Why the “Jobs to be Done” Framework Creates Better Products: Alan Klement

Defining Jobs-to-be-Done and Why It Matters

Louis: Right, so let’s get started. Straight away in the next few minutes I’m going to ask you to pick a product or service or even a politician where we can go through sort of a step by step method on how to identify a job and how to apply that to create and sell more products. But before that, can you define for me and for us and people listening, what’s a job?

Alan Klement: The best way I’ve found to describe a job to be done is someone’s desire to change their life situation from how things are today to how they would like things to be in the future. However, they have trouble making that change because there are certain constraints that are stopping them. So the combination of things in my life are not the way that they ought to be and there are things blocking me from making that change. What is what creates demand? And we call this a job to be done. Right?

Louis: And why should people care about this particular concept?

Alan Klement: So as I’ve and I recently wrote an article about this called the know the Two Very Different Interpretations of Jobs to be Done. I recommend reading that as well too because that represents some of the latest thinking in there about jobs. And I think has done a really great job of describing jobs theory because in there I talk about how jobs is about. It’s different because it’s focusing on these B goals that we have now. I think that marketers have, traditional marketers, right, have always been tuned to this kind of thinking about understanding that people are buying products because they want to be a certain way or they want things to be a certain way. But over the last 20 or 30 years that thinking has, has been lost. And if you want to we can go into the history of kind of why that that’s happened is actually a really interesting story. But you know, what’s relevant now is that what’s kind of happened is starting around the 60s and 70s, this idea of the customer is king and you need to study customer needs kind of became the prevailing wisdom of marketing and kind of the idea that consumers have these B goals or attracted to B goals, like I want to be a particular type of father or I want to be a particular kind of athlete. Some of that thinking has not been translated over to people who are in product development or entrepreneurship and innovation. It’s all about, well, study, study, quote, unquote, customer needs, which are often just like functional things of how things work today. And so it’s nice for jobs to be done. To bring that back into the discussion. The idea of focusing on B goals as being the core motivators that drive us to buy and use products, but also a way of thinking about how to connect these B goals to actually developing a product itself. So that’s why I get excited about it and why I think it’s worth everyone’s time to investigate.

Louis: Right. And this way of thinking really kind of bridges the gap between product development, marketing, sales, customer success and all of those disciplines because they have the same job at the end of the day, which is to create and sell product that people give a shit about.

Alan Klement: Yeah, exactly. So I find that that is what is really the power and the usefulness of job thinking is so when I do some consulting work, I like to have a cross functional team involved and doing the workshops and doing the research. And that means someone from customer success, engineering, product management, marketing, all those different kinds of roles in there because they can actually all relate to the same data and all start talking the same language. And it’s really great to see people across departments all come to the same conclusion and have the same understanding of, yes, this is actually why people are buying our product and kind of how they’re hoping to make a change and what business we really are in. And that, that right there, I think is probably one of the most valuable things of job syncing, is creating that, that cohesion that helps people and organizations kind of untangle. We call it the big ball of mud. Right. That these organizations get themselves into, the products get themselves into because they, when you’re driven by, you know, a feature driven development or even like a activity centered or task driven development, you know, oh, we’re in the business of, you know, helping someone listen to music or whatever, some task or activity, because you’re missing the context of that. Well, why is someone wanting to listen to music? Because you’re missing that context. You just start thinking about improving the activity and adding features and whatnot, whatnot. And it turns it into the big ball of mud. Whereas if you recognize. Well, actually we understand that people, when they are hiring, we call it hiring. Right, Hiring. Listening to music for some job. Well, the job is help me be more motivated at the gym or help me relax after a long day or you know, help me create a party atmosphere at my home or at a party of having at my place, when you understand these kind of B goals, what kind of life situation or what environment, context that consumers are trying to create, that just creates. It’s better for marketing, right? Because. And it’s better for product development. And I can go on and on, but that’s, that’s where I really enjoy it so much about it.

Louis: Right. And to give you another example, to give you listening to this podcast, another example of what a job is, and we talked about that in the episode with Claire Syllentrop is a sneaker, which is an example you give in your book, Alan. So you can’t really explain why somebody buys a sneaker, even if you drill down into a Persona like 35 year old marketer living in Georgia making between 30 and 35. However, with one sentence you can explain why they bought it, which is just simply to satisfy their hunger. So this is what it is, right. A job, I believe is really what gives clarity to, to all of the departments in the company. And you mentioned the big mud or whatever you describe it. And I believe this is one of the core principle, the first principle of marketing and designing people. So I’m very excited to go through it with you. Before we go into this step by step, picking a service or product, you’ve answered a question. What is a job? Job to be done. I’m interested in the other question, the opposite. What isn’t a job to be done?

