Aligning JTBD for Product, Marketing and Sales Teams

Imagine you’re the founder of a promising SaaS startup. You’ve poured your heart and soul into creating a product that solves a real problem. You’ve achieved product-market fit and have a solid go-to-market strategy in place.

However, despite having a talented team and early adopters, you find that your company is struggling to achieve the growth and scale you know it’s capable of. Your marketing efforts are falling flat, your sales cycles are too long, and customer churn is higher than expected.

If this sounds all too familiar, you’re not alone. Many SaaS companies, even those with exceptional products, struggle to reach their full potential. The root cause often lies in a fundamental misalignment between the company’s offerings and the underlying jobs customers are trying to get done.

This is where the Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) framework comes in. Developed by Clayton Christensen, who popularized the concept and further refined by experts like Bob Moesta and Tony Ulwick, the JTBD framework offers diverse perspectives on understanding customer behavior and motivations. Each contributor has developed unique methodologies within the JTBD framework to help companies understand what customers truly need and why.

At its core, the JTBD theory suggests that customers don’t simply buy products or services; they “hire” them to make progress in specific circumstances. This progress is not just functional, but also has critical emotional and social dimensions.

Here’s an example to bring this to life.

People don’t want to purchase another SaaS sales enablement tool. They want to:

• Build a repeatable, proven path to close/won
• Minimize friction in the sales cycle
• Boost sales confidence and skills 
• Stop losing deals they should have won
• Accurately predict outcomes for resource allocation
• Win/close deals faster to improve cash flow
• Expand revenue within the customer base
• Build stronger relationships and trust for retention

Understanding this higher purpose is critical for SaaS companies. It enables them to:

• Develop offerings that address real customer needs. Uncover the functional, emotional, and social dimensions of the customer’s job. Create products and features that solve meaningful problems and create value.
• Craft resonant messaging and positioning. Gain insights into the customer’s job context and desired outcomes. Develop content and campaigns that speak directly to customers’ needs and challenges.
• Improve sales and customer success. Understand the customer’s job deeply. Enable sales teams to position offerings as strategic tools for progress. Equip customer success teams to proactively support customers in achieving their goals.
• Drive innovation and differentiation. Focus on jobs rather than products. Identify untapped opportunities for innovation. Then, position the company uniquely in the market.
• Align the organization around a shared purpose. Use the JTBD framework as a common language and focus on cross-functional teams. Ensure everyone, from product to marketing to sales, works towards helping customers succeed.

Christensen et al. write in the Harvard Business Review, “Successful innovations help consumers to solve problems—to make the progress they need to, while addressing any anxieties or inertia that might be holding them back.” 

For SaaS companies, applying the JTBD lens is key. It helps overcome the “innovator’s dilemma” and achieve sustainable growth in a rapidly changing landscape.

Implementing Jobs to Be Done in SaaS

The concept of JTBD is simple and intuitive. But putting it into practice requires a structured approach. It also requires a willingness to challenge conventional thinking. SaaS companies looking to adopt a jobs-based approach should consider these key steps:

Step 1: Define the Target Market and Core Job to Be Done

The first step in any JTBD initiative is clear. Define the target customer. Identify the core job they are trying to accomplish when using the product or service. Frame this in terms of the customers’ desired progress from their perspective rather than just their tasks.

Core Job Examples

Marketing automation platform’s core job might be to “attract and convert high-quality leads at scale.”

Project management tool’s core job could be to “coordinate complex work streams. Deliver projects on time and under budget.”

For customer support software, the core job may be to “resolve customer issues quickly and efficiently. Maintain high satisfaction.”

Step 2: Map Out the Job Steps and Identify Key Struggles

Once the core job is defined, break it down into constituent steps or phases. Identify the key struggles or pain points customers face at each stage.

This step typically involves qualitative research (interviews and observations) and quantitative data analysis (usage metrics and support tickets).

The goal is to create a detailed map of the customer’s journey. Highlight the moments most relevant to getting the job done. If you’re familiar with Bob Moesta, you know he advocates for finding “struggling moments.” 

