Every company has customer stories. They know who the customer is, what their customer bought, how much they spent, and when the purchase happened. But most cannot sift this information into useful insights that tell you:
- Where these customers shop for information as they complete the buying journey
- Why the customer bought at that point in time
- How they made the decision to choose your company over another
- What their real competitive alternatives were (not just competing products)
To use Jobs-to-Be-Done research you need to be able to define and detail what is different between different jobs. This post shows how.
The critical aspect of using JTBD Switch Interviews and analysing them this way is forming the Jobs-to-Be-Done in such a way that:
- It is clear why each cluster purchased, and how they made different decisions than people in other clusters
- You can define the reasons why each group purchased, and what had to be true for them to make their purchase
- You are able to map out the purchase decision in enough detail to ensure you can design a specific offer that would be IDEAL for each Job-to-Be-Done (i.e. an irresistible offer for each)
This video shows you how we map this out at a high level:
From Cluster Chaos to Customer Clarity
As you can see in the video, there are a few key things we need to map out:
- Pushes and Pulls that matter to each Job-to-Be-Done
- Using the Ryan Singer method to create the jobs means we have already coded which Push and Pull statements matter for each interviewee
- Within each cluster/Job, we simply select the Push or Pull statements where the majority of interviewees in that Job said “Yes” for this statement
- More About
- You capture the core theme of the Job, what did they care about the most when making this purchase
- Less About
- The inverse – which attributes of products or situations were LESS important to this group when making a purchase?
- Hiring Criteria
- At the point of purchase, what were the causal forces that made them BUY NOW?
- Firing Criteria
- What happened that eventually caused the person to say “Enough is enough” and fire their old habits/ways of working?
Motivations to Buy:
The above insights help you see the differences between the groups and start to think of better ways to serve their needs. In addition, we need to know what MOTIVATED the customer to make the purchase. There are three motivational forces that act on us when buying:
- Functional
- What did the product or service have to do for the purchaser to consider it successful?
- e.g. in Janis’ course, one job has the functional motivation “I need to learn the skills to create polished visual designs for clients”
- They must finish the course with the skills to create a polished visual they can sell to others
- Emotional
- How does the person feel before purchase, and how do they want to feel once they’ve made the purchase and gotten the result?
- Carrying on the example above, the emotional motivation was “Help me overcome my anxiety and impostor syndrome and give me the confidence to put my work out there for paying clients”
- Before they had the functional skill, they were worried about their art, after the course they want confidence to share in public
- Social
- As a social species, we often buy things to improve how others view us
- In the Job above, the motive was “Ensure others see my visuals as high quality and that I am a competent designer they can trust”
- This is linked to the emotional and functional motivation, as with the right skills they have the right confidence, because their work will be judged positively by their paying customers and prospects
Tradeoffs and Compromises
Within a cluster/Job you will often find that people make the same compromises when it comes to making a purchase decision.
- What we want before we spend money is seldom what we get when we spend our money
The tradeoffs that one group in our research made were:
- I will pay more if I get more personal attention and time with the teacher
- I need it to fit around my work life and schedule
Whereas another Job-to-be-Done made different tradeoffs:
- I’ll join a DIY course at a lower price because I’m not in a hurry to use these skills
- I want to go at my own pace because I’m just taking my first steps in this journey
As you can see, these two Jobs both make very different purchasing choices when it comes to spending their money.
Competitors
Before we began the research, I asked Janis who his competitors were.
- Being a decent chap, he didn’t want us to research the competitors, because he views many as friends
- Janis was also concerned that we wouldn’t learn as much by talking to people that bought from a competitor than someone who bought his course
When you detail the Jobs-to-Be-Done, you find a bunch of competitors to the job that you NEVER thought you were competing with – here are some we found in this research:
- Relying on a graphic designer
- Time I spend at work making a living
- Do It Yourself attempts at posting visuals
- Text-based posts or reusing other people’s images to get my point across
- Other training courses or subjects they’re learning about
- Other hobbies
- Their work lives and family commitments
These are all the competitors we discovered across all the Jobs-to-Be-Done.
- Only ONE (in bold) is another training course, and in this case it could also have included subjects that are NOTHING to do with explaining ideas visually
Within the interviews we did observe people making choices about which course to select, and some selected a competitor of Janis, however we learn more from these stories in the tradeoffs/compromises section.
- Knowing the real competition – time spend doing a job or another hobby, for example – allows you to design a solution that helps unblock customer inertia and buy your offering rather than sticking with the status quo
Quotes
Given the rich, detailed qualitative interviews we have conducted, it should be no surprise that we also have a rich seam of quotes that bring these Jobs to life.