What Isn’t a Job-to-be-Done

Alan Klement: Yep, that’s actually great. And I think that’s really important to understand because I’ve seen people, because again, jobs to be done. And I’ve mentioned this before, it’s an idea that’s slowly been kind of half out there in the public for a long time. I think Clayton Christensen first wrote about it and his innovator solution, and it was 2002 or 2003 is when he published it. And then it kind of hung out there for a while and only recently has Clay himself revisited the topic. So it was like a 12 year gap where it was kind of floating out there and people were kind of coming up with their own interpretations of it. It’s definitely fragmented a bit. So I think it’s very much important to an understanding of just, you’re right, not saying what it is, but also saying what is not. So now what isn’t a job to be done is I would say, and I give some examples of this again in another article, but you know, whenever someone is, I would say, consuming or using a product, but it’s not for the purpose of making some change in Their life. Right. Or, you know, trying to create some better life situation. So a very simple example would be, I would say batteries. You know, no one really wants batteries, right? What you want is you buy the toy for your kid because, you know, maybe you want to feel like a better parent or you want a great way to keep your kid distracted so you can sit down and have your cup of coffee in the morning. But then it requires batteries. And you know, so it’s like you go out and buy the batteries. You might be tempted to think, okay, well that’s a product and it’s being hired for this job. Well, not, not really. You don’t really want the batteries actually. The, the toy itself is actually requiring you to buy the battery. So, so that’s like you, I would say, I would recommend that it’s actually not a job to be. Batteries would not be hired for that job to be done. Same thing for things like, like gas or maybe car insurance that could be hired for a job to be done. But like I call those second order purchases, it’s like you actually want something else. Like, you know, I’m getting a car because I want to have a particular type of independent freedom in my life. And that’s why I’m hiring this car to help me create that experience. But then because I bought that car, it kind of like all these other, more problems popped up, you know, car insurance and parking and gas and learning how to drive and whatnot. And so I think it’s understanding that those kind of second order purchases are really side effects of that one product that was being hired for a job to be done. I think just drawing a line between, no, that’s not for a job to be done because it’s not being used itself, not being used to help transform your life in some way, whereas these products are helping you make some transformation and change in your life.

Louis: So that begs the question, if I work for car insurance, what the fuck am I supposed to do?

Alan Klement: Yeah, so I think that’s, you know, it still can be relevant, right? But I think it’s like from a product strategy point of view, I think that the car insurance makers should understand that, you know, it’s always kind of tough, right, because the products, it all works as a system, right. So it’s not really like a hierarchy necessarily. And it’s really tough to determine a cause and effect. But you can kind of recognize that we, when we start buying these products and bringing them into our lives, it kind of creates this like spider web, like this system, right. Of Things that all kind of link together and it makes some changes in our life. So, you know, I think actually recognizing that when I buy a car that that is actually perhaps changing my life situation in some way. Right. It’s kind of like you kind of think about like the car, throwing the car, buying the car is like buying a, throwing a rock into the water. It’s creating these ripples and it’s affecting other things in my life. And so, you know, maybe it could be that the car does for some people. See, this is, this is where it’s relevant because for some people there is no job to be done. It’s like, well, you have to buy car insurance because the government is requiring me to do it. And so like, for them there’s no job to be done. Whereas someone else may have a job to be done because of car insurance. Because like, well, I actually have a high net worth and I live in an area where there’s a lot of risk and people are bad drivers. Maybe I live in somewhere in Florida where there’s like, there’s lots of bad drivers and whatnot. And so for them there is some demand, there is some job to be done of kind of help me create some safety or a safety net or help protect me, protect my wealth, for example, or protect me from liability. So I think that’s, that’s actually a really good example because that shows how for some people car insurance is really just like a second order purchase. Like, well, I’m buying car insurance just because the government is requiring me to do it. And if I don’t have it, you know, it’s a fine and that’s it. Or some people are actually do have a job, like, okay, well there’s all this risk in my life I’m trying to reduce and I’m very concerned about it. So you know, that’s, that’s for them is a job to be done, there is some demand.

Louis: So can you, would you describe a job to be done as something negative or a projection of something negative? For example, in the car insurance thing, could the job to be done be. I’m hiring the car insurance so that I’m not going to be fined by the government?

Alan Klement: Yep, that could be. I’m not really, you know, again, this is all interpretive. We have to be honest. Right. And I think it’s best for you to think about what works best for you and your organization. Me personally, I would not like to, you know, say that. Okay, so I’m kind of like figuring out the best way to Say it. So I’ll back up a little bit. So to answer your question directly, it’s always better if your job to be done is described as something positive, moving towards something that you want. So therefore progress right now. But there are things in our lives that kind of create a discrepancy or kind of make us. How can I say? It’s like I want. Think of it as like a thermometer or like a thermostat. Right. So sometimes the progress, like, I want to advance. So maybe I want things to be warmer. Right. It’s like a plus happened in my life. Or sometimes things happen and there’s a negative. So you’re right, there is something has happened in my life and now there’s some discrepancy. And I’m just trying to get back to where I was. So, you know, you can think of jobs to be done that way, but it’s still. It’s not about trying to find the exact same words, but they’re both positive. But it’s because that, for example, in the car insurance example, like, suppose you do, you buy the car and it introduces this anxiety in your life. Before you had the car, there was no anxiety. Like, you were happy and that was good and so you bought the car and it creates this anxiety, this kind of discrepancy. Now, before the car, I was fine. I had no worries about it, but now I do. And so I want to make this positive change, but. Positive change to where I used to be.

Louis: Exactly. Right. So it’s still a progress, even if it’s negative.

Alan Klement: Right? Yeah, but it’s like, I want to say, like, it’s not like you are. It’s not. You’re just trying to avoid something. You’re always trying to get towards something.

Louis: But it’s like, like financial independence, right?

