Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 3/5

Grace: Sales teams cannot replace user researchers for product feedback

Merci Grace · Insider's Guide To Building Great Product w/Merci Grace, Slack's First Head of Product · Oct 9, 2018 · at 14:42

Merci Grace, former Head of Product at Slack, explains why relying on sales reps for user feedback is flawed compared to dedicated qualitative user research.

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“My sales guys are bringing back information to HQ. You, but they're not really listening. They're selling. And they're listening for the name of the competitor, for the problem that matches the use case, because they have that great line about this feature, which is awesome. That is their job. But it's not their job to just be listening for things that potentially you don't even want to hear.”

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