Lessons

Lesson Info

Describe the Jobs to be Done

We're gonna talk about the jobs that your product needs to do for your customer, the jobs your products need to do for your customer. Remember, your core offer is your highest contribution. It is a focused tool for getting your customers results. We're using the illustration here of an ax, which is very apt, because every product is a tool. Every product has a purpose behind it in its customers' minds. Your customer essentially takes your product, your core offer, your program, your service, and they use it to get something done in their own life, in their own circumstances, in their own situation. Continuing with this kind of metaphor of the ax, why would you buy an ax? What job are you trying to get done when you buy an ax, use an ax? Well, this is an easy one guys, you're trying to chop wood. You buy an ax to chop wood. That's the job that it does. It is the tool that is singularly designed to do that thing. Your core offer is no different. Your core offer is designed to get a job d...

one for your customers. In fact it was Clayton Christensen who pioneered this idea, and he says, "When we buy a product, "we essentially hire it to do a job for us. "When we buy a product we essentially hire it "to help us do a job." When your customer buys your product they're buying that product with the idea in mind that they're getting a particular job done. Something is gonna be different for them. Something is gonna be easier, more convenient, more hassle-free. And that thing is something that they've been struggling to do on their own. Maybe they've been getting it done but it takes too much time, maybe they've been getting it done but the results haven't been good enough. Your product is a tool that helps them get it done better, faster, more easily. Let's look at some examples of this, because I know this can be a little bit conceptual, but once you get it it's so good because you can say, hey yeah, if you need to get that job done I have got the tool to do it. And yes, when I say product here, when Clayton Christensen says product here, we mean product, we mean service, we mean program, we mean app, whatever it is that you're selling. If you're selling something you're selling it because it helps people get a job done and if you don't know what that job is, as probably many of you don't, and that's fine, you've gotta figure it out, because as soon as you figure it out you have the brand new and very compelling way to talk about what it is that you're offering. Airstory is an example that we've used here a couple of times. The job that Airstory's customers need to get done is that they need to collaborate with colleagues to get their writing projects finished. Very simple. When Joanna was developing Airstory, actually I interviewed her for Profit Power Pursuit about this exact thing, and she was talking about, yeah, we've spent a lot of time figuring out what jobs our customers were doing, and how we can help them better do that. And she talked about how sometimes the content marketers or copywriters that she was working with, they'd start working on a writing project and they'd realize oh I need this piece of information, this piece of information, and this piece of information. Joe has one piece, Sally has another piece, and Sue has another piece. So they'd shoot off a couple of emails, that information would come in in drips and drabs and then finally they could get that writing project finished. And so Joanna thought well what if we could just take all of that research, all of those templates, all of those ideas, and put them all in one place so that the writing collaboration happened in one place instead of piecemeal emails or Slack conversations or trips down the hall to knock on somebody's office door. That's the job Airstory helps people get done, it helps them collaborate faster, it helps that information all live in one place so that more writing projects get finished, they get finished on time. At CoCommercial we help people get their business questions answered. People have questions, they want 'em answered, we have a tool that helps them do that. We connect people with the people who have those answers based on experience or expertise. That's the job that needs to get done. It's so simple. It doesn't have to be world-changing for it to be life-changing for our customer. My customers, my members, have questions that need answered. As long as those questions aren't answered they're feeling unconfident, they're feeling like they don't know what to do next, they're feeling unfocused. As soon as we take those questions and get them answers, ideas, brainstorms, they can get back to work. That's a job that we help them get done. Let's look at some other examples here. I know we've got a lot of photographers in the audience, we've probably got some marketing consultants, some career coaches, some jewelry designers. I wanted to give you a variety of these things. So photographer, one of the jobs to be done there might be that your customer needs to remember the best parts of their child's childhood. Marketing consultants help get the job done of needing to reach more people so they can make more sales. Career coaches, the job there might be that you need to leave your terrible job, and your career coaching is the tool that helps them do exactly that. Jewelry designer, the job that they get done might be to help people look put together and feel confident every single day. Very, very simple. This is not rocket science, which sometimes makes it much harder. I know you guys, you guys are really good at rocket science. This is actually really simple. Your customers are telling you on a daily basis the kinds of jobs that need to get done. Whenever you finish with a client or your course completes and you've got all these customers who are now brand new graduates, they tell you, these are the things I'm doing differently. Your course helped me to blank. That's a job they needed to get done. So what are the jobs people are trying to get done when they buy your core offer? Ailet, we'll start with you. What jobs are people trying to get done when they buy your core offer? I need to understand more about my infant or toddler's development and how to support it. Okay, what else? I want to connect with my child and feel more confident. So I'll give you a tip. The first one you used the word understand. That is something, yes, they wanna do that, and it's not the ultimate thing they want to do. So you really want to make it focused on the doing thing. So connecting is really good, it might be having