The first lesson in our course demonstrates the entire JTBD process from start to finish. It explains what a customer job is, how to structure and identify customer needs, and how to prioritize unmet needs. Your team will see the power of JTBD to beat fierce competitors and accelerate your growth.

Who is the customer your team should target for growth? In this lesson, your team will learn how to distinguish between job beneficiaries, job executors, and purchase decisions makers. It will help you avoid targeting the wrong customer for value creation, and help you identify the best unmet customer needs to target in your market.

Review Questions

• What defines a customer?
• Who is the key customer in the market?

Exercises

• Define the job beneficiary in your market
• Define the job executor in your market
• Define the purchaser in your market

What is a market? Traditional definitions use products to define markets. This is a lethal mistake. Products, solutions, and technologies change over time, but your customer’s Job-to-be-Done does not. In this lesson, your team will learn how to define your customer’s JTBD to ensure you have a valid, accurate, and stable market definition to target for growth. 

Review Questions

• What is a customer job-to-be-done?
• What is a market?
• What are the three elements of a job-to-be-done?

Exercises

• Use the three elements of a job-to-be-done to define your market

How big is your market opportunity? Traditional market sizing equations all use the product price times the number of buyers to calculate size. But your customers are not buying your product, they are hiring it to get a job done. In this lesson, your team will learn to use your customer’s willingness to pay to get their job done to identify larger, hidden opportunities to accelerate your growth. 

Review Questions

• What defines your market size?
• How should market size be calculated? 

Exercises

• Estimate the size of your marketing using willingness-to-pay

What is a customer need? And does your team agree on how to define your customers’ needs? Failure to satisfy needs is the number one reason for product failure. In this lesson, your team will learn how to define customer needs in a Job-to-be-Done using actions and variables that are independent of any solutions. Your team will have measurable and actionable customer needs that are the key to equity value creation. 

Review Questions

• What are the elements of a customer need?
• What are the job step types?

Exercises

• Identify the first three steps in your customer’s job-to-be-done
• Identify the additional steps in your customer’s job-to-be-done
• Identify a need in your customers’ job-to-be-done

What is an unmet customer need? In this lesson, your team will learn how to define an unmet customer need, how to quantify unmet needs, and how to prioritize unmet needs to target for growth. Satisfying unmet customer needs better than competitors in your market is the key to accelerated revenue growth and equity value creation. 

Review Questions

• What causes a customer need to be unmet?
• What should you measure to determine if a need is unmet? 

Exercises

• Estimate the speed and accuracy of satisfying a need.

What criteria should your team use to judge your product ideas? In this lesson, your team will learn how to use unmet customer needs to assess your product roadmap ideas and generate new ideas that will differentiate you from your competition, satisfy your customers’ unmet needs, and accelerate your growth.

Review Questions

• What are the criteria to judge a feature idea for your product?

Exercises

• Generate a feature idea that satisfies a need faster and more accurately.

How do you identify the optimal growth strategy in your market? Your growth strategy is everything. It determines if you are on the path to success or failure. In this lesson, your team will learn how to use your customer, their Job-to-be-Done, and their unmet needs to define a growth strategy that will keep your teams aligned with your customer and create equity value faster and with less risk.

Review Questions

• What is a growth strategy?
• What are the elements of a growth strategy?

Exercises

• Who is the customer your growth strategy will target?
• What is their job-to-be-done?
• What are your customers' unmet needs?
• What platform will your strategy use to get the job done better? 

Today’s markets are intensely competitive. To accelerate your growth, you have to beat competitors in your market. In this lesson, your team will learn how to identify competitors who might not seem like a threat today, but represent a serious risk to your business. And your team will learn how to use your customer’s Job-to-be-Done to identify and exploit your competitors’ weaknesses to win in your market.

Review Questions

• Who is your competitor?
• What are the solutions you compete with?
• What is a competitive weakness?

Exercises

• List three solutions that help get the job done.

Traditional customer segmentation doesn’t reveal the most valuable customer in your market. In this lesson, your team will learn how to identify the most underserved customer segment using unmet needs in your customers’ Job-to-be-Done. This segment is the most valuable group of customers to target because they have a much higher likelihood of buying a product that helps them get their job done better. 

Review Questions

• What are the key segmentation variables?
• What is the best way to describe a customer segment? 

Exercises

• Describe an underserved segment of customers.

What is customer value? Creating customer value is the key to creating equity value. In this lesson, your team will learn how to define customer value using the speed and accuracy of getting the job done. Your team will learn how to assess your competitors’ customer value to ensure that your product delivers more customer value and creates more equity value than your competitors.. 

Review Questions

• What is customer value?

Exercises

• Determine the baseline customer effort
• Determine the baseline speed
• Determine the baseline accuracy

What is the best competitive position in your market? And how do you find it? In this lesson, your team will learn how to use your customers’ Job-to-be-Done to identify the optimal position for your product. Using underserved job steps and unmet customer needs, your team will be confident that your position will beat your competition and accelerate your growth.

Review Questions

• What is a competitive position?

Exercises

• Select job steps to define your competitive position.

Companies love to talk about their products and technology. But products and technologies are not what your customers’ want. They want you to help them get their job done faster and more accurately. In this lesson, your team will learn how to create marketing messages that tell the story of how your product satisfies your customers’ unmet needs. This is how you can generate more qualified leads faster and at lower cost. 

Review Questions

• What is messaging? 

Exercises

• Create a message for a new feature idea. 

Your customers’ don’t want to use your product. They want your product to help them get their job done. In this lesson, your team will learn how to use consumption jobs (interface, learn-to-use, install, purchase, etc.) to design a user experience and user interface that will help your customer’s get their job done in the fewest steps.

Review Questions

• What is optimal product design?

Exercises

• Describe the steps it takes customers to use a product feature.

Customers are not buying products, they are hiring them to get their job done. To sell more of your product faster, in this lesson your team will learn how to empathize with your customers’ struggle to get their job done and how to tell the story of your product helping your customers’ overcome their struggle. This is the key to accelerated revenue growth and faster equity value creation.

Review Questions

• What is selling?
• What is purchase control divergence?

Exercises

• Describe customers overcoming their struggle to get the job done.

Accelerating revenue growth is the most powerful way to generate superior equity returns because it leads to multiple expansion. Investors are willing to pay more for companies that are growing faster. In this lesson, your team will learn why aligning your product, marketing, and sales team on your customers’ unmet needs is the fastest way to create equity value with less risk.

Review Questions

• How is equity value created?
• How should you calculate the equity value you can create in your market?

Exercises

• Estimate the equity value you can create in your market.