Alan Klement: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it’s just like you’re still trying to work towards something because, like, you can’t just say, like, avoid things. So another analogy that I like to use is think of yourself as being lost in the ocean in a raft, like in the Pacific Ocean. Now everyone knows, okay, we don’t want to be in this raft and we’re lost at sea. We don’t like that. But unless we actually make a choice on a direction to go or some way to get ourselves out of it, we’ll just continue floating in the sea. So it’s like you might be negative, like, well, I don’t like how things are. But unless someone says, ah, I think there’s a shipping lane this way we should paddle in that direction or we should stay right here because the wreckage of the plane is here and people are going to come looking for us or we should go that way. I think there’s an island over there. So like that’s the whole thing about jobs to be done. Like there has to be some direction, positive influence that you want to make. But even if it starts from a negative place.

Louis: Right. And to go back to the tough question I asked you and thanks for answering it, I guess for the car insurance part of it, it’s not really about so that I can avoid being fine. It’s more about because I’m saving for a house right now and anything that might prevent me from doing that is not good. So I want to make sure that I’m doing everything that I can to save for a house in order for me to build a family and to be happy with my wife and kids and all of that.

Alan Klement: Right? Yeah, exactly. So that’s, I think it’s important to. That’s it. I agree. Yeah, I agree. And I think that’s also relevant to understand this idea of progress and the job to be done as try not to start with the product itself. Actually I think that life insurance or the car insurance actually was a really great example because that just shows that the job to be done is independent of the product and is completely dependent on the customer. Right. Because for some people the product is being served for a job to be done for some people, but the same product is maybe not serving a job to be done for others.

The Pipedrive Case Study Setup

Louis: Right. So we’ve been talking about a lot of theory in the first 15 minutes. Let’s go into kind of a practical example and perhaps to help you because you’re a consultant, because you’ve been working with a lot of companies and also individuals towards this journey, perhaps, perhaps you can pick a product or service you’ve worked on in the past. You don’t have to name the service, but perhaps it might be easier than to go through the steps actually you went through. So it’s up to you. So what is the product or service that you want to go through this step by step?

Alan Klement: Sure. So I will actually I’ll use a product that a client because you’re right. It’s always a little tricky because you got NDAs like crazy. Especially when you get up to some of the, the really fun clients who maybe have the budget to do really crazy stuff. Those are the times where they really keep you tight lipped, which is unfortunate. But I can talk about for Example, pipedrive, who has actually, the founder gave a presentation where he talked about how his work with me and my partners actually transformed how they market and how they do product development. So kind of make sure it goes in the right direction. How would you. Would you like to know the process of how they did what. Like, how they.

Louis: So, first off, let’s just define briefly what pipedrive is.

Alan Klement: Oh, okay. Yeah. So it’s a. It’s a CRM solution. So that’s a. I think it’s a customer relationship.

Louis: Management.

Alan Klement: Yeah, management. Yeah. I always forget what CRM stands for, but that’s what it is. And basically it’s a software product that people who do sales would buy and use.

Louis: Okay, Right. So what was the situation that this company was in before they started to talk to you?

Alan Klement: Yep. Great. So it’s. It’s really funny. They came to me and they talked about how they were. They felt like they were struggling to. And the founders describe it as all sniff the same glue. That was the kind of joke they were using. Right. So basically, like, it was that. And then if you go back and watch this video, maybe we can link to it. In the description of this podcast where Hank talks about it. In the beginning, you’ve got a small team, the founders, and some extra help. 5, 6, 12, 10 people, whatever it is. It’s much easier to have cohesion around product vision and what we’re doing and so on and so forth, because maybe all of you are in the same room. Same room, and you’re all talking in the same language and can kind of have a shared mind easily. But when you get up to bigger scaling issues, two or 300 people, and as Hank talks about, they have 12 product teams. 12 teams. Then you have all those scaling problems happen. Like different product teams are reinventing each other’s features when they don’t need to. They’re stepping on each other’s toes. They have trouble communicating the founder’s vision all the way down to maybe the engineer or two of the interaction designers on team number eight. So they need to figure out, how can we organize but also maintain the vision and keep ourselves directed and all moving forward together? So that was it. And so they felt like that job seeking would. Would help them. As I said, all sniff the same glue.

Louis: Okay. So the actual problem, the actual thing they wanted to achieve was to sniff the same glue. And they thought about this way of thinking, the jobs to be done methodology, as a way to solve it, to actually achieve this. So, okay, you went there. How did you. How did you go about trying to find this job or those multiple jobs that customers were hiring pipedrive to? And perhaps you might want to go into details about the, the kind of the maybe one or two methods that are simple enough for people to replicate and we can drill into them.

The 5-Day Research Sprint Process

Alan Klement: Absolutely no problem. So we have a, so I’ve worked it out to where it’s a process that we replicate now that we, I’ve done for my own products in the past, historically and I also do with, with clients who want to hire me or hire my firm actually I should say. And so what we do is we do these research Sprints where over five days we interview 20 to 25 people. So these are hour long interviews with 20 to 25 people and we talk to them. So it’s usually about a half and half, like half people who just started using the product within the last month or two and then the other half are people who’ve recently stopped using our product.

Louis: Okay, so first question, because I know a lot of people are suffering from this. They know they need to talk to people, they know which type of people they want to talk to. But then when you tell them just go about it, just do it, they don’t really know where to start. So without going into a lot of details, how do you advise companies and even individuals to, to go about this very step?

