Three Ways to Encourage Customer-Focused Behavior

Jeff Lash

How Managers Can Encourage Customer-Focused Behavior

Tell me if this sounds familiar: “My product managers and marketers are too inward-facing. They need to be more customer-oriented.” I hear it on a regular basis from product management and marketing leaders. Well, the problem may not be (entirely) the fault of the product managers or marketers –- part of the blame may be the executives and leaders, who often talk about the importance of customer-centricity but (usually unintentionally) behave in ways that send a different message.

If you are concerned that your staff is not appropriately market-focused, before blaming them outright, look in the mirror and see what you can do to help. In this post on the SiriusDecisions blog, How Managers Can Encourage Customer-Focused Behavior, I provide three suggestions for product management and marketing leaders.

And if you’re a product manager or product marketer who is trying to be more customer-focused but facing obstacles, maybe anonymously sending this blog post to your boss will help!

What’s Hot on Twitter
Here are a few of my tweets which have generated the most interest over the past few weeks; to get these in real-time, follow me at @jefflash:

And through my colleague Edge Coble (@gecoble) I found this one that I particularly enjoyed: