The rise of the outbound product manager

Product teams that engage with customers gain a more comprehensive understanding of their needs. Those teams then build better products. Seems obvious, right? Every good PM I've learned from, worked with, and coached knows this. Yet, most product teams I've worked with have taken years to establish even a baseline standard for how they engage with customers.

At Flatfile we're happy to be part of a broader trend in product teams that have an increasing set of customer-facing interactions and obligations. Outbound Product Management (OPM) is the process of gaining a greater understanding of the market and your product's role in it by meeting with and discussing customers' in-depth needs. OPM takes customer feedback to the next level, developing strong strategic relationships with customers to build features that satisfy a select customer group, which can then be applied to the broader customer base.