Alan Klement: Yep. So at the highest level, what you want to talk to these people about is find out why they were making some change in their lives. Right. Which regarding which resulted in the purchase of a product or maybe the discontinuing use of your product. And so we talked to them about first learning about your product and kind of what were the circumstances that made you think, ah, today we need to go and get a CRM or today we’ve been dealing with maybe our previous CRM solution was terrible and it just the camel’s back is broken. We have to make a change. And so that’s actually for both for people who have just started in your product and people who have left your product. And so the purpose of the interview is to go on that, that journey, explore that journey of okay, what was that first thought? When did you first started thinking about making a change and then follow through of kind of how they, we call it shaping up the job. Right. It’s like kind of like how they were going out into the market and gathering information. We call it information forging. So like they’re going on the market and they’re gathering like what’s, like what’s possible out There, and what are other people doing and what are the people using? And then what are the solutions that are out there? And then you kind of try to understand how the consumer is trying to design their job in their mind or design the progress that they want to make. And then that ultimately culminates in what we call a switch, which is they change their behavior. They change. Okay, you used to use product A and now you’re using B. So that’s at a high level. What you’re trying to do is discover that journey of what made you realize about a change? Study, study, study. How did you actually think about and design that change? And then finally, what did you finally switch to and did it meet your expectations?

Louis: It’s funny, because your process, what you’re describing right here, is the same than a lot of other processes we talked to in this particular step, especially to Adel Revella, who’s the CEO of the Buyer Persona Institute. Right. And I asked her this very question about. You’re talking about Buyer Persona, but it’s. It sounds like jobs to be done, and basically it’s the same stuff. So I don’t want to overcomplicate things going through that when I say that. But the question that you mentioned at the start and the word journey is very important to me, and I believe that the only question that you must ask at the very start, and you can contradict me if you think I’m wrong, is talk me through the very first time you ever thought about potentially using pipedrive.

Alan Klement: Yep. Yep. So that’s good. But see here. So that’s interesting. What you’ve asked, though, is that is actually usually someone who’s already been on the journey. So I would say go a little further back and be like, okay, what before you were using pipedrive, for example, what were you using? Right. Start there. So maybe they say Salesforce. Okay, so before Pipedrive, using Salesforce, tell me about the time or the moment when you realize Salesforce was no longer working for you, because maybe they don’t know about pipedrive yet. You see? And so it’s like, I would even say go a little further back, because again, if you go back to the original definition of a job to be done, it’s like life before and then life after. So you want to kind of. You need that contrast to understand the job to be done. So you want to say, okay, what was your life before? Oh, okay, so you’re using Salesforce, and this is what it was like. And then you kind of reach some breaking point. Tell me about that. And then you went on a journey, and then that’s when you would ask, okay, well, how did you learn about or first hear about Pipedrive? Oh, well, I went on Twitter and I, you know, after using Salesforce, we were going crazy, and I went on Twitter and said, hey, what CRM are you using? And someone said, pipedrive. So that’s a great question to ask. And we always ask that question. However, I would even think about the buyer’s journey. I would go even a little further back and start thinking about. Start with the old solution and kind of like think about those ads. If you see, like, those infomercials, but, like, you know, they’re saying, oh, you know, this is your. You know, your garden hose is all tangled up, and the person’s all angry because their garden hose is all, you know, tangled up. You want to, like, capture all that. Now tell me about, like, you know, the garden hose getting all kinked up and you’re going crazy, and then, you know, follow through the journey to when they bought the new fancy garden hose that never gets tangled up. So that’s. That’s how I would make a tweak to that. To that question.

Four Essential Interview Questions

Louis: So if you had to summarize or select the top, let’s say three or four questions that one should always ask or at least go through, you know, as a. In the step of the journey, what would they be?

Alan Klement: Well, the interviews, I’ll maybe go over. I’ll say four questions, but actually, I think there are four kind of anchoring questions. And these are kind of like how we do the interviews. And I recommend think of the question as kind of a starting point for then you to dig deeper. So this is how I would do it. So start off with, what are you using today? You know, I’m using this product today. And just start there. And because that’s what people are expecting you to talk about and ask them about and most recent in their memory, and then you say, okay, you know, you’re all using pipedrive. Great. You know, what version? Oh, I’m using the platinum edition. Oh, okay, great. You know, are you happy with it? You know, this is kind of like, warming things up. So that’s kind of question one. What are you using today? Question two is like, okay, well, before pipedrive, what were you using? Oh, okay. Salesforce. Okay, okay. Talking about that, you know, so on, so on and so forth. So that’s question two. Question three is, as I mentioned before, what. When did you first start thinking that Salesforce was not working for You. Oh, well, we hired a new CEO and she came in and she saw Salesforce and was like, oh, this is way overcomplicated and too pricey. This is ridiculous. Go find something else. You know. And so then the fourth question would be, okay, you know, tell me about how you went out and started, you know, looking at solutions and finally end up on pipedrive. So I would say that those kind of four questions, so it’s like start recently and then go way, way back in the past and start marching forward.

Louis: Okay, very cool. So interview 25 to 30 people. If I recall you said, yeah, I

Alan Klement: would say 20 to 25.

Louis: 20, 25.

