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Revisiting JTBD

By on 23rd April 2021

Demand Side Sales by Bob Moesta is a great JTBD refresher. Traditionally businesses focus on product features, continually pushing new features to customers, this is supply-side thinking where the focus is on the product or service and its features and benefits. The flip-side is demand-side thinking where the focus is on understanding the buyer and user and what they are struggling with. Demand is created for a solution once you understand the struggling moment, that which is holding someone back from making progress. The central idea behind JTBD is that people hire solutions that solve their struggling moment.

The frameworks for demand-side selling:

  1. Three sources of energy or motivation.
  2. Four forces of progress.
  3. JBTD timeline.

Three sources of energy

  1. Functional motivation: how difficult is the process–time, effort, speed
  2. Emotional motivation: what internal emotions is driving–positive and negative
  3. Social motivation: how do other people think and feel–this is a very strong motivator to drive change

Four sources of progress

  1. Push of the situation: the reason why change is necessary
  2. Magnetism of the new solution: the realization that something better may solve the problem
  3. Anxiety of the new solution: anxiety for change–how complicated is the change, and will it really bring a benefit
  4. Habit of the present: you have learned to live with it, so why change now

The push of the situation and the magnetism of the new solution need to be stronger than their anxieties and habits before they will buy.

JTBD timeline

Through the years we’ve uncovered the six stages a buyer must walk through before making a purchase:

  1. First thought
  2. Passive looking
  3. Active looking
  4. Deciding
  5. Onboarding
  6. Ongoing use

…it all starts with understanding the customer’s JTBD, the triggers, and the micro-progress at each phase in the customer’s timeline.

Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice is another great read on JTBD. My favorite take away from the book is the idea of focusing less on what your competitors are doing, instead relentlessly focusing on understanding what your customers are struggling with, and using the insight to drive innovation. In this way is is hard for competitors to copy you, because they lack the deep insight into your customers’ struggling moments.

Category Design

By on 7th August 2020

Increased choice among goods and services may contribute little or nothing to the kind of freedom that counts. Indeed, it may impair freedom by taking time and energy we’d be better off devoting to other matters.

Barry Schwartz The Paradox of Choice

Putting things swiftly in categories is a quirk of our minds to deal with complexity.

Our brains are governed by more that fifty different cognitive biases that push us toward decisions based not on facts and logic. It’s a shortcut system in our brain–a way to make decisions faster and easier, especially when overwhelmed by too much information.

Play Bigger: How Rebels and Innovators Create New Categories and dominate Markets

Category design is the mindful creation and development of a new market category, designed so the category will pull in customers who will then make the company its king.

Defining a new category, designing it will increase your chances of success. This includes defining and marketing the problem, then you can help people understand that you are best placed to solve the problem better than anyone else.
This is not about first mover advantage. This is about making it easy for customers to understand the category of problem that you are solving. If done successfully customers will come to associate you with the category, then due to our cognitive biases, it becomes very hard for competitors to replace you.

Seven areas where Product Managers need to lean in

By on 7th August 2020

I’m enjoying Todd Birzer’s Becoming a More Strategic Product Manager. It is part of my learning journey to become a more business focused designer. Product management thinking is an essential skill set for anyone working in tech. For maximum impact there are seven key areas where product managers need to lean in:

  • Customer analysis: Collect stories from users to get a deep understanding of what they need. Stories work best to ignite empathy for customers across teams.
  • Competitive analysis: Have deep understanding of what your competitors are doing and where the next disruptions are likely to come from.
  • Strategy: Have a bold vision that inspires the team. Be clear on where you want to play and how you are planning to win. Read Roger Martin’s Playing to win: How strategy really works for more on strategy.
  • Prioritization and roadmapping: Roadmaps helps visualize and communicate strategy and prioritization helps teams focus on high impact features.
  • Discovery and Delivery “Discovery and delivery is best driven by a small empowered team–typically a product manager, a user experience designer, and an engineering lead. Prototyping, experimentation, and rapid customer feedback are all part of this process.”
  • Pricing “…intelligent price changes can be one of the fastest and most effective ways to increase margins.”
  • Finding growth “Generating revenue, profit, and share growth is a central job of product management.”

Understanding the Mind

By on 3rd August 2020

Sam Harris quotes that I wrote down without getting the source. They are from the lessons and interviews in the Waking Up App which I love as I am delving deeper into mindfulness. Also recommended is the Making Sense Podcast.

…to recognize how consciousness is prior to thinking, reacting, or trying to change your experience, in any way at all, can be the most important thing you ever learn to do.

…a choice between noticing what arises in your mind, and not noticing…

When you are suffering you are lost in thought.

Diversifying your life

By on 3rd August 2020

I loved How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life by Scott Adams. I lost the book at Houston airport. Maybe it was meant to be. I hope that whoever picked it up enjoyed it and found it valuable. I don’t think the quotes below come from the book, they are from Tools of Titans by Tim Ferris. Scott Adams is featured in the book.

This involves choosing projects and habits that even if they result in failures in the eyes of the outside world, give you transferable skills or relationships.

Diversification works in almost every area of your life to reduce your stress.