Chapter 3. Laying the Groundwork

	"Failing to focus leads to a state of mediocrity"
	--Treacy and Wiersem, Discipline of Market Leaders

In the previous chapter, we discussed ways of incorporating your VoC into your organization's New Product Development process and touched on some of the process and tools to bring the customers' voice to life, helping to ensure that the process does not just result in a 'check the box' exercise which will not ultimately meet the needs of the market. In this chapter, we will go even deeper into some of the basic tools, processes, and strategies that should be undertaken prior to embarking on a customer VoC, and when used in conjunction with VoC, provide a much more complete view of the customer, market, and opportunity.

This chapter is meant as a high-level primer on these other marketing methods and how they provide more value to VoC research. In this chapter, we will discuss performing the following...