Here’s a question I ask in every product management workshop: “How much time did you spend with customers last month?” 

The answers are depressing. Most product managers spend less than 10% of their time on customer research. Some spend zero. 

Then they wonder why their products miss the mark. 

The Problem with Proxy Research 

Many PMs rely on what I call “proxy research”—reports from sales, feedback from customer success, feature requests in the backlog. This is useful data, but it’s not customer discovery. 

Why? Because it tells you what customers say they want, not what they actually need or why they struggle. 

Real customer discovery means going to where customers work, observing what they do, and understanding the problems they’re trying to solve. It’s anthropological, not transactional. 

What to Look For 

When you’re doing customer discovery—whether through site visits, interviews, or observation—you’re looking for four things: 

1. What are they trying to accomplish? Not what features they want, but what job they’re trying to get done. What does success look like in their world? 

2. Where do they get stuck? Watch for friction points, workarounds, frustration. These are opportunities. When someone says “we just deal with it,” that’s a problem worth solving. 

3. What do they value? Time saved? Money saved? Risk reduced? Quality improved? Status gained? Your value proposition has to connect to what they actually care about, not what you think they should care about. 

4. What’s the cost of the current solution? If the problem you’re solving isn’t costing them something meaningful—time, money, reputation, opportunity—they won’t pay to fix it. 

How to Actually Do It 

Customer discovery isn’t a one-time project. It’s a discipline. 

Schedule regular site visits. Block time quarterly to visit customers in their environment. Don’t bring a demo. Bring questions and a notebook. 

Involve your team. Engineering needs to see customers struggle. Marketing needs to hear the language customers use. Don’t be the sole conduit of customer knowledge. 

Look for patterns, not outliers. One customer’s problem might be unique. Three customers with the same problem? That’s a segment need worth addressing. 

Validate what you learn. Create prototypes, mockups, or concepts. Share them with customers early. Iterate based on what you learn. “Build it and they will come” is fiction. 

The Payoff 

Companies that obsessively focus on customer discovery create products that matter. They solve real problems. They charge premium prices. They build defensible market positions. 

The alternative? Building features no one asked for that solve problems no one has. 

This week: Schedule one customer visit. Don’t sell. Don’t demo. Just observe and ask questions. See what you learn. 

Your customers will tell you what to build—if you’re willing to listen.