By Stacey Weber
As product managers and product marketing professionals, understanding our market is crucial –but how often do we stop to consider whether our view of the market is accurate or distorted?
Think about the places where you learn about the market. You might hear requests from salespeople. Salespeople occasionally have an idea or two, but their perspective is often influenced by their immediate need to close deals. You also hear things from customers, perhaps through customer support channels. Engineers sometimes have interesting ideas — and occasionally, you might even have an idea yourself.
Some of us are in situations where the founder or the CEO has an occasional idea or two. I used to have a CEO who would mow the lawn over the weekend and come in on Monday with great ideas about how we needed to change the organization. Books can also be dangerous. I worked with a founder once who, if he got a new book and read it over the weekend, we were going to have a new strategy on Monday.
Even when you see these things happening, do you have the skills you need to balance that equation? If you listen to the noisy voices around you, you are going to end up with a distorted view – which can lead to expensive, hard-to-fix mistakes. Instead, we need to practice transformational listening with people who are interested in either buying our product or becoming users of our product in the market.
Rather than focusing on that noisy 80%, we need to be purposeful about finding people who look like they should want to buy our product and people who look like they should want to use our product. Practicing transformational listening will help us genuinely understand their unsolved problems.
Transformational listening involves actively seeking out and engaging with potential customers who fit the profile of our target market. It means going beyond the surface level feedback and digging deeper to understand their story – with pain points, needs, and desires. This approach allows us to gain a more accurate and nuanced understanding of the market, free from the distortions caused by the noisy voices.
By focusing on transformational listening, we can ensure that our product development and marketing strategies are aligned with the actual needs of our target market. This will lead to more successful products and campaigns, as we are addressing real problems and providing solutions that resonate with our current and future customers.
In conclusion, it’s essential for product managers and product marketing professionals to critically evaluate the sources of their market insights. By practicing transformational listening and engaging with the right people, we can avoid the pitfalls of a distorted view and gain a clearer, more accurate understanding of our market – leading to better decisions that positively impact profit.
At CI2 Advisors, we provide coaching and workshops to help build your relationship skills. One of the fundamental skills we teach and help you practice is transformational listening, which allows you to effectively communicate with a person’s subconscious so that you can earn the right to inspire them to make a true change. Check us out at http://www.ci2advisors.com.
