Why Not Every Request Deserves a Place on Your Roadmap
In enterprise B2B product management, direct customer conversations are often the most elusive and valuable form of insight. Unlike consumer-facing environments — where getting feedback from end users is more straightforward — enterprise customers can be difficult to reach. This often leaves product managers reliant on second-hand reports from internal stakeholders like customer success managers, account executives, and sales teams. While these teams frequently speak to customers, the insights they share tend to arrive framed as “the customer wants Feature X,” rather than as a clear articulation of the underlying problems customers face.
This discrepancy presents a tough challenge: on one hand, product managers ideally want first-hand customer insights to understand the root issues; on the other, it’s rarely feasible to ignore the valuable but imperfect information provided by internal teams. The key is to transform these solution-oriented suggestions into problem-focused statements that better reflect what the customer actually needs.
Normalize to Compare Apples to Apples
With feedback pouring in from every angle — win/loss analyses, second-hand customer requests, support data — it’s easy to lose sight of what matters. The solution is to establish a common, customer-centric language. Instead of simply recording requests like “Customer X wants Feature Y,” translate them into statements that spotlight the underlying challenge:
Original Win/Loss Input: “We lost customer X to competitor Y because of price.”
Normalized Statement: “Help me solve X at the lowest possible price point.”Original Commercial Feedback: “Customer X has asked for Feature Y.”
Normalized Statement: “Help me reduce the time it takes to do Y.”
By normalizing inputs, you level the playing field. Instead of juggling mismatched requests, you’re comparing a set of consistent, problem-oriented statements. Over time, this practice also educates commercial teams on how to present insights with greater clarity and empathy, helping them think more like product managers. It steers everyone towards understanding the “why” behind a request, not just the “what.”
To read more about this process refer to my other article here.
Validate Your Assumptions Through Customer Conversations
Normalized statements offer an improved perspective, but they’re still approximations until tested with actual customers. While direct customer conversations may be few and far between, even limited opportunities can be immensely valuable. A single conversation can reveal nuances and conditional factors that transform a vague “lowest possible price” ask into a more precise and actionable requirement.
These conversations ensure your understanding of the problem is accurate and prevent you from making well-intentioned but ultimately misguided product decisions. Even if customer access is rare, each interaction sharpens your insights, making the most of scarce opportunities.
Clustering to Find the True Signal
Once you’ve normalized and validated your inputs, the next challenge is identifying patterns. Rarely does a single problem statement stand alone. Real insight emerges when related needs are clustered together, revealing common themes and highlighting genuine market signals. Visualization tools like mind maps, Lucidchart, or Miro can help here:
Group Similar Needs: Identify clusters of related requests that point to a shared underlying issue.
Separate Noise from Meaningful Signals: Isolated, one-off requests might be interesting but usually don’t indicate a pervasive problem.
Iterate and Refine: As you gather more data, some clusters may merge or disappear, reflecting evolving customer challenges.
These clusters transform a jumbled heap of feedback into a structured problem landscape, making it easier to spot true opportunities and avoid being misled by outliers.
Validate and Align Clusters with Strategy
Each cluster of customer problems represents a potential strategic opportunity. The level of validation you seek depends on your organization’s risk tolerance. Additional customer research, A/B testing, or even market analysis can build confidence in your conclusions.
Armed with vetted clusters, you can engage senior stakeholders in more meaningful strategic discussions. By connecting problem clusters to broader business objectives, you create a roadmap that’s both customer-centric and aligned with long-term goals such as:
New Market Growth: Uncover unmet needs that open the door to new segments.
Expansion Opportunities: Enhance existing features to encourage upsells and cross-sells.
Customer Satisfaction (CSAT): Address recurring pain points to boost satisfaction and loyalty.
Competitive Differentiation: Tackle gaps that set you apart in the marketplace.
Keep the Landscape Dynamic
The B2B environment is never static — technologies evolve, competitors change strategies, and customer expectations shift. Your normalized statements and clusters must be revisited regularly. Ongoing collaboration with commercial teams is essential, as they remain your frontline observers of changing customer needs.
By frequently updating your problem landscape, you maintain alignment with current market realities and ensure that your product decisions stay relevant.
Avoid the “Franken-Customer” Trap
It’s tempting to treat “the business” as a single persona encompassing every perspective. Resist this urge. In B2B, multiple personas — users, buyers, internal stakeholders, and executive sponsors — have distinct needs. Recognizing these differences prevents the creation of a mythical “Franken-Customer” that satisfies no one. Distinguishing among personas keeps your focus sharp and ensures that you’re solving the right problems for the right people.
From Insights to Impact
Normalizing and clustering feedback, validating assumptions where possible, and keeping the landscape dynamic all serve a higher purpose: cutting through the noise to identify the right problems to solve. While direct customer interviews may be scarce, the insights you glean from internal stakeholders, once properly reframed and clustered, can still guide you toward meaningful, impactful product decisions.
This approach fosters empathy, clarifies priorities, and helps the entire organization think more deeply about what customers truly need. The end goal is not to merely fulfill requests, but to craft solutions that genuinely move the needle for both the customer and the business. By embracing a structured, iterative process of normalization and validation, you ensure that every decision is rooted in clarity, strategy, and a profound understanding of the customer’s world — even when their voice is filtered through many layers before it reaches you.
