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. 

A few of the most formative "field trips" in my Product Management career include:

–Dispatching a team of product managers to various restaurants (not to eat!) to spend countless hours observing how servers interacted with their new touch screen point-of-sale system.  This was at a point in time when our engineers could cite reams of statistics about why the touch screen would never work in that environment.  They were right, except the servers loved the new interface, training time was reduced tremendously and speed and quality of service improved.  This immersion in the environment gave us the insights and credibility to change a flawed development plan that might have left us in the dust.  No amount of surveying or phone interviewing could have replaced what we learned from observing the situation ourselves.

–Shortly after announcing the discontinuation of an old and languishing software product, an astute  and slightly nefarious sales representative encouraged me to visit a client that was unhappy over the discontinuation.  The sales rep had a sudden emergency on the day of the visit, so I continued on my own. (I should have known something was up at that point, but I’m not that bright!).

The client’s assistant met me at the lobby and escorted me into the conference room with about a dozen people already seated.  The only remaining chair was in the corner…a long way away from the only exit in the room.  For the next 90 minutes, I learned how critical this product was to a client’s operation and how adversely we would impact their organization without offering more time and a viable replacement plan.  We adjusted our program and created a transition plan for our clients.  Our discontinuation plan was well supported on paper, but it was wrong.

-Our first-mover advantage in a new systems market turned to disaster as it became apparent that in spite of our sexy new hardware, the software was bug laden and causing real problems in the end user environment.  Out we went into the field to meet with VARs and end-users, eat some humble pie and isolate the specific problems.  Along the way, it became clear that even after the bug fixes, we had a lot of work to do on features, and we needed help. 

The idea to create an advisory group was established (long before these were viewed as de rigueur) and we gained quick approval for an inaugural trip to Japan to visit the parent company executives and engineers and to charter the advisory group.  Fast forward another five years and that group of dedicated professionals helped us define the market requirements that propelled our firm to unrivaled leadership. 


The bottom-line:

As a Product Manager/Marketer, the more time you spend in the office, the less intelligent you become every day about the real situation of your offerings and your clients.  You cannot build relationships, gain critical insights and frankly, grow as a professional from your office or cubicle chair.  As important as all of your internal tasks are, you cannot create value for your firm by cloistering yourself in endless meetings and only gaining critical market context on the other end of a telephone. 

If you are managing Product Managers and your firm is extremely cost conscious, you should defend your team’s travel budget like you are the last one standing at the Alamo.   I’ve taken bullets for the need to keep the PM team in the field and learning from clients.  Skip the unneeded trade show junkets and plan intelligently, but don’t cut off the flow of ideas and insights from clients to your Product teams.

If you want to know if you are doing the rights things to grow into a Product Manager/Marketer, check your flight mile balance and look at the dust on your desk.  The truth really is in the field.  Happy travels!