Jobs-To-Be-Done: Untapped Marketing & Sales Potential

When it comes to marketing and sales, gathering intelligence from customers on won/lost sales opportunities could turn out to be a game changer. Time and money spent on market research, testing, product development and go-to-market ultimately come down to: “are customers buying from us?”, “why are they buying from us?” and “why aren’t they buying from us?”. Jobs-To-Be-Done (JTBD) provides a framework for gathering this type of market feedback and much more.

JTBD Introduction

JTBD, created by Clayton Christensen, views a product as “something” a customer hires to get a job done. JTBD detaches the product from the job it’s being hired to do. For example, customers don’t buy chat applications, they buy “something” that helps them personalize customer engagement. I prefer to use “something” when referring to the product because it forces a shift in focus from product to job. Job focus is important because there may be a better “something” available to do the job or a “something” to do the job may not exist and needs to be created. For example, hammer and nail to hang a picture vs. sticky tape.

With JTBD, “something” could be hired to do a lower level job(Task), for example “cut the grass”. But, higher level jobs (goals), like “keep the lawn healthy and clean”, are where opportunities to differentiate and innovate really start to become visible. “Cut the grass” is a task, its starts and finishes. Sure, you could build a better lawn mower and offer a better way to “cut the grass”. But, “keeping the lawn healthy and clean” is what customers really want to achieve — the ultimate goal.”Cut the grass” helps make progress towards the ultimate goal, but more progress is needed. The gap between “cut the grass” and “keeping the lawn healthy and clean” is where opportunity exists. Although, to find opportunity you need customer data and assumptions won’t work. To do it right, feedback is needed from actual customers.

JTBD: Marketing & Sales Untapped Potential

Missing the mark on a target customers job to be done could have wide ranging marketing implications from branding and positioning to defining a target market. It’s the difference between “are you interested in a chat application?” vs. “are you interested in personalizing customer contact”. If you’ve visited a website or read a brochure and found yourself asking “Ok, but when & why would i need this?” or “Ok, but what does it this actually do for me?” — they probably missed the mark. Implications also flow down to sales.

From a sales perspective, missing the mark on your customers job to be done could set your team up for failure. For example, meeting with a prospect to sell a chat application is tough. There are many chat applications available and its not too complicated to spin up a basic one. On the other hand, meeting with a prospect to help them personalize customer contact could be mutually beneficial. And, from a mindset standpoint, helping a prospect personalize customer contact has purpose, it’s noble and motivational. Its the difference between waking up in the morning and saying “time to go sell chat” vs. “time to help companies build personal connections with their customers”. An additional benefit of selling to higher level customer jobs is an opportunity to increse wallet share. Selling a chat application is transactional, SKU’ish, but helping customers personalize customer contact goes beyond transaction and may require multiple products, services and ongoing support to produce meaningful benefits.

The Time is Now — Technically Speaking

Customer data is needed to put JTBD in motion. Conveniently, with JTBD, you need to get feedback from customers already using your product (Side note: this statement is a JTBD, lower level). And, with artificial intelligence and process automation, opportunities are available to operationalize the collection of customer feedback. For example, questions required from post sale analysis in CRM, voice & chat scripts from customer support with questions defined for various scenarios, customer interviews (transcripts from audio and video), surveys, customer emails and creating topics for discussion on social media could all be automatically collected and categorized for analysis while laying the foundation for an engine of continuous improvement and innovation insights.

JTBD Final Thoughts + Example Statements

The intent of this article is to introduce JTBD in a marketing & sales context. With that said, the topic of Jobs to Be Done goes a lot deeper and wider. For example, there are functional jobs (presented here), emotional jobs, social jobs and desired outcomes. Additionally, products aren’t limited to one job, they could have many jobs under each category with different priorities and desired outcomes.

Key outputs of JTBD are functional job statements and desired outcome statements. There are guidelines and templates for each. Examples of functional job guidelines are: must be solution agnostic and focus on want vs. need (want is goal or high level job focused). Functional job statement template is: (action verb) + (object of verb) + (context clarifier). Desired outcome statement template is: (direction) + (variable) + (clarifier) template. Three completed examples are provided below (not supported by customer data) that include guiding questions and starter statements (these are not JTBD, they are my additions).

Example Statements:

Research Application

Functional Job:

1. The research application is something that helps you do what(Goal)? “The research application helps me understand (action verb) + what my customers (object) + want (context clarifier)

a) Understand what my customers want (Goal)

1. Gather information (Task)

Expected Outcome:

1. How does understanding what your customers want help you? reduces (direction +/-) + risk (variable) + of product adoption in the marketplace (context clarifier)

a) reduces my fear of her being lonely

JTBD Statement:

“I want to understand what my customers want, so I can reduce risk of market adoption”

Chat Application

Functional Job:

1. The chat application is something that helps you do what(Goal)? “The chat application helps me personalize (action verb) + customer (object) + experiences on my website (context clarifier)

a) Personalize customer experiences on my web site (Goal)

1. answer questions (Task)

2. provide recommendations (Task)

Expected Outcome:

1. How does personalizing customer experiences on your web site help you? increase (direction +/-) + conversion rate (variable) + of prospects(context clarifier)

a) increase conversion rate of prospects to paying customers

JTBD Statement:

“I want to personalize customer experiences on my web site, so I can increase the conversion rate of prospects to paying customers”

Lawn Mower

Functional Job:

1. The Lawn Mower is something that helps you do what(Goal)? “The lawn mower helps me keep (action verb) + the lawn (object) + healthy and presentable (context clarifier)

a) Keep the lawn healthy and presentable (Goal)

1. Mow the lawn (Task)

2. Trim the lawn (Task)

Expected Outcome:

1. Why do you need to keep the lawn healthy and presentable? minimize (direction +/-) + risk (variable) + getting fined by HOA (context clarifier)

a) minimize the risk of getting fined by HOA

JTBD Statement:

“I want to keep the lawn healthy and presentable so I can minimize risk of getting fined by HOA”