We just wrote about the importance of understanding your non-customers.  That doesn’t mean you should neglect your current customers.  If you do, you’re in world of trouble.  Even if you don’t abuse your customers, maybe you’re taking them for granted.  You’re losing some of them every year.

Jeff Lash has been kind enough to ask me to answer another question on Ask A Good Product Manager.

Question: How can we decide between focusing on the needs of many small customers with only a few users each and the needs of a few large customers with many users each?

Go check it out for my answer and the developing conversation and other answers…

A lot of people stand up a variation of “If you build it, he will come” (from Field of Dreams) as a copy-writing hook for whatever they are about to tell you about creating products/services/whatever.  We’re no better.  We’re going to tell you that there is a big difference between the people who buy your product and the people who use your product.

If you build what he thinks he wants, he will come.

Actually, we need two catchy quotes.

If you build what he actually needs, he will come back.

For good measure, let’s plug my recent article in The Pragmatic Marketer, Maximize Your Word of Mouth Marketing: Turning Users Into Fans with a gratuitous quote.

If you build it right, he’ll bring his friends.

These quotes (the first two) highlight the differences between buyer personas and user personas.

We’ve all heard the saying, the customer is always right.  For most product managers, however, the non-customer is the person you should be listening to.  When you hear the phrase understand your market, the goal isn’t to understand those people who’ve already purchased your product.  The goal is to understand the people who haven’t purchased your product yet.

Should product managers get certifications? Ask a Good Product Manager asked us to answer.