Paul Gray from Brainmates recently wrote a blog post on Five Questions Product Managers Should Ask Their Customers. In his blog, Paul lists them as:
- What are the reasons that first led you to buy our product?
- What problems does our product solve for you?
- What do you like most about our product?
- What do you like least about our product?
- If you could change one thing about our product what would that be?
While these questions make sense, I’d like to offer a slightly different approach that might be more beneficial and rewarding:
- Don’t start with your product. Most organizations don’t buy a product. They invest in your company. Rather than asking them the reasons that led them to buy your product, ask them ‘why did you choose us’. You might realize that they care less for the next version of your product and more about how you can help them gain internal adoption.
- Forget the features. Most customers don’t know what features they want. They do however have a good idea for what they want to use your product for. Rather than focusing on their problems, ask them what use cases they are solving or wish they could solve. I guarantee that while you go through this outcome driven approach, they will not only tell you what they like, don’t like or wish to see in your product but you might realize that they want to use your product for a completely new scenario (and potentially great revenue opportunity for your company)
- Ask them if they would invest in you again. Yes, invest in your company again. You might be surprised by the answer. In fact, while there is little chance that they might say ‘no’ (they probably would not have accepted to talk to you in the first place), they is a strong likelihood that they would say ‘yes’ followed by ‘but’ and a few good pointers that you could greatly learn from. For example, yes but if we were to do it again, we would invest less in the software to start with and a little more in the supporting services, or yes although I would also consider this other vendor that has recently entered the market etc. Ultimately, lots of great insights that you would not have gotten otherwise.
One last point: as you engage with your customers, make sure to not only talk to the direct users but all the stakeholders who are indirectly impacted by the value your product brings to the organization, starting with the senior management team.
They are usually the ones holding the purse.
Image Credit: Flickr
