In technology everything starts with the engineers.

Because they created the product, they’re the ones teaching the rest of the company — including marketing and public relations departments — about how to talk about it. This happens informally, perhaps even unintentionally, but it happens in nearly every technology company.

Engineers run meetings with marketing people, describing the product. Demonstrating it. Teaching it. Marketing folks take copious notes. They tailor the message slightly and hand it off to PR, which is charged with blasting it to the media, which is overworked and overwhelmed — and incredibly underwhelmed by your terrible pitches.

That is, messaging for multi-million dollar products begin with exactly the wrong people. Engineers are the hardest people in your business to understand. They’ve never been trained to communicate effectively with each other, much less with consumers.

I say this only half jokingly: Nothing your engineers say should be allowed to leave the four walls of your business.

You know who should be at those meetings with your marketing and PR departments? Consumers.

In fact, they should be the centerpiece of your marketing formulation.

More on consumers’ role in your marketing structure tomorrow.