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Microsoft Marketing - Don't be too "customer-focussed"?

One of the topics that interests me on an ongoing basis is the mindset behind Microsoft marketing.

A now rather ancient, by blogging standards, entry by Chris Sells entitled The real goals of marketing? contains an interesting quote about the mindset of the marketeer:

" Marketing is not about giving the customer what he wants, or even finding out what the customer wants and trying to get engineering to create it. It's about trying to sell the customer what you already have -- whether that's product, talent, or pre-conceived notions. If the needs of a customer occasionally overlap with an actual product, that's merely random coincidence. "

Even allowing for a little hyperbole in the statement, which was made to not by Chris Sells, it does give some insight into the old Microsoft marketing mindset.

My view on this is that that approach can't last in the context of the "Big Software War". It is, in my opinion anyway, too narrow a view of marketing. Finding out what the customer needs and finding the best possible solution within, for example, constraints of time and money is a much surer foundation for a successful business long-term. Then, although the marketeer will continue to be constrained in today's sales by what he has to sell, he will have a more customer-focussed product. And the customer should win if the customer needs have been competently analysed and a solution has been competently implemented.

Too narrow a view of marketing won't, I suggest, serve Microsoft well in the "Big Software War".