Two software industry CEOs appearing at Sandhill Group's recent Software 2005 conference made clear the importance of routinely letting customers drive product decisions.
James Goodnight, CEO of business intelligence software vendor SAS
, points to a process whereby the company asks customers each year to prioritize and vote on proposed product enhancements.
"Your customers are the most pragmatic marketing people out there," maintains Goodnight. "They not only know their problems, but they also know your competition."
According to Intuit Chairman Scott Cook, good marketing sometimes requires company executives to shed their blinders. Cook cites several examples of highly successful products that his company initially didn't want anything to do with. "Some were accidents of having unintended customers buy Quicken [personal financial planning software]."
For one, Intuit discovered that executives at small companies—and departments of larger companies—were using Quicken. The resulting product, QuickBooks, soon became the top small business accounting package.
Similarly, when an Intuit product manager noted that retail-based users of QuickBooks needed a solution that included point-of-service (POS) hardware terminals, Cook initially rejected the idea. "Fortunately, [the product manager] only 'selectively listened' to each objection," Cook says, noting that Quicken's new retail OPOS solution is today a market leader.
Yet another product was developed after an Intuit employee needed to decipher $1 million in medical bills, resulting in a special medical expense-tracking edition of Quicken.
Having an exclusive focus on "building market share is a conventional mind-set that limits your growth opportunities," Cook concludes.