Being very close to the product is all the jazz until you get too caught up in it.
But, this is exactly why taking an “outside-in perspective” is super important.
If you’ve ever heard this phrase and felt fuzzy in the head, join the club. But as it turns out, it’s a darn good approach to vibe-check how aligned you are with what your customers want.
Put simply, the more involved you get with your product, the easier it gets for you to underestimate your customer’s level of knowledge, intention, urgency and need than it actually is.
Because you’ve been in and out of product loops so much, it introduces bias and judgement lapses that disconnect you from your customers and the market.
This looks like:
-Overcomplicated messaging that doesn’t land
-Positioning that neither points to your strengths against your competitors nor the REAL solution against user problems
-Narratives within sales decks that barely resonate or worse, overestimate the problem
-High number of customer support tickets and churn because the problem you sold the product for isn’t the problem your customers actually need a solution for
To regulate this better and ensure you’re always aligned, it’s helpful to zoom out every now and then and:
Look at your product from the outside, as a customer (outside-in)
vs
Looking at the customer and the market from the inside (inside-out).
This will help reveal product gaps, missing links in the narrative, the real problem statement vs the assumed and other indicators that could really turn around metrics in the long run.
#productmarketing #saas #productmanagement
