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A job is the progress a customer seeks in a particular context

Knowing more and more about customers is taking us in the wrong direction. What we need to focus on is the progress that the customer is trying to make in a given circumstance — what the customer hopes to accomplish. This is the job to be done.

When we buy a product, we “hire” it to help us do a job. If it does the job well, the next time we’re confronted with the same job, we hire that product again. If it does a poor job this time, we “fire” it and look for an alternative.

The 2 Assumptions

When you decide to adopt a Jobs to be Done approach, you work with simple assumptions that drive decision-making.

Customers buy a product to perform a specific task

A passenger doesn’t want a ride in a taxi, he wants to reach a place.

A construction worker doesn’t want to push a wheelbarrow, he wants to move material from here to there.

An accountant doesn’t want a computer program, she wants an easy method to calculate tax.

Tasks become the job to be done.

Tasks are the heart of strategies and innovations

Our products evolve over time, but the jobs to be done remain.

If the customer’s needs are always initially conceived as the JTBD, they remain stable and valid for longer periods. Companies can remain focused on outcome-driven innovation.

Jobs To Be Done Example

Imagine you have just taken a photograph, there are numerous potential jobs now

1) Capture this moment privately between two people, so we can look back on it fondly in years to come.

2) Embarrass a friend in front of another friend.

3) Get this photo backed up online, so I can point others to it.

4) Get a copy of this photo to my grandmother who doesn’t use computers.

5) Make this look cool and interesting. Like me. And then share it.

6) Get this edited and into my portfolio so people consider hiring me for future engagements.

In this case the products you could hire are Facebook, iPhoto, Instagram, Flickr. When you think about how many of these apps you use, you realise the job is the distinction here, not you.

Focusing on the job rather than the persona helps highlight how features like red-eye reduction, multiple photo sizes, or filter effects are only useful for certain jobs

Desired Outcome Statement

Direction Of Improvements	Metric	Object Of Control
Minimise	Time it takes	Songs
Contextual Clarifier Listening to music

Example “Hiring” an iPod

The user experience is tailored to do the job of helping you feel motivated when you go running. The iPod is smaller than a CD player, easier to use, and it allows you to have more than one CDs worth of songs on your playlist. You don’t have to listen to the same music over and over again or change a CD.

An iPod

Feature: 5 GB Storage
Benefit: 1,000 songs your pocket
Context: When you go running
Job to be done: You want to motivate yourself with music

System of Progress

All customers journey through the same System of Progress

According to JTBD theory, the journey for progress includes four touch-points:

The customer imagines a better life solution — a “new me”
The customer searches for and chooses a solution
The customer uses the solution in order to start making progress
The customer realises the “new me”

Forces of Progress

Anxiety force reduces progress. There are 2 types of anxieties for customer jobs:

• Anxiety in Choice (I will choose the wrong product)
• Anxiety in Use (the product won’t work the way I expect)

Inertia force reduces progress – a tendency to do nothing or remain unchanged.

There are two types of inertia’s for customer jobs:

• Habits in Choice (I will choose products that I always have)
• Habits in Use (I will use products that I always have)

Push force improves progress

It is signified by a need to change. There are both internal (e.g. motivation for progress) and external (e.g. life forcing someone to change) pushes.

Pull force improves progress and it is signified by an aspiration or ideal that someone is in pursuit of (e.g. a better life).

What motivates someone to buy?

Lets take an example of someone being an early customer of Tesla cars?

Practical – I want to drive to work

Social – I want to show my friends and family I love new tech

Emotional – I want to feel like Im helping the environment

“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to 100 other good ideas. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying NO to 1,000 things.” ― Steve Jobs

Market Fit Pyramid. All the layers of the pyramid are hierarchical and are built on top of each other, that proposes a structured guideline to achieving product-market fit

The bottom layers of the pyramid is the market. As a product manager, you don’t control the market. If you change your customer, then your whole pyramid falls down and you have to start all over again.

You can pick which market you want to go after but everything builds on top of your target customer and their needs.

• Whose life are we trying to make better?
• Who we are trying to create value for?
• Within our customer needs, which ones are undeserved?

In our Product-Market Fit pyramid, the Product layer is divided into 3 key elements:

Value proposition

A value proposition is a promise by a company to a customer or market segment.

Feature set

The functionality we need to build to deliver the benefits that fit customer needs. Validating at this stage plays a crucial role in defining direction for our product.

UX Design

Good design is something that causes delight, a positive functional surprise; resulting in an emotional uplift in our users.

Determine Your Target Customer

These are the people whose desires, values and needs most closely align with what your business can offer them. They’re already looking for what you have. Understanding your target market requires research over assumption.

It’s about trying to grasp on a much deeper level who those people are, what motivations they’re driven by and how you can reach them.

Identify Underserved Customer Needs

Divide your hypothesis into the “problem space” vs the “solution space.”