Alan Klement: Yeah. It depends on the type of product that you’re doing. So the easiest products to interview around are consumer packaged goods. And that’s because, you know, there’s only. There’s only so many jobs that I could hire, say, sneakers for, you know, tennis shoes. Right. Because it’s just. It’s a physical product. It’s bounded by the things it can do. Whereas getting more complicated. Software is getting more complicated because now you can pour in tons of features and now you’ve got a product that might do, who knows, three, four, five, six or seven jobs, depending on the software product. And even more complicated. Probably the most complicated products out there are like a B2B2C product. Like, for example, we did some research, and I can talk about this again too, because they’ve talked about working with us, is a large yearbook manufacturer. It’s. I can’t remember the name right now. I’ll add it in the description. Sure. And you know that. So they were making yearbooks and yearbook software and a yearbook platform for high schools who then would go on and sell those yearbooks to their students. So you understand that there’s actually maybe like three quote, unquote buyers or users there. Right. There’s like the principal who’s of the school who’s, you know, make has their own progress, their own jobs that they’re trying to make, that maybe they’re interested in the yearbook. And then you got the people who are actually, you know, in charge. You know, I’m head of the yearbook committee, so, you know, I’ve got my own jobs here of what I’m trying to get done. And then there’s the students who end up would be buying the yearbook who will then have their own jobs. And so that becomes a much more complicated product because you get three different types of progress. And you got to make sure that your solution aligns up with those three types of Product or progress or touches on those types of progress enough to make everyone satisfied.

Louis: Right. So going back to pipedrive and the interviews, outside of the interviews, did you do anything else to try to find out about the job or jobs that people are hiring pipedrive for?

Alan Klement: It starts with it’s just the interviews. So it’s the interviews, but we’re looking for particular types of data, right? So, you know, we’re looking for. And maybe I will put it here in the. And perhaps in the descriptions too. So we have. Actually, I haven’t announced this yet. We’ve been using this tool for like a year and a half, and we’ve been wanting to release a blog post or media, a dedicated website to it. But we created what we call. It’s a demand profile. So this describes the demand that was created that caused this person to purchase this product. And so the demand profile talks about. You’re right. It’s kind of like the desired future states. So these are qualities of the desired future state that I want things to be like. So for our CRM solution, it’s maybe I always have leads coming in, or I’ve never have leads are never being dropped, or my sales team is always working at their top capacity. I always know if a salesperson is falling behind and needs me to help them out those kinds of things, of how they would want things to be. We describe those and then below that we talk about catalysts. So these are the events or things that happened to accelerate demand formulation. Because the way that we think about demand is like a chemical reaction. Like things have to come together in order for demand to be synthesized. And so we want to kind of highlight these things that are helpful. And this is particularly helpful for marketing.

Building Demand Profiles from Interview Data

Louis: Right?

Alan Klement: The catalysts are particularly helpful for marketing and also gives really important context to product development. So, like, for example, when people are thinking about getting a CRM solution, a catalyst might be we’re about to launch a new product. Right. Or we’re about to expand our sales team. Or there’s been a shakeup in our upper management and they want new tools or new ways of thinking about how to do sales. These are the things that are causing the demand formulation, causing a change to happen. Okay, so there’s that. And I don’t have it right in front of me. I should have right in front of me. But those are like this demand profile parts that we find very helpful and kind of. We use those and those types of data to help formulate the job to be done.

Louis: All right, so I’m going To challenge you to go deeper on this. And I’m sure you’ll remember because. So demand is kind of the push, right? Is it? Is. It’s what you should be. What, what you’re kind of looking to do better, Am I right?

Alan Klement: I’d say that’s part of it. So it’s how I like to think about demand is, you’re right, is again, like a chemical reaction. So it’s like these, these things coming together that have to come together in order for me to go out into the market and hope to make some change. So, like, for example, because it can’t be just enough of how you would like things to be. Like, for example, like, you know, I don’t want my fingernails to grow. Like, I’m tired of cutting my nails or like, I don’t want to grow old or, you know, I don’t want to, you know, I don’t want these things. But, you know, I’m not out there searching for a product of like, make my fingernails stop growing or I’m not out there looking for a product that’s going to stop me from aging. Like, I mean, real aging, not like, you know, wrinkles and stuff. Right. But the reason why I’m not doing this because I don’t believe that that’s possible. So it’s like there might be some things that people don’t like about the way things are, but unless they believe that there’s some solution that is out there, then demand won’t happen. Okay, so, like. Yeah, so. So, yes, but I’m not saying no to what you’re saying. That’s part of it, though. So, like, there’s one part of. There has to be some idea of a better future for myself, some kind of B goals of how I would like things to be. And then the second part is I have to believe that there’s some product out there that can help make that actually happen. And then there has to be some constraints that I’m facing right now that’s preventing me from attaining that, that B state. So those three things have to exist that come together, and then that’s what creates demand.

Louis: Right. I’d like to clarify this concept of demand as you’re explaining with your other concepts in job to be known, which is push and pull and inertia anxiety. Right?

Alan Klement: Yep.

Louis: So maybe for listeners who might be confused right now, because we’ve done the interviews and we’ve compiled data, by the way, where, briefly, where do you usually compile data after those interviews? So you would record them you get them transcribed, I suppose, and then what would you do with them?

