose stories of using your product matches the stated value proposition.
4. When customer experience issues are being ignored because they cannot be addressed by more product features, only with a more fleshed-out offering.
5. When the R & D budget dwarfs the market research budget.
6. When management rarely meets customers face-to-face.
7. When there is recurring evidence that customers use very few of the features designed in the product.
8. When customer research is designed to produce a validation of the accepted internal view of what the company’s products should be.
9. When the technical function is on quasi-autopilot adding features to products and extending product lines with limited analysis of which customer segments will benefit and how.
10. When advertising entails many bullet points that most customers cannot relate to what they need to get done.
11. When no one in the history of the company has ever been “embedded” with a customer for a reasonably long period of time.
12. When the failure rate of the product upon arrival at the customer’s location is the only measure of the customer experience.
13. When Sales people spend too much time becoming technical experts instead of honing they ability to be empathetic problem-solvers and persuaders.
14. When product innovation does not involve functions that touch the customer: Technical Support, Sales, Customer Service, Marketing, even Finance.
15. When Marketing is about product advertising and promotion, with limited or no opportunity (time, budget, mandate, executive support) to be the voice of the customer.
16. When the preference for hiring product managers goes to people with limited customer “empathy” skills.
17. When competitive comparisons prepared by product managers mostly involve making point-by-point comparisons of spec sheets.
18. When customer advisory councils are just social affairs meant as a reward to top customers instead of being a serious way to involve them as partners.
19. When suppliers determine the product you will design and sell, irrespective of the company’s customers’ requirements.
20. When new products are the only news that excite current investors with very few of them asking for serious evidence of the product’s real value to customers.
21. When the CEO’s deeply held view of the company’s mission is that it is about moving products, not about identifying and solving customer problems.

Like most lists of this type, your mileage will vary depending on your industry and company. Feel free to add more to the list in the comments.

Tags: high-tech marketing, market research, marketing strategy, product innovation, Product Management

This entry was posted on Monday, April 27th, 2009 at 2:37 pm and is filed under Connecting with the Customer, LinkedIn, Marketing in the Company, Product Management, Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.