Understand how your customers are struggling. Then, you can better help them make progress and improve their lives. JTBD interview for Peleton is an excellent example of how this unfolds.

Key Job Step Examples

Remember that each example below has related jobs (more on that below).

Marketing automation platform: Define target audiences, create content, set up campaigns, and measure results. Struggles: Difficulties integrating data from multiple sources, limited visibility into campaign performance and attribution, and challenges proving ROI to leadership.

Project management tool: Set up projects, assign tasks, track progress, and communicate with stakeholders. Struggles: Managing competing priorities, dealing with scope creep, and ensuring cross-functional team alignment.

Customer support software: Triaging incoming requests, researching issues, communicating with customers, and documenting resolutions. Struggles: Managing high volumes of requests, dealing with complex or escalated issues, and maintaining consistency across support channels.

Step 3: Uncover Related Jobs and Emotional/Social Dimensions

The core functional job is critical. But it’s equally important to consider related jobs and emotional and social dimensions. They shape the customer’s experience.

Related jobs are additional tasks or goals the customer tries to accomplish with the core job. Emotional and social factors are personal and interpersonal considerations. They influence how customers perceive and evaluate solutions.

As Christensen explained in HBR, “Circumstances are more important than customer characteristics, product attributes, new technologies, or trends. The jobs-to-be-done framework doesn’t require you to throw out the data and research you’ve already gathered. Personas, ethnographic research, focus groups, customer panels, competitive analysis, and so on can all be perfectly valid starting points for surfacing important insights.”

Related JTBD Examples:

Marketing automation platform: “Prove the value of marketing to the organization.” Emotional factors such as a desire for recognition or fear of budget cuts influence the customer’s perception of the solution.

Project management tool: “Build trust and credibility with clients.” Social factors such as team dynamics and organizational culture shape how the tool is adopted and used.

Customer support software: “Maintain a positive brand reputation.” Emotional factors such as empathy and desire to help influence how agents interact with customers.

Step 4: Prioritize Opportunities Based on Underserved Needs

With a comprehensive understanding of the customer’s jobs, struggles, and context, SaaS companies can prioritize opportunities. Focus on areas of greatest unmet need. Analyze data to identify significant gaps between the customer’s desired outcomes and current reality. Rank these opportunities based on their potential impact.

Ulwick explains, “An unmet need, in a JTBD context, is a measurement of how satisfied people are with their existing solutions to get a job done.” 

SaaS companies can hone their offerings by focusing on the most underserved needs. This, in turn, creates value and differentiates it from competitors.

Underserved Needs Examples:

Marketing automation platform: Customers are highly satisfied with email automation. However, they struggle with reporting and proving ROI. This could suggest an opportunity to prioritize features and messaging around advanced analytics and attribution.

Project management tool: Customers are generally happy with task management capabilities. However, they find it challenging to collaborate with external stakeholders. This could suggest an opportunity to focus on improving guest user experiences and integrations with third-party tools.

Customer support software: Data on customer support software may indicate that customers are satisfied with ticketing and workflow features. However, managing knowledge and enabling self-service is challenging. This could highlight an opportunity to invest in knowledge management and chatbot capabilities.

Step 5: Brainstorm and Prototype Solutions

With priority opportunities identified, SaaS companies can engage in ideation and prototyping. Develop potential solutions. This typically involves creative brainstorming (to generate ideas) and rapid experimentation (to test and validate promising concepts).

As Modesta says, “Building a better product isn’t about knowns; it’s actually about unknowns.” In other words, prioritize experimentation and iterative learning over traditional, rigid marketing plans. This approach encourages teams to test various strategies and channels. The goal is not to validate pre-existing assumptions. It’s to uncover effective growth levers they have not considered or understood.

It underscores the idea that real growth and innovation require a willingness to start without having all the answers. Instead, you can learn through prototyping and testing. The key is to focus on the customer’s job and iterate quickly based on feedback and data.

Brainstorm/ Prototype Examples

Marketing automation platform: The product team may brainstorm ideas around advanced reporting templates, data visualization tools, or ROI calculators. Then, prototype and test these concepts with a select group of customers.

