I attended the Product Camp Boston over the weekend and shared what I have learnt doing over 300 Customer Visits in 10 countries (US, Canada, Japan, UK, Germany, Netherlands, India, China, South Korea, Taiwan).
Customer visits can be the best qualitative method to learn the most about your customers/prospects – stuff you will not learn from surveying them. But this is only if you do them right. Based on experience doing 300 of them in 10 different countries, I would like to share what has worked and what has not.
Here are the slides I used.
Software Product Manager by Gopal Shenoy 
Hello Mr.Gopal Shenoy,
I am Abhijith Neerkaje a student of tehnology management at MIT. I have been following your blog with great interest for quite some time now. I am keen on leveraging my six years experience in product development at GE as well as my education at MIT to transition into product management role. It would be extremely helpful for me if I could speak with you about various aspects of career in product management . I would therefore like to request an informational interview with you at the time of your convenience.It would be great if you could let me know how to take it forward. I look forward to hearing and learning from you.
Regards
Abhijith
I attended your session @ productcampboston. very informative, well done!
Great tips, Gopal. Slide 11 on not being a salesperson is my favorite!