Most sales and product people speak in features; they associate the feature with the outcome. However, in reality, the outcome a customer is seeking can actually be achieved through a different set of features.
Sometimes, you don’t even need the feature, you just need to understand what a customer would do if they had access to it in the first place.
But instead of talking to the customer, some businesses keep trying to match each other in features, and what happens is they outpace the customer.
My favourite example is the camera industry.
At a time when market share was wavering, the big brands just looked at each other and decided to win the race to the top to push out even more features. Better lens, improved speed, etc.
While this was all going on, Apple was taking ownership of the camera industry.
Here’s the thing: Apple produces more photos than anyone else in the world. And, while this obsession with feature development was happening, Apple was taking market share.
They knew that the best camera is the camera that’s with you. They started out with a bad camera. But a bad camera is better than no camera at all, right?
The camera brands looked at Apple and laughed at them. “That’s not how you take pictures” or “that’s not a camera”. Yet, while they were criticizing, Apple was taking market share. And fast.
Understanding the difference between a product feature and the Job a customer is looking to make progress with.
Through working with businesses via our product development consultancy, I see many businesses spending way too much time focused on features. Many pay talking to customers lip service, or say that they understand the Job. But in reality, they don’t; they’ve only asked surface-level questions.
The inverse solution: how Basecamp discovered what customers really needed wasn’t a calendar at all
I’ve worked with Basecamp for the last 15 years.
There was this one request that kept coming up from customers who were asking us to build a calendar. But the thing is, we couldn’t work out why this particular feature was being asked for.
Google’s already got a great calendar, why on earth would we need to build one?
Before writing a single line of code, we arranged a customer interviews using Jobs to be Done, just to dig into why they thought they needed a calendar.
We started by asking “why do you need a calendar? You already have one, so what’s going on – why do you need another calendar?”
It turns out it was to do with the way Basecamp populated tasks. Customers told us when you put a task into it, it populated with all the things you need, but it didn’t give you the info required for when something is due by date and time. It didn’t have the “calendar feature”.
It turned out that people were struggling with the fact that they wanted to know what time slots were available.
“I need a calendar because I don’t know what’s available” and “I don’t want to override something or miss out on a key meeting” were frequent comments.
How we applied it at Basecamp:
We didn’t need to make a calendar, we just needed to show the customer what was available. In this instance, we were able to show them the inverse of what was booked. The funny thing was, when we realigned and communicated this to customers, everyone said thank you for the calendar. It wasn’t a calendar at all, it was a way to see resources.
The biggest learning from this experience is that customers don’t know what features they really need.
As a business, you need to dig past this and be prepared to move beyond surface-level questions. By us asking “what would you do with this feature that you couldn’t do yesterday?” meant that we could have lost almost 9 months of development.
Instead, we uncovered what the customer was struggling with, and it became a 6 week cycle that that unlocked something that was very easy to do.
Next time sales tells you “I need that feature built, otherwise I’ll lose out on another customer” think about running a few customer interviews and ask them: what would you do with this feature that you couldn’t do yesterday? 90% of the time they don’t know what’s possible.
Customers don’t know what they want but they know the outcome they want.
Your next steps: moving from feature demands to desired outcomes
If you’re feeling the pressure of feature requests piling up, it’s time to change the conversation. Here’s what you can do starting tomorrow:
First, get a list of your top five feature requests that sales or customers are pushing for. For each one, don’t just write down what they’re asking for, but schedule 30-minute interviews with at least three people who’ve requested it. Your goal isn’t to talk about the feature, it’s to understand the struggle they’re trying to overcome.
In these interviews, push past the surface-level feature talk. Ask questions like: “What are you trying to accomplish?” “What happens if you can’t do this?” “How are you solving this problem today?” Listen for the emotional language – frustration, anxiety, confusion. That’s where the real Job is hiding.
Create a simple “job statement” for each request that captures the progress the customer is trying to make. Be specific about the situation they’re in, what they’re struggling with, and what success looks like to them.
Then, bring your product and engineering teams together to discuss. Don’t show them the feature requests – show them the job statement. Challenge them to come up with three different ways to solve each Job, with at least one solution that could be implemented in under two weeks.
What you’ll find is amazing.
Just like our Basecamp calendar example, many of these “must-have features” can be solved with simple tweaks to what you already have. You’ll discover that a six-week solution can often create more customer value than a nine-month feature build.
Most importantly, go back to your sales team with this new approach. Teach them to ask different questions when they hear feature requests. Give them the language to probe deeper and understand the real job. When they come to you saying “we need this feature,” they’ll be armed with the actual customer struggle instead.
Remember, your competitors can copy your features, but they can’t easily copy your deep understanding of the customer’s Job. That’s your real competitive advantage.
Start by changing one conversation from “What feature do you need?” to “What progress are you trying to make?” and watch how quickly everything shifts.
Interested in learning more? I’d recommend reading our case study with Basecamp or how green line development will help you to avoid product failure.