Can you use Jobs to be Done if you’ve got no customers?
This was a topic I discussed on the podcast with Lenny Rachitsky, titled the Ultimate Guide to JTBD.
And I think it’s one that requires further digging into, especially with news that 9 out of 10 startups fail every year.
Let’s say you’re a business with no paying customers.
When you’re at this stage, it’s likely you’re trying to identify what the Job your ideal customer is looking to get done. But what’s actually happening is, you’re getting involved in hypothesis building research.
You’re trying to figure out: what will people stop using when my product becomes available?
The thing is, we don’t know.
We think we know.
But in actual fact, what causes people to buy your product is not the reason you think it is.
Dr. Taguchi always would tell me there’s more unknowns than there are knowns. Druker says “what businesses think they’re selling is not what customers are buying”. These were said back as early as 1950, and they still ring true today.
There are no new Jobs. We just get better at them.
The context and outcome still exist; the hire and fire criteria changes.
Where Jobs doesn’t work in this situation – or is used inaccurately – is when you’re sitting in the boardroom and you hypothesize what the Jobs are. You hide behind guesses and assumptions. You don’t leave the building.
You think it’s about pain and gain as opposed to context and outcome. Or you think it’s just about the outcome and not the context and the outcome together.
Only when people change can you reveal what’s underneath the iceberg. So how’d you get to this new layer? You continue your work around hypothesis building research.
Hypothesis building research – what should you be listening out for when using JTBD?
Listening is about actually understanding where people are going and what they are trying to do. You need to listen very carefully not only to what they are saying, but how they are saying it. (Don’t worry, we have a podcast on this very subject).
In these situations, you’re listening out for intent and bringing in the context in which the decision was made.
But you need to get past the surface layer answers people tell themselves.
People will say why they bought something, but it’s rarely the true reason why they did so.
But we have to get past the surface crap people tell themselves. We give the easy answer, the answer people will accept and move on.
But to take the first answer isn’t really getting to the underlying causality. Learn more about unpacking language.
Summary
When you’re a startup with zero customers, the first stage I urge you to consider is hypothesis building research.
Talking to who you believe your ideal customer is and then going out to disprove every assumption you had about them. It’s the only way to understand where and if there’s a potential gap for your product in the market.