Image from: http://mwrichardson.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/
Perspective very often determines the conclusions we reach.
The visual perspective above shows a person holding the Sun. Our greater understanding and world view enables us to quickly rationalize that the Sun must be behind the person in the distance, so this is visually just an illusion. Still, this picture is very compelling to the eye, isn’t it? This is an example of “visual perspective”.
“Cognitive perspective” is one’s “point of view” – the choice of a context for opinions, beliefs and experiences. How we choose to evaluate product opportunities is no different. We must choose a point of view in evaluating all the possible products we might develop, which features to add to an existing product, who to sell our products to, and who to target in our marketing. Investors must choose which opportunities to invest in, which ones to double down on and which ones to pull the plug on.
Great products all do something “magical” for customers:
They enable the customer to “get an important job done in their business or personal life better than before”.
The important perspective here is to how we view the purpose of the product – the “jobs” perspective. This concept was first introduce by Professor Clayton Christensen of Harvard Business School in his various works on disruptive innovation.
When we stop looking at the product and instead look at the job the customer needs to do, this perspective change leads us to reach very different conclusions. Instead of becoming enamored with a particular feature, we focus on the job the customer needs to accomplish – and what kinds of products, features, services or other value we can bring to the table to do a “better” job for this customer and their circumstances.
This past weekend I saw a very innovative product that is designed to automate appointment confirmations for medical professionals. The product eliminates the need for a doctor’s office to manually call up patients and confirm their appointment. It can also be used to collect past due accounts, before turning accounts over for collections. The value proposition of the product and jobs to be done are very clear.
However, the product was apparently originally conceived as an outgrowth of a surgeon not calling a patient back, which was a very painful and frustrating experience. This caused the founder of the company who developed this product to recognize an opportunity – to automate callbacks and staying in touch with patients (who are customers) to provide better service.
Unfortunately, many surgeons still wake up every day thinking they are godly and that the world must come to them, since they are in such demand and omni-important. And if you are trusting your life to a surgeon on any given day, you would probably agree with them!
These surgeons still don’t care about providing good customer service – and they probably never will unless something happens to cause them to change their priorities and outlook.
So these surgeons aren’t really concerned with patient follow-up. This makes surgeons a very difficult sell for this product, because it’s not a “job” they’re trying to get done in their business nor one they value highly. You would have to “push” this product very hard to make a sale to the average surgeon.
On the other hand, most dentists do care about customer service and satisfaction, because people have many choices when it comes to which dentist to use. And dentists, like most physicians, want to optimize their patient workload in order to maximize their revenue. And most want referrals from happy customers, so they value providing good customer service.
So many dentist offices prioritize this job by having someone in their office call patients the day before the appointment to confirm it. The company’s product is a great fit for dentists, because it provides a “better” way to get an important job done that dentists already do. Most dentists would welcome the opportunity to automate follow-ups for appointment confirmations and collections – both of which are important jobs they are already doing today.
So the “secret” to winning products isn’t as much about the product as it is about the customer – and the jobs they’re doing (or want to be doing) in their business or personal life. By taking a “jobs to be done” perspective, we can identify which customers are most likely to want to buy a particular product.
It’s a lot easier to sell a product that helps someone do a better job at something they already value and are doing vs. trying to educate someone as to why they should start prioritizing (and budgeting) a job they don’t do today.
One of the fastest paths to success is taking an existing market, where customers are already doing a job with some existing product, then determine how satisfied these customers are with the products available to them. If the market is “underserved”, then you may have found a good opportunity to introduce a better way of doing that job.
For example, I just switched over to using AT&T U-Verse and replaced DirectTV, analog phone service and Internet service. AT&T U-Verse provides an all-in-one solution bundle that’s about half the price of all these services I was already using – a better and less expensive way to get all three of these jobs done that I’m already doing. Home run!
Another way to identify great opportunities is looking for customers who are interested in doing a particular job, but who aren’t able to do that job today due to some limitation, such as lack of money required, lack of skills or lack of access to the solution. By innovating in such a way that enables these “non-consumers” to overcome their current limitations and get that job done, you will have found a great market opportunity.
I sure wish I’d learned about this particular “jobs to be done” perspective about twenty years sooner…
How does this perspective change how you see your customers? Your products? Your job to be done?
Tags: customer driven, disruptive innovation, job to be done, what customers wantRelated posts:
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