Fable
The one who grows the vegetables and the one who buys them are not the same family
On the outskirts of the city there was a smart farm run by two partners. Old Zhou, who was in charge of sales, made decisions based on a spreadsheet listing the characteristics of target procurement customers: restaurant chains, central kitchens, and fresh-food e-commerce. He used these characteristics to negotiate partnerships, and the orders he signed back supported the entire farm.
Old Wang, who is in charge of the product, uses a completely different set of records. Every week he chats with the kitchen supervisor, the procurement manager, and the delivery driver, and notes down their work rhythms—the kitchen supervisor hates temporary shortages most, the procurement manager cares about consistent specifications, and the delivery driver needs the packing list three hours in advance. Based on these details, Old Wang adjusts the planting plan and packing process.
Once, two people had an argument. Old Zhou signed an order with a high-end supermarket, requiring the farm to grow a batch of imported varieties. The supermarket's procurement decision-maker valued differentiated positioning. But Old Wang, after seeing feedback from delivery personnel and shelf stockers, strongly opposed it: these varieties had extremely high temperature-control requirements, and the existing delivery chain simply could not support them. Old Zhou felt Old Wang did not understand customers; Old Wang felt Old Zhou did not understand users.
The problem is not with any one person; it is with the two forms in their hands. Old Zhou's form answers one question: who has the money, who is willing to sign the contract, who decides the purchase—this is the person who pays. Old Wang's form answers another question: who touches this batch of goods every day, who curses at the console, whose work gets slowed down by three hours because of a parameter change—this is the person who uses the product.
The two later agreed on a protocol: Old Zhou was responsible for figuring out "who pays," and his spreadsheet only covered company characteristics and decision-maker profiles. Old Wang was responsible for figuring out "who uses it," and his records only covered frontline user behavior and pain points. Product decisions looked first at Old Wang's data, while pricing and channels looked first at Old Zhou's data. The two sides maintained their information separately, referencing each other but not replacing each other.
After a quarter, the results were clear. Old Zhou used ICP data to identify a group of fresh-food e-commerce companies that had just received funding, quoted precisely, and nearly doubled the signing rate. Old Wang used persona data to discover that warehouse stockers simply had no time to look at on-screen reminders, so he changed notifications to voice broadcasts, and the complaint rate dropped by 40%. The two datasets each minded their own business without interfering with each other.
The first line hung on the farm's meeting room wall later became: every feature you design is used by someone, but the check that signs the contract is signed by someone else. Confuse these two people, and either you build the product right but can't sell it, or you sell it but lose the customer within three months.