How do you balance the use of data and personal intuition when understanding your customer's needs?

Mine your own database to understand customer profile. The data tells a story if you keep digging, but marry that actual data with trends in the market -- buying, social, demographic, etc. 

I really skew toward data.  Intuition is inherently fallible and prone to bias.  It is fact that humans don’t always act rationally. 

Of course, if something isn’t logical, one would dig into the detail to find out why.

Data and externally-driven facts should always inform internal opinion but there is indeed a balance particularly when your internal expertise is ahead of trends and trying to influence formative perceptions. Aggregating VoC data from research with insights from client and prospect interactions can be very valuable. I like to survey AEs and other internal thought leaders on their reactions to aggregated VoC overviews. Asking their opinions is often absorbed better than just stating a new angle on VoC as a given and can be very useful in identifying the gaps between external data and internal intuition to define where we need to move closer to customers and where we need customers to better appreciate our perspective.