Project management tool: The team may experiment with new collaboration features, such as shared workspaces, real-time co-editing, or integrated chat. Then, measure adoption and usage among external stakeholders.

Customer support software: The team may pilot a new knowledge base portal, chatbot interface, or community forum. Then, track metrics such as self-service resolution rates and customer satisfaction scores.

When teams are aligned, these experiments can inform marketing and sales content. Gear it toward the buyer’s journey. For instance, prospects could use your ROI calculator to identify their problems. It also reveals, more authentically, how you can help them.

Step 6: Align Go-to-Market Strategies with Customer Jobs

Next, SaaS companies will align their go-to-market strategies and plans with customer jobs. This involves tailoring messaging, positioning, and sales and product-led motions. Be bold in directly addressing the customer’s needs and desired outcomes.

More specifically, you will align your marketing and sales to your JTBD and GTM strategies.

GTM and Customer Job Examples

Marketing automation platform: Instead of highlighting product features, emphasize how the platform enables marketers to “prove their impact and secure budget and buy-in.”

Project management tool: Move from focusing on task management to showing how it helps teams “deliver work on time and delight their clients.”

Customer support software: Move away from ticketing and workflow. Concentrate on how the solution allows support teams to “scale personalized service and build customer loyalty.”

Step 7: Measure Progress and Continuously Iterate

Finally, SaaS companies must establish clear metrics and processes aligned with JTBD-driven initiatives. Continuously iterate based on feedback and data. This involves tracking outputs (such as features shipped or campaigns launched) and outcomes (such as job success rates, customer satisfaction, and business results).

As Ulwick advises, “Focus on the metrics that matter most: time, stability, output efficiency, or learning cycles.” 

Align measurement with the customer’s definition of success. SaaS companies can ensure they are making meaningful progress toward their goals and continuously improve their offerings and experiences.

Measuring JTBD Outcomes

Marketing automation platform: Percentage of customers able to attribute revenue to marketing, adoption rate of new reporting features, NPS score among marketing leaders.

Project management tool: On-time delivery rate for customer projects, average number of external stakeholders per project, Net Revenue Retention rate for accounts using collaboration features.

Customer support software: Self-service resolution rate, first-contact resolution rate, Customer Effort Score for knowledge-base interactions.

Embedding JTBD into Culture

The JTBD framework represents a powerful approach for driving growth and customer-centricity in the SaaS industry. By shifting the focus from products and features to customers’ underlying needs and motivations, SaaS companies can develop better offerings, experiences, and go-to-market strategies that truly resonate and deliver value.

However, adopting a JTBD approach requires more than just a change in tactics. It demands a fundamental shift in mindset and culture.

To truly understand a job, it must be integrated into the company’s DNA. It should be apparent in all aspects of the company, from strategy creation and planning to implementation across all departments and regular performance evaluations. It is your responsibility to set a good example and lead the way.

DocuSign mapped out the stages of their customers’ buying journeys, streamlined personas, and created targeted content that addressed common questions and concerns at each step of the buyer’s journey. They did this by aligning their personas to buyers’ real-world needs and behaviors, As a result, DocuSign was able to establish a shared language across the company. They also influenced product innovation strategy and enhanced how they engaged with customers.

For SaaS leaders, this means committing to a culture of continuous learning, experimentation, and customer focus. Break down silos. Align cross-functional teams around a shared understanding of the customer’s jobs and desired outcomes. Challenge long-held assumptions and practices to pursue true customer-centricity.

What it all boils down to…

The power of JTBD lies in its simplicity and focus on customers. You have to prioritize the customer’s needs and desired outcomes. SaaS companies can unlock new opportunities for growth and success by putting the customer at the center of everything, from learning and defining to managing, innovating, and selling.

Many companies only think about how to sell more or make customers buy. However, customer-centric companies ask a different question: How can we help the customer make more progress? So first, adopt the right mindset. Start with this question. Then, see how it enables everything else.

Focus relentlessly on understanding and enabling the customer’s progress. It may be the key to unlocking the full potential of your SaaS company.