Over a decade ago, a coworker gave me a rip-out from her daily Dilbert calendar. At the time, I was deeply entrenched in understanding and negotiating my way through a complex, product launch process at a large company. The Dilbert cartoon perfectly illustrated my situation. I was hooked.
I wondered how Dilbert creator and author Scott Adams hit so perfectly on my situation and that of so many others in Silicon Valley workplaces. Being a product of that Silicon Valley workplace, he certainly had experiential knowledge. But even so, it seemed impossible that anyone could have lived through so many dysfunctional situations. Why would anyone stay? It came as no surprise then when I discovered that Scott Adams encouraged dialog with his "customer" base. Many of his readers emailed him about their own insanely quirky work colleagues and situations. Some of those situations made it into his comic strip.
Recently, the value of opening a dialog with your customers was reinforced for me. I was working on a project that gave me the opportunity to speak with some existing customers and prospects. For many product marketers, this can be a scary thing. But it shouldn't be. In my case, everyone I spoke with was delighted that the company was actively seeking a dialog and their input. In a world filled with disjointed email conversations, they valued interacting with a real person. Our discussions were open, insightful, and stimulating.
In a wonderful way that seemed surprising but shouldn't have been, each individual clearly wanted the business to be successful. Too often product marketers get buried in the less-than-edifying corporate work environment and see only the problems with their product and their business. But frank conversations with customers and prospects provide a very valuable balance to the internal negativity.
Unlike Scott Adams' situation, in many cases marketers are not themselves customers of their own product. For this reason, it is critical that marketers create avenues for open dialog. Of course there are blogs and forums and feedback forms. However, each of these mechanisms allows conversation through an invisible wall. None of them can substitute for picking up the phone and talking with an individual. Many of your customers want to reach out to you. You should want to reach out to them.
In our protective environment, no one posts email addresses and a good portion of the world opts out of communications. It is harder for prospects and customers to really reach us. We need to provide open avenues and invitations for on-going dialog with our prospects and customers. When we do, like Scott Adams we can have a rich pool of resources from which to draw.
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