Make your customers the marketing department

I've been reading GapingVoid for a few months now. Hugh has some very interesting insights, and draws great cartoons, though some of them are not safe for work. Yesterday, he wrote a post titled Make your customers the marketing department, with the cartoon that I've included above. The post has some good points in it, but I'm more interested in the message in the cartoon. I've seen lots of examples at Microsoft where teams have become enamoured with technology, while not connecting with customers.

Customers are betting their livelihood on your software. If they don't trust you, it doesn't matter what your techology is, though it's a pretty fair bet that if you haven't been talking with customers, what you build will not be a good fit for their needs.