Tired of generic 2021 predictions about remote work, cloud, and data? Here are 10 specific trends to consider in your growth strategy:

By this point, most PMs know that the key to growth is a deep understanding of your target customers. Simply relying on internal ideas is not enough, nor is it enough to just look at google analytics and product usage data. You actually have to talk to the market.

But even if you are convinced to regularly interview customers to get the voice of the market, of the big blockers I have seen is simply HOW to go about it. How do you land customer interviews? What do you say during the customer interview?

Product leaders know they need to tailor their roadmap to customer demand. They base these decisions on market intelligence from the usual sources:

• sales team
• analyst reports
• competitor web sites
• existing customers
• product usage analytics (in SaaS)

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These sources are important, but are often indirect and lagging information, not to mention other biases. For those that just want to appease their boss, this may be enough. What you release next may or may not be successful, but at least you can show that you based your roadmap on sources. But for those that really care about a product that sells and users love, you need to balance this with more direct and predictive sources of intelligence.