Alan Klement: Yep. So after each interview we create a demand profile. So I’m actually brought up on my screen right now. So you’re right. So I’ve got desired future. Right. Which is like what experiences I want to have, what things I want to avoid or how I want things to be. And then we also like to assign a type of desire that is like, is it about control? Is it about care, Is it about belonging or self expression? Right. So like that’s the desired state of what things to be. And then we, after the interview we write down another data type, which is the constraints. Like these are so what’s blocking me from moving towards what I desire.

Louis: All right.

Alan Klement: And then we have those constraint types which are talking about the forces before. Like, are these habits, are these anxieties, are these missing skills, are these things that are blocking me from, from making that change or having that, that desired future. And then you’re right. Then the catalyst, which I mentioned before, which could be pushes as well too. So like pushes, if you’re thinking back to that model of the push, pull, anxiety, a habit, a push can be about a desired future, but also can be. So that’s like an internal push. I have this internal desire of how I want things to be. Or it could be an external push like I bought a car and now I’m required to get car insurance. Or we just found out that we’re pregnant and so now we have to start figuring out what to do about getting baby stuff. So this is like external pushes that happen that kind of accelerate demand generation.

Louis: Right. And briefly, for pipedrive, so you’ve done those interviews and you build this demand profile. In a nutshell, what did you find out?

The Three Jobs Pipedrive Customers Hire For

Alan Klement: So let me think here. I’m trying to think. So I guess I can keep it at a high enough level because they talked about it. But there are. We found three or four kind of jobs that people were trying to get done. One job was around, I’m trying to remember, God, this was about a year and a half ago. I think one was definitely around organizing. Right. So it was like life before was. We’re not. Our sales process is not organized at all, you know, and like there’s all these undesirable things about it. And then we have this idea of how things could be once we are organized. So we call it an organized job or a controlled job. Whichever one kind of works better for you. And then after that we found another job around improvement, because after people would make progress around getting organized. Like, great, now we’re organized. Now let’s improve our sales process. So then they would want to go out and aim to improve their sales process. So again, you know, different things would become important for them at that stage. Different types of progress would be wanted, different constraints start arising. And then after that, there’s a scale job, which is great. We’ve. We’ve finally got ourselves organized and we’re in control of our sales process. We’ve made that progress, and then we want to improve our sales process. Okay, you know, we’ve. We’re all firing. All the salespeople are working great. They’re doing what they should be doing. Now we want to add more sales per people and scale from maybe from 10 salespeople to 100 or 200 salespeople. So those are the three jobs, and there maybe were one or two more which were smaller, but we didn’t really care much about. But those were the kind of three jobs that we had found out at a high level that people were hiring these CRM tools for.

Louis: So what I’m not hearing from you is that you’re not describing their customer profiles whatsoever. The only way you’re describing that is by describing the jobs. And an important concept you’re describing right now is the fact that when you hire a product to do a job first, as soon as you’re hiring this product for this job, then the idea of progress kicks in, the cycle starts, and there might be a second job that you can then hire the product to do and the third job. Right. So the idea of progress is continuous. It doesn’t stop as soon as you hire a product.

How Jobs Progress and Create New Demand

Alan Klement: Yep, that’s exactly right. I think that’s another really underappreciated aspect of jobs. It’s really unfortunate. You know, it’s like we’re struggling to get people to, like, that first part of jobs of like, okay, don’t think about the product. Don’t think about task or activities. Think about these B goals that people have. Like, they’re trying to create some. Some better future for themselves. They want things in their lives to be a certain way. We’re. We’re still trying to get people over that first hurdle, but then once they do, then they get to the really more fun advanced ideas of progress, which is what you just talked about. I’m sorry, the advanced ideas of jobs, which is again, understanding that once you do make progress. Progress in your life, then these new goals start coming up and new constraints arise. Like, for example, and this is a Good article to read on. JDB.info Rene, who wrote, who wrote this article, describes this really well because he was working at a surfboard manufacturer. And so the kind of three jobs that he came up with, similar to pipedrive, was again, there was this control job and then this improved job and then this scaling job that the surfboard manufacturers were facing. It was really great. He could actually anticipate and predict when people would change from one job to the next. And because they started looking for certain metrics, like how many surfboards that they were manufacturing and shipping. So when a surfboard manufacturer is, okay, we’re making five surfboards a month, then they’re like, okay, then they’re just in the control and like, be organized job. But then once they start getting up to like, you know, five, ten employees, and now they’re making 100 surfboards a month, and we can see this within the app, right? We can predict that they’re going to start losing control because they, they are now kind of having scaling issues and now they want to kind of help improve their, their, their process because now they’re like, they’re losing track of surfboards and they’re not, you know, having trouble banging invoices. So, like, there’s that improve job comes in. And then again, like, once it kind of hit like 500 or a thousand surfboards a month, then they start running into scaling issues of like, where do we keep the inventory? Like, you know, do we need like a warehouse? And now we have like inventory management problems. So they could actually anticipate, depending on the progress, where people were right, what jobs would come up, or if people were not making progress, then maybe that’s an opportunity for us to reach out to them. Like, for example, surfboard manufacturer, they just started using our product and, you know, a year ago they were making five surfboards a month and year. Now they’re making eight surfboards a month. Well, you know, maybe they’re not making progress. So let’s go reach out to that person. Maybe they’re just like, oh, this is my habit, my hobby, and I only want to make seven or eight surfboards a month, then you’re fine. But if someone’s like, oh, yeah, I just, like, you know, I just can’t figure out how to make more than eight surfboards a month. I just can’t figure it out. You know, I have all these problems. And so then that’s, that’s the opportunity for you to kind of reach out to them and find out what’s blocking them. From either using your product correctly, or maybe they need some education problems, or maybe they need some of their help from you to help them continue using your product and pay for the more fun features.