more productive conversations, it could be making playtime with their kids as productive as possible. Does that kind of resonate? Yes, definitely. Cool. Jennifer, what jobs does your customer need to get done? They need to speak and write more powerfully about their work for grant applications, proposals, speaking with museum curators and gallerists. Yeah. I would actually even say, they just need to get the grant, or they need to get the placement in the gallery, or they need to get the placement in the museum, and then you can say well in order to do that then you need to write and speak more powerfully about your work. But the job they have on their mind is I want that check for that grant so I can make that piece that I've been dying to make. Mariette. I would say they are trying to get healthier, so they are therefore health-- Why do they wanna get healthier? Because they're feeling sick, and they don't have a very good understanding of how to eat and how that correlates to their health so they need to learn how to eat better. If they are feeling healthier and not feeling sick what are they gonna be able to do? Then they're also able to dig deeper into what is going on in their digestive system. So if they feel fine, totally fine, and if they have absolutely no issues with eating then I don't think they really wanna work with me unless they really wanna do preventative health care and dig deeper with testing and really looking if there are some things hidden. You're providing a fantastic example because you're really looking at this from your perspective. Like I'm gonna help them get healthier, I'm gonna teach them how to eat. But the job they wanna get done is they want a tool for waking up every morning feeling great, and starting their day feeling happy, or they want a tool to help them perform best at work without constantly worrying about what's going on in their stomach, or something like that. Understanding what to eat, feeling great, those are all good things, absolutely, that you help them achieve, but from their standpoint when they're hiring you they're not just thinking I wanna get healthy. That's sort of like, especially when we talk about health, you can sell the vitamin or you can sell the painkiller. Try and sell a vitamin, it's tough. Even vitamins need to find the pain that they're killing. So you wanna look, what is the pain that you can kill, because that's also the job that has to get done. Right now they're waking up feeling gross every morning, or they're going to bed feeling gross, or they can't keep up with their kids in the afternoons, or their mind isn't as focused as it could be because their body isn't doing well. That's the thing that feels urgent to them, that's the job that they're hiring you to do for them, or that your service, hiring a product, to do for them. Does that make sense? Makes sense. Okay cool. So every time you start thinking in terms of like the actual thing that you're doing with them, try and get out of that headspace and get into their headspace. Why is this urgent to them, what is it that they're going to do with this information or what is it that they're going to do with the results of getting happier or healthier. That's the job they're hiring you to do. Greg. They want a tool to help them scale their expertise or business, a tool to reach more people. Yeah, I think reaching more people is huge. When you say scale their expertise that's essentially what you're saying, is reaching more people with the thing that they do. I'm kind of in this world, so yes, sometimes I hear people talking about scaling their expertise but I think most people, unless they're already indoctrinated into this, they're not thinking about that, they're thinking, oh man it sucks that I can only talk to one person at a time or I can only work with one person at a time. I want to be able to reach as many people as possible with my ideas. Aleia. I have a few. I often hear I want to stay on top of my business relationships. Relating to that, I want to reach more people. I want to spend less time on my business. I want to scale my business and grow my team. I want to be less stressed about my business operations. And I want someone to help me get things done. Excellent, great. A couple of you listed multiple ones, like Aleia, yours were all great. What I want you to do is focus on what that number one job is, the one that you hear most often, the one that feels the most urgent, the one that is the most pressing, the one that leads to the biggest results, or leads them down that journey they're trying to go on. What is that one job? Yes your product can help them get all those other jobs done too. Like Airstory, it's about writing collaboration but it's also about getting the job done of writing more sales pages, or writing more landing pages in less time. That's a job that it also helps people get done, but Joanna has decided, and her team has decided, to really market that software based on collaboration, on getting people working together on these projects. That's the job that it's being sold around, and that's the job she's leading with when she describes that value. With CoCommercial we talk about getting your business questions answered but there's all sorts of other jobs we help people do as well. Meeting other business owners, learning new things. We help people with all of that as well but we really focused on just that one thing because we know when you've got a pressing question the only thing you care about is getting it answered. That's the thing we're focusing on. Just like I'm asking you to take that junk drawer of a business model you have right now and focus it down to one core offer, that one tool, I'm gonna ask you to take all those jobs that your product helps people do and streamline it down to one that you can use as a focal point to really help people understand this is what we help you do. Our product is a tool to help you do blank. That's your job to be done, and that's the first piece of building this value statement that's going to make it so easy and compelling for you to talk about your offer. Describing this job your customer wants done is one good way to describe your core offer's value but there's two other ways that we're going to layer on top of this so you can create a value statement that feels really good, feels like something you can repeat over and over again and every time you repeat it light bulbs go off, and people are like, I want that, that's exactly what I need or they say that's exactly not what I need but I know somebody who does. That's also a good result of this.