"Customer focus. Market driven. Total quality. All new terms, promising a new way of conducting business. But, how do you move an organization to make it more market driven? How do you organize product development so that real user needs are addressed? How do you change hearts and minds so that employees in all parts of the organization take responsibility for customer satisfaction? Drawing on the best practices found at leading technology firms, Customer Visits: Building a Better Market Focus offers a complete guide to all aspects of planning and executing a customer-visit program - managers and engineers visiting the customer at their place of business. A wealth of specific advice is offered on topics such as the right and wrong kinds of objectives, how many customers to a visit, how to prepare a discussion guide, how to coordinate visits with the sales force, how to build rapport, effective and ineffective questions to ask customers, and traps and pitfalls in the analysis of data from visit programs. Every aspect of the book focuses on the manager who wants to act - now." "Managers and engineers engaged in new product development will discover a wealth of information for finding out what customers really want. Executives charged with continuous improvement will discover a practical and cost-effective approach for motivating employees to focus on customer satisfaction. And marketing researchers, scholars, and students will be on the cutting edge of a critical research technique for the 1990s and beyond."--BOOK JACKET.