How to Differentiate, Innovate and Grow with Jobs-to-Be-Done
Why is growth so difficult? I have found that many leaders struggle with how to differentiate, innovate and grow because they don’t know which of their target customers’ needs remain unmet by their own offerings and their competitor’s offerings. If you don’t know where those unmet needs lie – where those market opportunities lie – then it’s very difficult to differentiate, innovate and grow in a predictable manner. Instead, it becomes a guessing game which leads to high failure rates, a lot of frustration, wasted time and resources, opportunity costs, and even damaged reputation, all of which are unnecessary but very common for many companies today.
Most companies don’t lack ideas or creativity; they lack focus. They lack clarity about where the best opportunities lie, so that’s what we do. We reveal the best opportunities in any given market and then help clients apply their expertise to the issues they now know are important to their customers and this dramatically increases success rates 2-5 times higher than industry averages to over 80%. This gives clients great confidence about where to focus and what to do.
This may seem impossible but just as physicians conduct a patient diagnosis to inform them about how to develop a treatment plan that they know in advance patients will respond to favorably, we conduct a customer diagnosis to inform our clients about how to differentiate, innovate and grow so they know in advance what their customers will respond to favorably as well.
It would be considered medical malpractice for a physician to implement a treatment plan before conducting a thorough diagnosis, and yet many companies are committing marketing malpractice by launching new offerings before they understand what customers want. This is because most companies don’t know how to conduct an accurate customer diagnosis, what questions to ask, what inputs to obtain from customers, or how to get them.
JTBD is based on marketing fundamentals and the insight that people “hire” products and services to get jobs done. By “job,” I mean an objective, goal or task that people want to get done or a problem they want to avoid or resolve. When we have a job that needs to be done, we look around for a product or service to hire to help us do it.
A good way to illustrate this is with the famous quote by the late great Harvard Business School professor Theodore Levitt who said that “People don’t want to buy a ¼” drill; they want a ¼” hole!” This quote is important because it illustrates that customer needs are separate and distinct from solutions. The drill is just a solution. Other solutions could be a pick, or punch, a laser, or some yet-to-be-invented tool, but all solutions are separate and distinct from the true customer need which is the job of “making a ¼” hole.” If we can keep this distinction in mind, we can turn innovation into a predictable business process that consistently delivers results because now we can capture a comprehensive set of customer needs in any market, separate and distinct from solutions. This enables companies to allocate their resources optimally and dramatically increase success.
For example, a leading shared-jet-ownership company understood that C-level leaders that use private jets for work don’t want to buy a private jet or even fractional ownership in a private jet; they want to get various jobs done with a jet, such as:
- Maintain productivity while traveling
- Control the travel itinerary, e.g., departure times, destinations, etc.
- Reduce wear and tear on executives
And dozens of other jobs that are separate and distinct from solutions. By revealing all their target customers functional, emotional and social jobs to be done with a private jet, and then determining which are important and unsatisfied, the company was able to design and commercialize a successful new offering in a predictable manner.
Or take another client, GBQ Partners, a regional accounting and consulting firm headquartered in Columbus OH. They understood that their target market – CEOs and CFOs in mid-sized privately-held companies – don’t want to buy accounting services; they want to get financial & accounting jobs done, such as:
- Create financial statements
- Determine the profitability of a new product line
- Increase the accuracy of forecasting
And dozens of other jobs that are separate and distinct from solutions. By revealing the customers’ jobs to be done and then identifying which are important and unsatisfied, GBQ was able to create two new service lines, make an acquisition, and enter into a joint partnership with confidence because they knew in advance what customers would value. (See the GBQ Partners Case Study).
The key to success at innovation and growth is to shift our focus from generating ideas to revealing insights about the jobs your target customers are trying to get done and where they struggle given current offerings. Then, once you have identified the best opportunities in the market (those jobs that are highly important to get done and not getting done to customers’ satisfaction), you can determine which of them are most attractive for you to pursue. This is how breakthrough growth strategies are formulated. Addressing the best market opportunities with your company’s unique capabilities also creates a tight product/market fit. A good customer diagnosis informs an effective treatment plan.
If an idea isn’t targeting an important unsatisfied need, then is indeed a “bad” idea because only targeting important unsatisfied needs will create unique value and competitive advantage. Knowing where market opportunities upfront saves vast amounts of time and resources that are otherwise wasted on generating, vetting, and developing a lot of bad ideas. Professor Clayton Christensen estimates that about 75% of all money spent on developing new offerings is spent on offerings that don’t succeed commercially. JTBD enables companies to reduce that loss significantly while shortening the time to market by focusing only on important unsatisfied needs.
Reveal needs. Create value. Drive growth. We can help.
