How do you balance customer input from PMM with what PM is already gathering?

As outlined in another question, there are multiple ways to analyze i) your product-market fit, and ii) your position in the market relative to your competitors. All of these inputs need to be analyzed systematically to determine your product strategy, and thus, your roadmap that will fulfill that strategy. To be explicit, PMMs need to gather more than just customer input to build out their point of view. Ideally, both PMMs and PMs will analyze many/most of the same inputs. While this may seem r ...Read More

Customer feedback should be weighted most heavily since they're the ones giving you budgets at the end of the day. But it's important to talk to a variety of customer personas, especially in B2B where 7-20 different stakeholders can influence a purchase. Sales feedback is excellent for go-to-market insights and can identify burning customer issues that need immediate attention. However, sales teams may not always help you peer around corners to see where the industry is headed next or identify b ...Read More

On the consumer side, we rely heavily on consumer research and product analytics since we don't have sales teams or industry analysts in the same way B2B companies do. We launch products iteratively and experimentally, breaking down the roadmap into small pieces and analyzing signals to understand what's working or not working. Customer support (which we call 'customer happiness' at MyFitnessPal) provides invaluable feedback since they're on the front lines hearing both pain points and positive ...Read More

The customer always comes first when weighing different inputs for the roadmap. They are the end users of your product, so their feedback is most important. However, other sources provide valuable perspectives too. Sales teams offer broader customer feedback from the field and insights on how to make messaging actionable. Analysts provide industry-wide perspective, competitor intel, and market trends that individual customers might not see. When weighing these inputs, I categorize them by their ...Read More