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I’ve been a marketer for some time, but the first half of my career was spent mostly in direct sales. Don’t miss the quota, but definitely do miss being in the trenches.

Talking to real customers about their real business issues every day was for me the best part of selling. I loved the authentic nature of it. It sure beat the canned role-playing that often goes on in corporate sales training. Real customers never bring up the objections you overcome expertly in training sessions, but they keep you on your toes and teach you how to continue to get better if you know how to listen. I always loved the listening part of selling, which is perhaps why I eventually morphed into a marketer.

Having recently joined Scout Labs in that capacity, I’m now delightfully back in the trenches gathering my own market intelligence around how people find and use consumer-generated media to become better marketers. Recently, I had the pleasure of talking to several real customers about their real issues in this emerging discipline and it was just as I remembered the trenches to be—totally fun and very inspiring.

Here are a couple of points that I have recently been rightly reminded of about life in the customer trenches:

You still don’t know what you don’t know. No matter how well you approach, define and vet the dozens of brilliant ideas you may have, you still don’t know a thing about the hundreds of other ideas that might be better. Until a real customer tells you about his.

There’s no arrival. Customer research is an ongoing, ever-evolving journey. More than ever as the rate of innovation takes a sharp northward turn, keeping your finger on the pulse of your customers’ wants, needs and wishes should be baked into your work week, if not your daily routine.

The market wants you to succeed. Despite their well-vocalized frustration with intrusive, one-way marketing messages, consumers consistently surprise me with their willingness to talk to marketers who are willing to listen. More often than not, they are honest, gracious, generous with their time and sincerely interested in doing what they can to help companies to deliver better products.