Another Reason Why Product Management Shouldn't Be Part of Marketing
Sunday, October 21, 2007 at 12:09PM Adele Revella quoted a client of hers in The Buyer Persona Blog thus:
“The CEO and I spend a lot of time talking to customers during and after the sales process, so I assumed that we knew our audience. Now I realize that when we’re in sales mode we’re preaching our message. We don’t get to just listen and not take a position, so we haven’t been getting the right information.”
That's the set up. Adele's client articulates very well the difference between talking to customers in assistance of a sales opportunity and talking to them as a product manager listening for market opportunities (urgent problems the company can solve).
The blog entry goes on to to describe how once he started listening instead of selling, Adele's client was able to uncover a widespread unmet need in his industry. "I just listen and see the same theme emerging over and over again," he said. That's when you know you're succeeding.
The payoff came when Adele asked him why it had taken him two years at his current job to get around to this kind of listening to customers. "We are so busy working on our marketing checklists, there is never enough time to get out." I hear this complaint from every person in product marketing I've ever met. A product person in a marketing organization will always be asked to help get the message out before they will be asked to help bring the message in. That's the key reason why I've always said that product management must not be part of marketing. Innovation requires that it be someone's full time job to listen to the market.
Reader Comments (3)
It's an interesting take, Bruce. True, that product managers probably have a different perspective that's less about "selling" an organization, but I also think that when marketers fail to listen to the market they are not doing their jobs properly, and risk not seeing the forest from the trees.
Hi Dan,
I agree marketers should be listening to the market and formulating product plans and marketing messaging according to what they learn. Unfortunately, in my experience, most marketers are like Adele's client. They would like to listen, but they are too bogged down in assisting the sale to make it happen.
Developers don't listen to the market either. A company usually doesn't hire a product manager until after version 1.0 goes out the door.
Why did they spend two years developing a product before they started listening to the customer? Probably because they were living on investor money, instead of living on client money while bootstrapping.