Louis: Right, so let’s go through again this demand profile, very briefly, the key elements that you mentioned.

Alan Klement: Yes. So there’s three things, right? It’s the desired future, that’s one. Number two are the constraints, and number three are the catalysts. So that’s the three categories of data that we look for. And I’ll kind of go back through. So for the desired future, that is what experiences I want to have, maybe things I want to avoid, how I want things to be. And then the next one are the constraints. So that’s like what’s blocking me from having those experiences I want to have, what’s blocking me from preventing something I don’t want to happen, from happening what’s preventing me from having things be how I like them to be. And then the third bucket is catalysts, which are the events or things that happen that accelerate the demand generation process.

Louis: And where do you categorize those? You mentioned control, scale, improve. What are those four categories again?

Alan Klement: Yeah, so those were jobs that we synthesized. Right. So for example, we use all the demand profiles and then we kind of look at patterns here and we aggregate those and we think about, okay, what’s some of the common. These six people all seem to have these desired futures that relate to having more control, for example.

Louis: Right. But you mentioned this phrase a few minutes ago where you said, usually jobs are in those four categories.

Alan Klement: Yeah, so there are two things I mentioned. So there are like desire types that we use. So that’s. Yeah, yeah, we call it control, care or self care, belonging, self expression, self efficacy, recognition. These are kind of describes the type of desired future, like individual aspects of desired futures that I’m trying to create for myself. Okay, so like, like, you know, that’s part of the demand profile and that just kind of helps us when we’re doing the debrief and maybe we’re having trouble, the team is having trouble kind of understanding or thinking about, okay, well how can we categorize or how can we pick out desired future states? We’ll say, okay, do we hear anything about, about control? Like, oh yeah, yeah, you know, people were always losing track of leads or deals were getting dropped halfway through the process. Ah, okay. So these are aspects regarding to control or do we hear anything around recognition and people trying to gain some recognition? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. These salespeople were always. Or the sales Managers were always concerned about their team hitting their numbers because their bosses were always trying to, you know, making sure like they’re being evaluated whether their sales teams are hitting the right number. So if the salespeople are not hitting that, then they look bad. So okay, great. So that’s a desired future for those people. So that’s kind of the elements that we like to think about and use to extrapolate or categorize desired futures.

Louis: Right. So we have those jobs and in the example of pipedrive that you give, there’s this particular job of like control and the leads and the lead flow. So people listening might be wondering, okay, that’s all well and good. Thanks for going through those. Does this practical step by step with us, but why should I care? How do I apply this knowledge now in my day to day in my company, in my job? How do I use those jobs to be done? With practical examples. So with pipedrive, how did they do it?

Applying Jobs Thinking in Day-to-Day Work

Alan Klement: Yep. So again, I would recommend watching the video again. So I going back to what jobs to be done is not, I would say think about, you know, what jobs to be done is and what it is not. I think it’s also important to recognize how to use it and how not to use it. So I don’t believe that the way to use jobs is very heavily in it. Like you use it in a day to day way. But it’s not my primary or not your team’s day to day tool. It’s kind of tough to explain because what I mean is like we find it best that organizations use this as a product strategy tool or helping them communicate product strategy. And when you are doing your day to day work, say as a product manager or as a marketer, when you are you yourself figuring out what changes to make to the product, or maybe you’re brainstorming on some new ideas or concepts or maybe you’re thinking about new marketing campaigns. You think about, okay, is this tying back to this job? Right. So I like, I think that there are better tools out there for helping you design solutions. Like, you know, like there’s design thinking and those kinds of workshops that you can do that are good. So while you are doing those types of exercises or tools, that’s great for very granularly designing a solution but always make sure it ties back to that. Okay, is this, is this helping really people get, get control of their sales process, you know, which, which aspect of control is our solution, our brainstorm solution really helping either make go away or help create. So that’s How I recommend. And that’s if you hear about the pipedrive guys, what they actually end up doing was, which is actually brilliant, they created a like, they call it like a comic book, but it’s the product strategy for their, for their company. And they put it like in this comic book format and that’s what they hand to all the people. So all the product teams all have the same kind of product strategy manual, but it’s maybe like 20 pages of models, like pictures, but also text and information that everyone uses. Like okay, great, you know, here’s what we’re trying to create. So when I’m here building whatever tool or building this product, I have to make sure that it’s fitting into the strategy. So think of it as like guardrails. Right. You know, you don’t use guardrails every day on the highway, but you just make sure that they’re there and it helps you keep on track.

Louis: Yeah, to me it sounds like doing this exercise really helps you to have the right foundations in place. And then if you have the right foundations in place then yes, as you said in the day to day, you might not think about at it every day or every hour, but it’s there and it really helps everyone to be on track. To on track, sorry. And also it helps customers to understand why they should use you instead of somebody else. And I think one of the good example of the use of jobs to be done, we explained that a few times, described that a few times in this podcast is Intercom because they are able to tie in then the foundational stuff. So the jobs that that people are hiring Intercom to do with the actual product that they are releasing. So they’re tying those two very closely together. And I can’t really find any other companies that seem to be doing it so closely. Associating one job with one product.