Here are a few from the first Job-to-Be-Done:
“I have searched online. I have seen there are short term courses, three, three months, course, six months course, one year course. But the thing is, the time schedule, nobody teaches you on weekends.”
- Kiran is working a full time job, and he’s doing part time work to make more money on the side.
- He needs a course that will fit around his schedule and allow him to learn at his own pace
OR:
“I was feeling unconfident before for sure. I don’t have a portfolio of. Well, yeah. I don’t have a full portfolio of my client work on my landing page at the moment. … there’s also part of me that’s that has that, like, imposter syndrome type feeling of, If I’m going to put this out there, everyone’s going to know what this. And I don’t feel like I’m at the level of letting everyone see it yet.”
- For Wes, getting the confidence to publish his portfolio is critical to serving this job well
- We capture the “impostor syndrome” from doing this work poorly, which ties in with the Emotional and Social motivations in the job mentioned above
How you can use the quotes:
- Publish them on your landing page, as these directly agitate the same emotional and social motivations felt by others in this group
- Use them to demonstrate the before/after transition in your landing page copy, to excite people to buy
- Include these quotes in Product Design documents, do your product team knows how painful the problem is and can imagine and better solution
- Share with the Sales team, so they know how to behave and what their customers are feeling before and after buying your product
- Put them in front of management, so we are all on the same page about what our customers want and need us to deliver, in their own words
How we put the Jobs-to-Be-Done together (full video)
Here is the full video session where I map this out and detail the Jobs in our project with Janis:
An Example of a Fully Detailed Jobs-to-Be-Done Analysis
Below is the detail of one of the four Jobs-to-Be-Done that we have identified for Janis and purchasers of courses to learn how to explain ideas visually.
Job Narrative
When there's an opportunity to make visuals for a living and I struggle with impostor syndrome about my ability to create them, help me have the confidence to do this on my own so I can make money without paying someone else to do this
Title the Job using the Job statement format: "When I am {context} and I struggle with {challenge}, help me {overcome challenge} so I can {outcome}." Keep it specific and outcome-centred.
When I...
What PUSHED these people out of their status quo and led them to look for a new solution?
- When I used to have someone else to do this but now need to learn how to do it myself
- When creating good visuals is a core part of my work
- When I need to create visuals, but lack the skills or experience and worry about my ability to do this
- When I have seen the power of a visual idea for communication first hand
- When I can make time in my personal or professional life to focus on this
So I can...
What were they PULLED in by? Which outcome(s) mattered the most to the people in this job?
- So I can make money creating my own visuals rather than paying someone else to do it for me
- So I can get personal help, feedback, structure and support and learn more quickly
- So I can fit this around my work or home schedule
- So I can learn the tools I need to use to repeatably create the images
- So I have the confidence to do this on my own and share my visual ideas with others
- So I can learn another creator's thought process to repeatedly generate ideas
More About
Expand on what mattered most in this Job. Highlight the themes and benefits they cared about when choosing.
- Needing to do this to make a living, right now
- Lacking the confidence to sell this as a service based on my current skill levels
- Getting coached and mentored to ensure I can use these skills
- Getting out of a creative rut, knowing I need a repeatable process to do this consistently for a living
Less About
Contrast with other Jobs. Note what mattered less here so differences between Jobs are clear.
- A total lack of artistic talent - they are more worried that their output is not polished enough
- Causing people to stop and think about their visual ideas
- Using this on social media to drive up engagement
- The enjoyment of creating visuals
- Future thinking - they have a more immediate need
- Using this to teach or train others
- Not the basics - they need to get competent
Hiring Criteria
What caused them to buy this specific solution? Why did they buy now rather than waiting?
- I now need to do this as a major part of my work
- I need to have the skills to do this on my own now
- Having trust and confidence that the teacher knows what they're doing and has done it before
- Worrying that their ideas or skills might dry up in future if they don't learn this now
Firing Criteria
What frustrations or situations caused them to finally give up the old way and buy something new?
- I'll make less money/profit if I outsource this to others
- I cannot rely on someone else to do this for me as it is now a core part of my work
Motivations
Functional
What did they want to achieve by buying this solution? Keep it concrete and action-oriented.
I need to learn the skills to create polished visual designs for clients
Emotional
How did they feel before, and how do they want to feel once the problem is solved? Capture anxieties and desired emotions.
