Markets Are Defined Around A Customer’s Job To Be Done, Stupid!

Too many companies live in “company solution space” when they need to be living in “customer problem space.” Which leads them to define markets in ways that make it difficult to grow their business.

The marketplace does not care about your company, technology or product features/benefits. Talking about those things is the definition of living in company solution space, and customers get bombarded with this banter.

Instead, companies need to adopt a needs-first view of the market and ask what needs they are trying to satisfy for which customers. Then once you uncover the right needs, talk about those! You will stand out in a crowd.

But greater clarity is still required because customer need conversations are often just another way to talk about features, devoid of rigorous definitions of the needs, which means people remain stuck in solution space.

3 steps to lead you to robust market-definition and customer-needs habits:

1 – Switching to a jobs-mindset is important because the customers job is stable over time, even as solutions come and go. Think LPs, cassette tapes, CDs, and streaming music. All different solutions to an unchanging job of “Enrich an activity with music.” Start by figuring out the customer’s job and ditch traditional customer profile definitions.

2 – Most significantly, jobs-thinking changes the way markets are defined: A market is simply a group of people trying to do the same job. Since there is no average user in a market, customer segments can be seen as groups of people with similar sets of unmet needs when struggling to get the same job done. Ditch being restricted by existing industry or product definitions. This mindset also leads to ditching TAM/SAM/SOM nonsense and focusing on clear market opportunities based on groups of customers with the same unmet needs.

3 – Focusing on the job places attention on customer outcomes, i.e., what they are trying to accomplish. Ditch customer journey maps that describe only tasks. Using outcomes as the new organizing principle requires companies reorient their thinking and answer these questions:

—When looking at solutions on the market, what job are they using those solutions for?
—Have we identified unmet needs by defining the needs around the job the customer is trying to get done?
—As we define the job, do we understand what the customer is trying to accomplish at each step of their job?
—Can we then articulate the customer’s desired outcomes, i.e., how they measure value at each job step?

Defining the market upfront through a jobs lens solves the pivoting problem that plagues many companies whose market definitions are woefully imprecise. Steve Blank describes how the JTBD Market Definition Canvas solves the problem in his article “How to Find a Market? Use Jobs-To-Be-Done (JTBD) as the Front End of Customer Discovery” In it he explains the MDC and why it is important, including providing guidance on how to fill it out.  It is a stunningly valuable tool so do check it out!

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