The Intercom Warning: Don’t Go Too Far

Alan Klement: Yeah, well, so like the Intercom guys, they have. Actually that’s an interesting thing. If you notice Intercom has change their, their marketing and their branding recently. I would recommend it. This is actually a really important point to make and very helpful. What do you think? Okay. The Intercom guys are super smart. We think they kind of went a little overboard with job thinking in the sense of they were using, they were communicating their internal descriptions of jobs and using that like a one to one of market branding their company. So if you go back to their website now, if you can go back to the Wayback machine, compare how their website looks now to how it looked a year ago or six months a year ago. And before it was like, I think it was something like Engage. The quote products was called Engage, it was called Educate, and then a few other. Those were actually what we called the jobs. From the research that we had done with them, that was actually the name of the, of the jobs that internally they had called it. But reflecting that on a one to one to, to. To the customer was kind of creating some confusion. So now they switched it to communicating what they call use cases. But those use cases still tie back to the existing, you know, job monikers. So I think Intercom is great. I think that’s a great use case of maybe taking jobs thinking a little too far, like just everywhere and then scaling it back a little bit to actually making it work again. Recognizing where something is helpful and what’s best used and maybe where it’s maybe not so well used. So it should inform your marketing, but it shouldn’t be like a one to one of your marketing.

Louis: I’m super glad I actually talked about this because this is critical. I think I’ve done this exercise a few times in the future, few companies. And I found that sometimes it’s easy to go down into this rabbit hole of thinking of jobs, jobs, jobs and forgetting about how people actually are looking for certain stuff. So I’m on Intercom’s homepage right now, and the way they change the feature is by calling it, for example, Inbox now and messages and articles before it was, as you said, engage and respond and learn, whatever. But actually that might create content confusion because people are used to terms like Inbox, they are used to terms like messages, they are used to term like articles, and they understand that they’re going to use those features in order to do something. But you might want to take it easy when it comes to describing certain things that people are used to describe this way.

Alan Klement: Yes. Yep. Yeah, because. And this is actually very much in psychology. And I think that we all can appeal this. You know, we all have we again, jobs to be done. I think about the B goals. You know, we all internalize our B goals, but we don’t sit around and think about, you know, like categorizing like, oh, I have this idea in my mind of being a, a particular type of athlete. And here are all the kind of attributes of myself in the future that I want to have. We’re not, you know, we’re not robots. Like, that’s not how we think is. We just kind of like have this, like, vision. Like, you know, we as a visual. It’s like, oh, I want to be, you know, I don’t know, some famous football player or something like that’s, I want to look a certain way and you know, maybe it’s some famous actor or something. Like I have like a vision, a general feeling in my mind and that’s what I use to kind of guide me. But we don’t, you know, we might not actually say, oh yes, I mean, maybe if I’m a bodybuilder, but you don’t think like, oh yes, I want 7% body fat and I need to have, you know, a ratio of three to one of my, you know, we don’t really do that so well. So yes, understanding how people are connecting, how they recognize solutions probably historically and currently, how they connect that dot to their B goals in their brain, that is a crucial thing to understand.

Louis: Right. Thank you so much for going through this practical step by step with me. Before you go, I have three quick questions to ask you. The first one being what do you think marketers should learn today that will help them in the next 10 years, 20 years, 50 years?

Alan Klement: I would say that recognize that all human motivation is ultimately powered by positive energy. So do your best to always communicate positive direction to customers and that will carry that advice will carry you through 10, 15, 20 years. Even as techniques change on marketing, recognize that people are always attracted towards positive things.

Louis: Right. Very good. What are the top three resources you would recommend listeners besides your book Coffee and Kale When Coffee and Kale Compete, which is free PDF if you want to get it for free, just Google it. You can buy it on Amazon as well. Jtbd.infojobtobidon.info, your medium publication, which is amazing. So outside of those two things, what are the best three you would recommend?

Alan Klement: So I would say if you want to, and I recommend this, I would look at the work of Edward Bernays. So he has an essay out there called the Manufacturing of Consent and he was the guy who invented. They call it marketing now but in the 1920s and 30s they call it PR public relations and kind of study his work and how he invented marketing basically and his opinions on primary. That’s helpful. Another great book that’s out there is Captains of Consciousness which again studies Bernays work but talks about the history of marketing. Kind of what I allude to earlier in the podcast where before it was about persuading people to be a certain way and in the 60s and 70s it changed to customer needs but like understanding the history of marketing in a very consumable way will be very powerful and give you a lot of tools to use. Right.

Louis: I completely agree with you on this one. Right. And final question, where can listeners connect with you? Learn more from you?

Alan Klement: I’d say my Twitter. So Ann Clement, check out my website alenclelement.com that’s probably the and keep an eye on jdbd.info and I think that’s good. I’ve got more stuff coming in the future. I’ll be making some products I’m really excited about, but for the time being, that’s the best way.

Louis: All right. Once again, Alan, thank you so much for your time.

Alan Klement: All right, thanks for having me.

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