Help me overcome my anxiety and impostor syndrome and give me the confidence to put my work out there for paying clients
Social
How do they want to be perceived by others after success? How are they judged today?
Ensure others see my visuals as high quality and that I am a competent designer they can trust
Trade-offs
What did they give up to make progress? Record the compromises they accepted when choosing. e.g. 'I paid more so I could get it faster' vs 'I saved money by doing more of the work myself'
- I will pay more if I get more personal attention and time with the teacher
- I need it to fit around my work life and schedule
Competitors
What were the real alternatives for this Job - this could be the old way before switching, other providers, or entirely different solutions they considered to solve the problem.
- Relying on a graphic designer
- Time I spend at work making a living
Featured Quotes
Key insights from interviewees
"He uses, some basic [tools] like, what do you call Photoshop? Adobe Photoshop, which with that software, he makes all his designs. I share my idea or thought with him and like, he modifies that thing or he tells this is the wrong, this would be the wrong thing. It's like a session like a zoom thing. We are using a zoom meeting on, like, he's telling me things in zoom meeting"
Kiran is engaging via Zoom, learning how to use the tools and also getting real-time feedback about the designs he creates, so he can learn this more thoroughly.
"I have searched online. I have seen there are short term courses, three, three months, course, six months course, one year course. But the thing is, the time schedule, nobody teaches you on weekends."
Kiran is working a full time job, and he's doing part time work to make more money on the side. He needs a course that will fit around his schedule and allow him to learn at his own pace
"So it's not only that my work. Actually, I have, like I told you, this thing I have sensed a lot of opportunities here which I don't see in India, actually. I've been seeing this work from last 2 to 3 years, like, there are some sites actually where they offer there taking up freelance work. I've been searching for other ways like other part time works like I can do it from home. I've seen the people are paying £25 per hour. 25. Even if you are good and have a good experience, the people are paying still £40 per hour. [For freelance graphic design work]. It's like £11. It's a basic, basic pay [normal freelance work]."
Kiran starts by looking for part time work to supplement his income. As he does this he realises that he's earning £11 an hour to do basic work in a factory but could earn £25-40 an hour if he was working graphic design jobs from home
"I feel like I'm well on my way. I mean, when I'm when I look back, I have a master file of all the headshots I've created across the now 12 sprints that I've run with clients. And you can see the quality is getting better. I removed all the language in my in my welcome document that was the disclaimer about quality and fidelity and needing to send this off to a different designer. So I feel like I'm getting to a place, and anyone that's buying from me now, now sees the level of output that I've created and they're still buying. So I feel like I'm like getting to a place where I feel much more confident."
This is the "end state" outcome he wants to reach - confidence that he can do this on his own for paying clients and leave them feeling happy with what they've purchased
"I was feeling unconfident before for sure. I don't have a portfolio of. Well, yeah. I don't have a full portfolio of my client work on my landing page at the moment. … there's also part of me that's that has that, like, imposter syndrome type feeling of, If I'm going to put this out there, everyone's going to know what this. And I don't feel like I'm at the level of letting everyone see it yet."
The confidence is critical to serving this job well
"My skill level was still at the point where, well, let's put it this way, I was still telling early clients of my sprint that I fully intended for them to then take what we came up with to a professional designer, that they could then elevate and polish the designs. I don't say that anymore. I've improved. But that was the level of of fidelity that I was selling at that time."
Wes was selling design services but then pushing the client on to someone else to get this polished up for them. As a result of taking these courses, he can now keep the work in-house
Common Anxieties
Top concerns from interviewees in this Job that caused them NOT to buy alternative products or to slow down the purchase of this solution
- I work a full time job, how can I fit this training around my schedule? – Kiran T
- Will this course be too fast or too hard for me to follow? – Kiran T
- What if I have questions outside of the curriculum - who can I ask? – Kiran T
- Will a YouTube course be too basic to teach me the things I need to turn this into a career? – Kiran T
- Do I have to sit in a cohort of people that might move at a faster pace than I can keep up with? – Kiran T
- Can I do this course on the weekends? – Kiran T
- I'm a slow learner - will I be able to keep up? – Kiran T
- Will I have to do this in the evenings when I'm too drained for this work? – Wes
- Can I fit this into my schedule? – Wes
As you can see, there is a rich tapestry of detail in this Job, and it is useful to think through how to change the product or service you would offer to make this match exactly what a customer needs.
That will be the subject of our next post – showing how we prioritise job(s) to target and to ensure we deliver exactly what each needs to be compelling.
It's very hard to see this when you initially start,… but now when you're like it just makes so much sense. This is so cool.