If you’re eager to accelerate sales growth by creating unique value for your target customers, trying to understand their needs can feel overwhelming.

A chief reason is that every target customer’s “story” is huge, multi-dimensional, and unbounded. We’re immediately confronted with the question, “What customer information is relevant to create unique value for them?”

Fortunately, most of your customers’ story is irrelevant because their story is different from your story about how you will create unique value for them. That’s the story you want to understand and write.

You cannot address ALL of your target customers’ needs. Happily, you only need to discover a focused set of key information to win at innovation (i.e., create unique value for them).

“The key to success is to shift your focus away from generating ideas, and away from trying to understand the customer, to understanding what jobs they’re trying to get done.”

Like a good reporter, you’ll want to focus relentlessly on the key questions: “who, what, why, how, when, and where.”

Here is a focused set of Jobs-to-Be-Done (JTBD) questions to help you focus on only the best opportunities and create unique value for your target customers.

(Note: if you’re seeking to a) find and capitalize on new market opportunities, or b) enable customers to seamlessly obtain/consume your offering, then these questions will be different, but still consistent with Jobs Thinking).

1) Who is the target customer?

It might be dentists in private practice, people with a net worth of over $500,000, parents of a newborn baby, or any of thousands of different groups. They must be accessible for marketing and delivery, and large enough to justify your investment.

2)What “job(s)” are your target customers trying to get done that you can help them accomplish in your market of interest?

People buy or “hire” products and services to get their jobs done. If you serve “dentists in private practice,” for example, you might want to help them “increase productivity by leveraging technology.” The key is to identify an important functional job they want to get done that is not getting done to their satisfaction given the current products or services.

You will also want to discover emotional and social “jobs” to be done as well. Usually, the best way to help your customers experience their desired emotions and perceptions is by helping them accomplish the primary functional job. We tend to feel good and be perceived favorably by others when we accomplish important stuff. The emotional and social jobs will be especially helpful for developing messaging and positioning that connects with customers.

Once you have identified your target customer and the core functional job they are trying to get done within your market of interest, you have defined your target market.

For the purpose of innovation, a target market is best defined as the combination of:

• Your target customer group, plus
• The primary functional job(s) they’re trying to get done

For example: “dentists in private practice who want to increase their productivity by leveraging technology.”

This is a great way to define a target market because it won’t constrain you to current products or services. Further, this definition will give you a more accurate view of the size of the market and your competitors. In truth, you’re not just competing against other firms in your “category;” you’re competing against anyone or anything that your target customers might consider using to get their job(s) done.

3) Why is getting the job done important to them? What will it do for them?

Always ask these two questions, even if they may feel stupid, because they will reveal the target customers’ higher-level objectives and aspirations. This will enable you to address them, if appropriate. Additionally, because there is a hierarchy of customer needs, it’s critical to confirm that you’re focusing on helping them at right level. Sometimes, companies unwittingly focus on helping customers get just one step in a larger job done. In such cases, it often pays handsomely to build out your solution to help target customers get all the steps done in the larger job.

4) How do they want to get the job done? (Note: this is different from “how they are currently getting the job done today with their product or service solution?”)

Deconstruct the functional job into the discrete steps the target customer wants to execute to get the job done. Make sure not to include any reference to current product or service solutions. This will give you a visual depiction of the steps they are trying to execute to get the job done irrespective of current solutions and, thereby, increase the likelihood of breakthrough innovation. Understanding these steps, where they struggle in the process and why can reveal game-changing opportunities for new value creation. (For more information, see The Customer-Centered Innovation Map, by Lance A. Bettencourt and Anthony W. Ulwick, Harvard Business Review, May 2008).

5. When/where are they trying to get this job done? What about their circumstances makes this job important to them and dissatisfied given their current product/service solution?

For example, when talking with “dentists in private practice who want to increase productivity by leveraging technology,” you may find that your best prospects are dentists who have been in private practice for at least 10 years because they have inefficient technology and need the most help leveraging technology to boost productivity.

There you have it – the “who, what, why, how, when and where” of creating value for your target customers. There’s more, for sure, but I hope that’s a helpful start!