JTBD: How To Identify Your Critical Customer | Jobs To Be Done | thrv

0:00 [Music] welcome to the customer lesson in the Thrive jobs to be done innovation course I'm Jay Haynes the founder and CEO of thrive in this lesson we will show you how to use jobs to be done an innovation methods to define and identify the critical customer to serve in your market in this lesson you will learn why traditional customer definitions are flawed and how these flaws in your customer definitions and personas can result in your competition stealing your customers and your market share the key to your company's success is building marketing and selling products that satisfy customer needs better than competitors in your market this brings us to the key question for

0:47 this lesson who is your customer to describe customers companies often create personas or fictional characters who represent a user or customer type customer personas are often based on characteristics including demographics like age gender and income Geographics like region or zip code and psychographic behavioral or situational characteristics for example in a consumer market you might create two different personas Paul is younger urban with a master's degree and Kate is older rural and has a high school education in business-to-business markets you might create customer personas based on

1:33 industry verticals like medium sized consumer packaged goods companies or East Coast financial services companies while personas can be useful in certain context the problem with personas is that characteristics do not cause people to buy products customers buy new products because they struggle to get a job done at a price they are willing to pay regardless of their persona or their characteristics let's look at an example with Apple and Google Maps who are the customers to target in this market in this market the underlying customers job to be done is to get to a destination on

2:20 time this is the reason people use Apple and Google Maps we will define customer jobs in much more detail in the next lesson but in short your customers job to be done is a goal they are trying to achieve independent of your product or your solution so who are the customers to target in this market who struggles to get to destinations on time if we created two personas using traditional characteristics these two personas would never be in the same customer segment because they have very different characteristics but could they both struggle to get to a destination on time in the same way the answer of course is

3:08 yes in this case they both struggle to get to destinations on time because they both make frequent and unfamiliar stops in other words these two very different customer personas actually have the same unmet customer needs in this market we will explore unmet needs in much more detail in later lessons since traditional personas based on characteristics can be limiting we need a better way to answer the question who is your customer the traditional dictionary definition of a customer is one that purchases a commodity or service at first this seems to make

3:56 sense since getting someone to purchase your product is how you generate revenue but defining your customer as a purchaser is limiting because jobs theory shows that your customers are actually not buying your product they are hiring your product to get a job done let's look at a medical market example to explain this in more detail obtaining a blood sample is a medical job to be done patients visit a trained phlebotomist who draws their blood with a syringe to obtain a blood sample this market exists because patients need a blood sample to diagnose their health patients are the ones who benefit from an accurate diagnosis from a blood

4:43 sample so patients are the job beneficiary and a phlebotomist is the job executors who execute the job for the patient the critical customer in any market is the job beneficiary this is the person who benefits from successful execution of the job regardless of their influence on the purchase decision this is an important concept to remember markets exist because of job beneficiaries not job executors or product purchasers in this market the insurance company is the dictionary definition of a customer who pays they

5:30 are the purchaser of the procedure to obtain a blood sample but they are not the reason the market exists patients are if a new innovation helps patients obtain a blood sample faster and more accurately the insurance company is more likely to purchase it this is exactly what is happening in this market a company called $0.07 has created a device that enables a patient to painlessly obtain their own blood sample at the touch of a button this happens in every market because markets evolve to remove job executors as customers this is an important concept to remember if

6:17 you are targeting job executors in your market you are at risk that your competition will launch an innovation that gets the job done or the beneficiary without the executor let's look at another example in a consumer market in the market for thermostats thermostat makers sold to professional contractors who installed the thermostats in people's homes thermostats sold for $30 to $60 again Jobs theory shows that your customers are actually not buying your product they are hiring your product to get a job done and this is true for thermostats homeowners are hiring thermostats to achieve comfort in their

7:03 home this is the homeowners job to be done so the homeowner is the true customer in this market because they are the one who benefits from successfully achieving comfort in their home they are the job beneficiary the critical customer in this market contractors are the job executors they help execute the job in this case by installing a thermostat on behalf of the job beneficiaries companies targeting executors as their customers are at risk because new solutions will evolve to get the job done for the beneficiary and this is exactly what happened in the

7:48 thermostat market a new company called Nest launched a thermostat targeted directly at the job beneficiary the homeowner rather than the contractor nests was priced at 249 dollars against the competition's $30.00 pricing nest included a screwdriver to eliminate the need for a homeowner to call a contractor the incumbant thermostat makers initially dismissed nest strategy and pricing but nest grew fast and took market share from the industry leaders they were acquired by Google for 3.2 billion dollars why did nest succeed because the job

8:36 beneficiary the homeowner had unmet need in the job of achieving comfort that they were willing to pay to satisfy in a later lesson we will show you how to use quantitative surveys to identify unmet customer needs underserved segments your customers willingness to pay and the true size of your market opportunity let's look at one final example in a business market companies need to enable secure data use for their employees for example to access email and company data this is a business-to-business job to be done one solution for companies is to install on-premise software like email

9:21 servers and ERP and CRM systems IT managers would manage these complex systems to execute the job of enabling secure data use for employees but clouds SAS software emerged to enable employees to securely use data on their own without the need for IT managers this is another example of markets evolving to remove job executors as customers these examples show that the key customer in your market is the job beneficiary and remember your customer is a real person with real goals they need to achieve in their personal and professional lives in

10:07 other words your customer has jobs they need to get done we hope you will share and like this video on YouTube in the next lesson we will answer the question what is a market and show you how to define your customers job to be done to help you avoid lethal market mistakes that have ruined once great companies visit us at thr v.com to get our free how-to guides and try our jobs to be done software for free [Music]