Back in the late 1990s, when I was a Product Manager back at MCI, we implemented a Customer Council - bringing a couple hundred of our corporate customers together, breaking them into groups based on the products that they were either using or were in the process of evaluating and getting honest feedback and direction. No sales people were allowed in the building - just Product Managers (and the occasional Product Marketing person). We would talk about what we had recently implemented, what was on the roadmap and then we'd stop and listen. Really listen.
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