What is jobs to be done?
Jobs to be done is the idea that customers hire a product to make progress in a specific situation, so the job explains demand better than demographics do. Clayton Christensen and colleagues summarized the theory for managers in a 2016 Harvard Business Review article. Their article stresses that a job has practical, emotional and social parts, and that the same buyer can hire different products in different situations.
Why it matters to a revenue leader
A facility manager who orders a fire inspection is trying to pass the fire marshal's visit and keep the building open without surprises. Sellers who sell to that job ask about the audit calendar and the last failed inspection. Sellers who sell the service alone compete on price per device. The job framing also shows a revenue leader which adjacent services the same buyer would hire next.
Example
A property management firm keeps switching elevator service providers despite fair prices. Interviews show the job it is trying to get done is avoiding tenant complaints during outages. A provider that sends tenants outage updates by text wins the account at a higher price.
"What job was our last lost customer trying to get done, and did we ask?"