If a product is being designed for a single customer, then it is both best and easiest to get the end customer involved in incremental reviews of functionality. When the product is being designed for a market the problem becomes larger and more difficult. Selecting a single customer for a product review will result in individual customer biases that can skew the results significantly. The marketing manager often becomes a surrogate for the customer and can act as the full time guide for product feature development and ranking. This is an appropriate method to use for most programs.

It is important to get the voice of the actual customer into the development cycle, however. XPM promotes this idea through the use of consumer advisory panels. Advisory panels are groups of consumers that meet as a group or provide individual feedback to functional blocks of the product. Advisory panels exist for the duration of the development cycle.

It is not practical for advisory panels to review all functional block releases. Best practice dictates that the marketing manager act in the role of real time feedback with advisory panels operating on a one in three or one in four review cycle frequency. While this may result in having to correct for mis-steps taken by the marketing manager, this approach will keep from burning out the advisory panel which would result in high turnover and delayed responses.

Furthermore, advisory panels are likely to provide divergent suggestions from members of the panel due to difference of opinion or operational procedures. It is up to the marketing manager to reconcile these differences and make final judgments for direction to the development group.