So you want to start a revolution

Today's shopping experience at my local Safeway inspired--nay, compelled--me to write a post over at The Heretech about revolutionary changes in the use of CRM. If there is a CRM revolution that's going to happen, or already is happening, how far is it likely to go?

The short version of the post: Don't look to Maximilian Robespierre for answers. (And not just because he's dead.)

Tell me lies

Christopher Cummings' latest entertaining and insightful post is worth reading:

Think about the last time a salesperson at a retail establishment asked what you were looking for. How honest was your answer? And how complete was it?

Exactly. Product teams often don't realize how misleading information coming straight from customers can be:

• They see the conversation as part of an ongoing negotiation with you, the vendor. This bigger context shapes what they say, and how they say it.
• You're dealing with middlemen. Sure, members of the IT department has a wish list, but on many issues, they're really fronting for business users who want something from you. How well they're representing this Silent Majority is anyone's guess.
• They're an unrepresentative sample. Let's be honest: the customers to whom you speak, or with whom you'd rather speak, are not the same as all your customers. You lean towards the people who are easy to work with, who understand you clearly, and who can speak the language of releases and features that you understand. That's a pretty skewed sample, and it's even further from the population of all people who might be your customer.

In other words, the traditional sources of product requirements are inadequate. Even the one that seems on the surface to be the most trustworthy, the face-to-face meeting, can be incredibly misleading.

And you often have yourself, Dear Vendor, to blame. You choose to be deceived. You get into these conversations with your own agenda--the boffo feature for which you're seeking validation, the workaround that you want them to use, the argument you just had with a co-worker about a design decision that you'd like to win, if only this customer would agree with you. You want the customer to tell you lies.

There are ways out of this trap, which is why I wrote that document about the Web 2.0 sources of product requirements that I keep talking about (and will be published soon, honest!). However, you have to want to face the hard truths of what you don't know, you might not initially understand, and in some cases, you may not want to hear.

[Cross-posted at The Heretech, where I write things that don't appear here!]

Social media and buying habits

Forrester colleagues Laura Ramos and Oliver Young have posted some initial conclusions from the big "Social Technographics" survey for this year, which details how social media inform and influence people buying technology. You can read about the survey on Oliver's blog and Laura's blog.

Needless to say, this is fascinating stuff. The survey looks at each kind of online behavior (content creation, critiquing content, joining groups, etc.), and then tells you how much people in different segments of the population engage in these behaviors. Here's an example:

For product marketers, these data tell you how to reach your target audience. For product managers, the same information is critical for tapping social media as a new source of requirements data.

Here are a couple of important links:

• The archived recording and slides from Laura and Oliver's recent webinar on this topic
• The actual report, based on the Social Technographics survey data

[Cross-posted at The Heretech.]

Getting to no

A popular topic among product management bloggers is, How can I say no to my customers? Christopher Cummings has the most recent musings. The Cranky Product Manager and Jeff Lash have also written about the topics--along with practically every other PM blogger out there.

Obviously, it's important to handle customers deftly when you can't comply with their requests. You'd like to keep the conversation friendly, but sometimes, the situation gets confrontational. Your diplomatic skills will face their toughest challenge.

All politics is local
I might have been unusually blessed with reasonable, understanding customers, but I never found the "foreign policy" part of saying no to be that difficult. The real headache, at least where I've worked, was "domestic politics"--what happens within your own company when you have to say no to a customer.

Anxieties run high within your own company when No is the only answer you can provide (other than some possible workarounds). Salespeople worry about the long-term revenue impacts of customer dissatisfaction. Marketing people wring their hands over losing a customer reference. Executives who have built relationships with the higher-ups in the customer organization get cranky.

The more you have to watch your back, the harder it will be to say no. It's a no-win situation, because the real obstacle isn't you, but the development team's ability or willingness to deliver what the customer wants.

If you've arrived at this unhappy point, you have more problems than the immediate dilemma over how to handle this particular customer. Product management, as I've argued in earlier posts, is an acutely political job. Effective product managers have to learn how to negotiate, cajole, wheedle, inspire, and deflect, none of which is possible if you don't have a strong position in the company.

You can ask for full diplomatic powers when you deal with customers. The company trusts you to act in its interests; you promise to do everything you can to keep the customer happy without making commitments that no one can keep. PMs rarely get this sort of plenipotentiary powers, however. You might want to treat this special envoy status with a boulder-sized grain of salt.

Avoid being a supremo
If someone says to you, "I have an exciting opportunity for you to be a real hero, handling some tough customer enhancement requests," don't answer. First, watch this short video from the brilliant BBC sitcom Yes, Minister, which should be required viewing for any product manager:

The Minister thinks that being "transport supremo" is a real honor, but instead, it's a time bomb. So, too, are situations in which you have to say no to a customer, but you don't have the political mojo in your own company to deal with the aftermath.

[Cross-posted at The Heretech.]