Comments on: On Customer Advisory Groups

By: Gary Mason

Gary Mason — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 23:41:36 +0000

Couldn’t agree more – in this economy a Customer Advisory Board is by far the low hanging fruit for any marketing and sales team to identify new revenue and secure existing customer loyalty!

I’m linking to this article in our next newsletter and blog – feel free to reference us too!

Cheers, CustomerAdvisoryBoard.org

By: Luke Hohmann

Luke Hohmann — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 05:18:49 +0000

CPM – thanks for the shout out. I appreciate being recognized. I have to clarify your potentially misleading statement about our IP. Innovation Games(R) is a registered trademark of Enthiosys. If you reference the games you need circle-R. Hey, I worked hard at the games and the names, and I want some credit. The actual games themselves are not trademarked because I understand the challenges of getting customers to play games — especially if you tell that they’re going to be playing a game. So, my advice is (generally) avoid mentioning anything about “games”. Instead, call them interactive sessions or interactive activities. We’re a few years from games being really well accepted in the workplace, but until them, keep playing, eh?

PS. Perhaps the CPM might be less, well, cranky, if she played more games with her customers :-).

By: Following Up: Customer Advisory Groups | The Cranky Product Manager

Following Up: Customer Advisory Groups | The Cranky Product Manager — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 13:00:21 +0000

[...] up on yesterday’s post on Customer Advisory Groups/Boards/Councils, you should realize that the Cranky Product Manager is hardly the definitive authority on the [...]

By: links for 2008-10-01 (Jarrett House North)

links for 2008-10-01 (Jarrett House North) — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 02:01:02 +0000

[...] On Customer Advisory Groups | The Cranky Product Manager Cogent advice on creating a working customer advisory group. (tags: productmanagement) [...]

By: The Cranky Product Manager

The Cranky Product Manager — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 18:32:34 +0000

cleverpeeps, the Cranky Product Manager is highly amused by your hatin’ comment. Clearly a link-baiting attempt! But the hilarious thing is, you misspelled your URL so you won’t even get the links!

The Cranky Product Manager pities your error, so here’s the corrected link to your oh-so-awesome blog http://cleverdev.blogspot.com

Oh, and from your one and only blog post, you’ll clearly be surprised to learn that lots of product managers (the CPM included) dislike Scrum too. Thanks for the link to http://www.scrumsucks.com.

By: April

April — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 15:11:55 +0000

I loved this post. Running an advisory council isn’t at easy as it looks at first.
Getting people to show is really hard, especially for the first meeting. If the folks are really senior (the ones I run are CIO level) it gets a lot easier after the first one because they show up as much to talk to each other as they do to talk to you. I’ve found that if you can lock in a couple of folks early then you can use them as a draw to get other folks to attend (hey, the CIO of XYZ corp who is really amazing is going to be there, what the heck is wrong with you?).
Thanks for the link too!
April

By: cleverpeeps

cleverpeeps — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 01:14:39 +0000

Blah, blah, blah. Do you read what you write, or do you write it and let someone else tell you how great you are. Shocker – talking to customers helps you to understand what they want. You do realize your not really a product manager and that you’re a sales person.

Oh, and your web site is slow.