Well defined products sell themselves

Intercom’s book on jobs to be done (JTBD) has a method called the Job Story which gains insight into the job the user is trying to do:

[ When _____ ] [ I want to _____ ] [so I can _____ ]

This story framework is remarkably similar to Emma Coat’s story principle at Pixar:

Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.

This principle is used by Dan Pink in his book To sell is human to describe a way to effectively pitch a product when trying to sell it.

This leads to the conclusion that a good JTBD description has the same message as a good sales pitch.

The old adage “Good products sell themselves” seems to ring true.

The above makes intuitive sense, if you know the user problem inside out, parrot it back to them, only with your product as the solution at the end of the story, they will give you that “take my money” look.

Humans and stories

We are hard wired to think about things in terms of stories to help us try to understand the world. So much so that given a series of random events (hindsight for example) we easily formulate a (false) story tying the events together.

When interviewing a user to try to find a JTBD Clayton Christensen recommends asking the user to tell a story around the purchase. Stories are very good at packaging experience, so this is not just a nicety. Users will very easily formulate a story rich with experiences that you can plan to improve with your product.

People aren't buying products they are buying experiences.