A post by Steve Johnson at Pragmatic Marketing raises the issue of Product Managers/Marketers spending quality time in front of customers rather than hiding behind other less personal forms of information gathering.
Surveys and phone interviews can be helpful, but nothing replaces the experience of entering your customer’s environment and spending a few moments gaining critical context for the impact that your product has on a business and its people. A sales colleague of mine was always quick to quip to me as his marketing counterpart, "the truth is in the field." Both Steve and my sales colleague are right.
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