Using Jobs To Be Done to find Go To Market fit (Part 2)
This is the second of two posts walking you through how you can use the Jobs To Be Done framework to find and maintain Go To Market fit as you scale from Series A to Series B.
For an introduction to the Jobs To Be Done framework, including:
The three types of jobs
The four forces of change
Switch interviews
JTBD is more that finding product market fit
Jobs To Be Done is commonly thought of in the context of product design.
You want to launch a new product, you go and speak to potential customers, you understand the main jobs, emotional jobs and social jobs they are trying to complete, and you design your product around meeting those jobs better than the competition.
The startup mantra of “Get Out Of The Office!” is strong and customer interviews are at the heart of early startup life.
Having found product market fit it is tempting to lose this curiosity.
“We know we have the right product, now let’s go and sell this thing!”
However, the customer interviews that you’ll have conducted in your product design will have been focused around the people that will buy and use your tool.
If you have an applicant tracking system you’ll have focused your interviews on the CHRO as the economic buyer, the HR business partners, the recruiters, the hiring managers, interview panelists and maybe the candidates.
As you start scaling your Go To Market team you’ll find that there are many different personas who have different Jobs To Be Done in the context of your product:
The CFO who will approve the purchase and is focused on cashflow
The business unit leaders who will have to allocate their team’s time to learning the new tool
The CIO who will need to integrate the platform into the tech stack
The security team who will need to check the data residency and security
The general counsel who will need to negotiate the contract and manage obligations
The accounts payable team who will need to process and pay invoices
The System Integrator that will configure the platform for the customer
And so on -
There are many more personas with many more Jobs To Be Done than the person that will be using your platform.
Multiple dimensions that require continual customer interviews
Building a company from Series A to Series B means existing in a state of constant change.
You will move from selling in one segment to selling in others (ie SMB to Enterprise or vice versa)
You will move from selling in one territory to selling in another (from a domestic market to your first international market)
You will move from one selling product to selling another (either via acquisition or organic development)
You will move from selling to one persona to selling to multiple (adding in the CFO, admins, users, IT, legal and more)
You and your customers will move through time (in 2023 AI transformed how customers think about their own jobs to be done)
Your ICP and value proposition are never done.
Customer interviews are never done.
Companies that succeed in this phase are fanatical about understanding the world that their customers are living in today and continually matching their offering to those needs.
Implement a strategic approach to customer interviews
So,
we need to expand our JTBD scope to a much larger group of personas
we need to continually re-evaluate our JTBD as the world around us changes
How do we do that?
Revenue Operations is the strategy of aligning marketing, sales and customer success into a single aligned team.
Customer interviews is a perfect example of that. Without an aligned revenue team where do customer interviews sit?
Is it with marketing to help create product marketing materials?
Is it with sales to help them develop better talk tracks and demos?
Is it with the CSM team to help them reduce churn?
Is it with product to help them keep developing the features that customers want?
At best customer interviews are fragmented, tactical and irregular.
Instead, consider how you can make customer interviews a strategic part of your go to market function.
Depending on how you structure your RevOps team, I’d suggest your RevOps strategy team own this.
Have them develop a continual schedule that covers a wide range of customer segments and personas and ensure they time block this into their calendar.
Book them in to start the week
Or book them in throughout the week to start the day
Worst case, have them book in a few days at the start of each month, but ensure they are locked in and other work won’t take them away from this essential task.
ABIC - Always Be Interviewing Customers.
Focus on all areas of the customer’s journey
As you interview your customers, it is tempting to think about that initial purchase - but in B2B SaaS we know that the initial purchase is just the beginning.
Customers increase their usage through upsell of the same product
Customers increase their usage through cross-sell of new products
Customers extend their usage through renewal
Customers cancel their usage through churn (partial or full)
Each of these are just as important decisions for you to investigate.
In part 1 we looked at the Four Forces, and a customer that is upgrading, renewing or churning is facing these four forces in the same way as a new customer.
Very few companies spend time mapping this out and therefore have very little insight into why customers increase their spend, or why they churn.
Develop questions for each persona
Your goal with these interviews is to go beyond the customer interviews that your product team are doing with users, admins and executives around the jobs that the product itself helps with.
Here you are trying to understand the jobs that are involved in buying a particular solution.
The Switch Interview
Guides your customer through the steps they took to make a buying decision.
Imagine for the General Counsel/lawyer:
Buying
Talk me through the time when you signed the contract for this product
Were you at work or at home?
How long did you read the contract before you signed it?
Who were you with when you signed it?
Passive looking
So how did this all come about?
Do you remember the first time this project or product came to your attention?
What led up to that moment?
How did you handle this need/project from a legal perspective before?
Why didn’t you keep doing that?
Active looking
How did your team start looking at potential solutions to this problem?
At what point was your legal team bought into the process?
What types of agreements did you share with/receive from vendors?
How did you negotiate - redlining Word, your CLM tool, the vendor’s?
How many vendors did you shortlist for legal discussions?
Why did you choose the vendor you did select?
Which other vendors did you look at?
Buying (again)
How did you get the the point of deciding to go with this vendor?
Were there specific contractual terms that you needed in place?
How do you decide whether to use your paper or the vendor’s?
At what point do you need mutual NDAs in place?
Were there blockers that slowed your legal process down?
Who else was involved in the legal discussions?
Who made the ultimate decision on which vendor was chosen?
Were there terms/obligations that you were able to forgo to get the deal done?
Describe the process of negotiating the contract.
Consuming
Once you signed the contract what did you do then?
What do you do with the countersigned copies of agreements?
Who else did you share copies of the signed contract with?
How do you manage the obligations of your vendors and of yourselves?
How comfortable did you feel implementing and managing this contract?
How many times did you refer back to this contract after signing?
Capture your notes on simple canvases like these, inspired by “Jobs-to-be Done - the Handbook” linked at the bottom of this article.
Capture the important parts of their journey
Which forces drew them towards change or held them back?
You can see from just these questions for one persona, for one stage in the customer’s journey, for one product, in one territory and one customer segment how much information can be gleaned to improve your customer’s buying experience.
Develop Value Propositions for each persona
Having learned about each individual’s Jobs To Be Done, you can start to incorporate these in specific value propositions that map your product, your services and your processes to meet the individual jobs that each persona is trying to achieve.
You can find out more about running workshops to develop these value proposition canvases here:
Repeat, repeat, repeat
By continually looking at the world from your customer’s perspective you will make it easier for your customers to buy from you and easier for you to find Go To Market fit and a predictable, repeatable and consistent revenue engine required for Series B.
Better buyer enablement content
Better contracting process
Better pricing models
Better sales channels
Better onboarding
Better customer support
Better renewal and upsell processes
Now its just a case of booking that first customer interview!
Good luck!
Further Reading
If you want to get a deeper dive into JTBD I recommend these sources:
Demand-Side Sales by Bob Moesta
Jobs-to-be-Done The Handbook by Chris Spiek and Bob Moesta
The Jobs to be Done playbook by Jim Kalbach
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Whenever you are ready, there are three ways that I can help you accelerate your revenue.
Buyer Experience Audit - I’ll impersonate a buyer researching your segment and company and let you know what I find. Ideal for planning your Revenue Operations strategy.
Business Model Design Workshops - I’ll work with you and your team to design or refine a business model for a new or existing product.
RevOps Impact Playbooks - I’ll help you implement one or more tactical processes across your revenue teams - content, referrals, testimonials, adoption and more.