> What you term "a very dangerous path" I call "a roadmap".
It's dangerous because the wishes of the next customer might contradict the wishes of the previous customer ; or worse, the wishes of the next next customer, etc...
Building your roadmap becomes a balancing act of "staying on course", "changing course when you realize there are other opportunities there", "guessing the opportunity costs of everything", etc...
I'm not in a marketing position, but I suspect there is a slight difference between "we're hearing it from customers, and it would be a good idea to work on X, Y" vs "X is item n°2345 in a 5000 items RFP, and if we don't do it we're not getting the contract at all".
> The bigger the customer, the more they can pay.
Also, the more they can "not pay" ;) Meaning that if, for some reason, you can not fully implement all their wishes (you're going to try to avoid that, but it can be hard), they might be in a possible to just pull the plug altogether.
Sure, you might deem they demands unreasonable, but then it comes down to:
- realizing that they might know better than you do (by definition, they've been in the business longer than you do)
- the old adage: "can you stay solvent longer than your customers stay unreasonable ?"
It's dangerous because the wishes of the next customer might contradict the wishes of the previous customer ; or worse, the wishes of the next next customer, etc...
Building your roadmap becomes a balancing act of "staying on course", "changing course when you realize there are other opportunities there", "guessing the opportunity costs of everything", etc...
I'm not in a marketing position, but I suspect there is a slight difference between "we're hearing it from customers, and it would be a good idea to work on X, Y" vs "X is item n°2345 in a 5000 items RFP, and if we don't do it we're not getting the contract at all".
> The bigger the customer, the more they can pay.
Also, the more they can "not pay" ;) Meaning that if, for some reason, you can not fully implement all their wishes (you're going to try to avoid that, but it can be hard), they might be in a possible to just pull the plug altogether.
Sure, you might deem they demands unreasonable, but then it comes down to:
- realizing that they might know better than you do (by definition, they've been in the business longer than you do)
- the old adage: "can you stay solvent longer than your customers stay unreasonable ?"