A problem space as a customer problem, need or benefit that the product should address.

The solution space there is a specific implementation to address the customer need or requirement.

An underserved market is a large group of people who have been ignored by businesses in a certain industry. This group can represent a certain gender or race. An underserved group can also be people who live in a certain location (such as a neighborhood or city), or a group of people who share certain beliefs or experiences.

Examples of product-market fit

Some companies have done such an outstanding job creating a product to fit the market that their successes can serve as models for your product development efforts.

Netflix

Netflix first gained traction in the early 2000s. Movie watchers were tired of paying late fees from brick-and-mortar DVD rental shops. Netflix sent them DVDs by mail as part of a subscription service, letting people keep a disc as long as they wanted.

If Netflix had remained a DVD-by-mail company, it would have disappeared when DVD players did. Instead, Netflix positioned itself as the easier, cheaper alternative to whatever currently dominates the entertainment market: brick-and-mortar rentals, DVDs, or traditional TV. Netflix has altered its product every time the market need changes, maintaining its fit.

Netflix’s success is a great reminder to stay flexible in changing markets.

Google

Google competed with lots of other search engines for market share when it started. As the other players in its market, they made money by offering ad spots next to search results. In 2003, they jumped ahead of the competition when they introduced a new concept, AdSense.

Google realised that businesses would pay to display their ads other than their search page. AdSense was developed to meet that demand. AdSense scanned webpages and automatically display relevant ads.

Within a few years Google Adsense was generating $95 billion a year. Google identified a need no other search engine was meeting, and then met it.

Take the time to find things that your competitors aren’t doing and adapt to fill unmet needs.

Slack

Slack the instant messaging platform used for workplace communication, started out as a completely different business. The founders were developing a role-playing video game – Slack was something they had quickly hacked together as an internal communication tool for their team.

The team realised the market had plenty of role-playing games, but there was nothing out there quite like Slack. They pivoted away from game creation. Today Slack has over 10 Million users.

Slack’s success proves that changing your focus towards a better product-market fit can be worth your time. Don’t be afraid to radically change your original idea when you see a better opportunity.

What Is SAAS Conversion Rate?

A SaaS conversion rate is a metric that measures the number of conversions (i.e. the number of people who complete a desired action) across a variety of marketing channels eg paid search, email funnels, and website landing pages.

A desired actions could be:

• Downloading a free report
• Requesting a product demo
• Signing up for a free trial
• Purchasing or renewing a subscription to a product
• Attending a webinar

SaaS Conversions Vs Ecommerce Conversions

SAAS conversion rates are different from eCommerce and other industries

The definition of “conversion rate” is nuanced

For eCommerce, it usually means people who make a purchase.

In SaaS, there are numerous types of conversion.

Visitor to Trial
Trial to qualified lead,
Trial to paying customer,
Freemium to paying customer.

There are different benchmarks and best practices for each conversion type.

If your goal is to maximise the percentage of trial users, focus on marketing.

If you need to increase the trial conversion rate, you should definitely invest in user experience and customer success.

Example 6 Step Funnel

Website visitor
Lead
MQL
SQL
Opportunity
Closed

Lead

A prospect that has submitted contact information.

MQL

A potential customer that has been reviewed by the marketing team and satisfies the criteria necessary to be passed along to the sales team

SQL

A prospective customer that has been researched and vetted – first by your marketing department and then by your sales team. An SQL has displayed intent to buy your company’s products and has met an your lead qualification criteria that determine whether a buyer is a right fit. The prospect is ready to be converted into a paying customer.

Inbound Marketing Funnel Conversion Rates

Inbound conversion rates will measure the success of your inbound marketing.

KPI Stages	Next goals	Average
Unique visitors	Get contact details	N/A
Contacts & Subscribers	Nurture to MQL	5.00%
Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL)	Get a meeting	20.00%
Sales Accepted Leads (SAL)	Qualified by SDR	43.75%
Sales Qualified Leads (SQL)	Qualified by Account Executive	63.33%
Opportunities (CRM)	Assign opportunity amount ($) and product	43.33%
Wins	Revenue committed by prospect	31.25%
All-up conversion rate (top to bottom)	Visitor to win	0.05%

Outbound Marketing Funnel Conversion Rates

Outbound conversion rates will depend on the quality and fit of your initial prospect pool, the channels used to reach them, and quality of messaging and content

KPI Stages	Next goals	Average
Outbound contacts (Prospects)	Prioritize targeted outreach and content	N/A
Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)	Get a meeting (BDR)	15.00%
Sales Accepted Leads (SAL)	Qualify by SDR	42.50%
Sales Qualified Leads (SQL)	Qualify by Account Executive	55.00%
Opportunities	Assign opportunity amount ($) and product	50.00%
Wins	Revenue committed by prospect	37.50%
All-up conversion rate (top to bottom)	Visitor to win	0.03%