Align: Get Your Team on the Same Page, Discover Clients' Needs, Develop Better Products

Understanding what customers want is neither easy nor obvious -- but it is essential for all companies. In this guide, expert Laura Reese walks you through the pitfalls and possibilities of customer interactions. Focusing on business-to-business fields, she demonstrates how to run face-to-face meetings that solicit valuable feedback and shares simple techniques for unlocking meaningful insights into a client's needs. You will learn how to cultivate an aligning mind-set within your company and among your own team by defining clear roles for each member. In addition to step-by-step guides for running customer alignment meetings, the book outlines specific skills for improving engagement with customers. Based on concepts of proven effectiveness, these tools will help transform a disparate group into a unified team of professionals working toward the same goal of discovering valuable customer insights. In the world of product development, be it semiconductors or anything else for that matter, big bets are placed on building the product the customer really needs. At Altera, Laura Reese energetically engaged on a mission to master the art of understanding what the customer really truly wants, digging through the layers of what to get to the far more valuable understanding of why. In this journey she developed a strategy for customer engagement to overcome the challenges of confirmation bias and other aspects of human nature-driven obstacles to the truth. In doing so, she created intellectual honesty in Altera's understanding of customers' needs, leading to some of the best products Altera has ever produced. The techniques she describes are applicable to any kind of uncovering exercise required to achieve an understanding of what is really required. I am delighted that she has been able to share her insights through this book. -- Richard Cliff, CTO, Altera Corporation