They Have All the Answers

What "they" am I talking about here? The customers. That's who.
I was talking with Anu Sanghvi, one of the very smart product managers at my client, PayCycle. We were discussing a new service enhancement that she's working on bringing to market; talking about features, benefits, pros and cons. I was asking her "why?", "why", "why"?
"Why did you decide to do that?" "Why did you make that decision?" "Why did you include that and not this"? You get the picture. Being a general pain in the side.
But trying to get enough insight to understand her thinking.
Finally, she looked at me long and hard and said, "I just asked the customers. They have all the answers. All we have to do is listen."
Aha, yes. So true.
All we have to do is listen.

Who, What, When, Where...

Today I sat in on an interesting conversation between a group of public relations professionals and a blogger from a leading business publication. As typical, the journalist began to complain about all the misguided pitches he receives from PR folks.
Someone asked, "what's your favorite" pitch to receive. The answer was a stark reminder of the basics of good reporting and consequently, good PR. He said, ..."I want a straightforward pitch. Just give me the who, what, when and where..."...and add-in the why and how if it's relevant.
Anyone who attended journalism school has heard of the "Five W's and a H" --the standard formula for collecting the relevant story facts for a lead paragraph. What this reporter was basically saying is, pitch me a lead with the salient facts.
If I'm interested, I'll let you know.
A good reminder that sometimes less really is more.