Your product has features. Your customers have jobs.
The gap between what you built and why customers actually use it is where most positioning fails.
You think customers buy your project management tool for task tracking and collaboration. But when you dig deeper, you learn they "hired" it to stop missing client deadlines—which was causing them to lose accounts. Task tracking was just the mechanism. The job was protecting client relationships.
That distinction matters. If you position around task tracking, you sound like every other PM tool. If you position around protecting client relationships, you're solving a problem executives care about.
This is what Jobs-to-Be-Done (JTBD) research uncovers: not what your product does, but what progress customers are trying to make when they choose it.
Here's how to use JTBD to understand what customers actually hire your product to do.
What Jobs-to-Be-Done Actually Means
JTBD is a framework for understanding customer motivation through the lens of progress, not features.
The core insight: Customers don't want your product. They want to make progress in their lives. Your product is just the tool they hire to get that progress.
When someone "hires" your product, they're trying to move from their current state (struggling with a problem) to a desired state (problem solved, progress made).
Example:
Product-centric view: "Customers buy our CRM to track leads and manage sales pipelines."
JTBD view: "Customers hire our CRM when they realize they're losing deals because reps don't know what prospects care about. They want to move from 'guessing what prospects need' to 'having a clear record of every conversation so reps can personalize outreach.'"
The job isn't "track leads." The job is "stop losing deals to poor follow-up."
When you understand the job, you can position around the outcome customers actually want, not the features that enable it.
The JTBD Interview Structure
JTBD research is built on deep customer interviews, but the questions are different from standard user research.
You're not asking "What do you like about our product?" or "What features do you use?"
You're asking "What were you struggling with before you found us? What progress were you trying to make? What made you decide now was the time to solve this?"
Phase 1: The first thought (5-10 minutes)
"When did you first start thinking you needed a solution like this? What triggered that realization?"
This reveals the moment they recognized they had a problem worth solving.
Listen for:
- External events (client complaint, lost deal, new regulation)
- Internal realizations (we can't keep doing this manually, we're growing too fast)
- Social pressure (competitor is doing it, board asked about it)
Phase 2: The passive looking phase (10 minutes)
"After you realized you needed something, what did you do? How did you start looking?"
Most customers don't immediately buy. They passively research—ask colleagues, Google search, read reviews.
This reveals how customers discover solutions and what information sources they trust.
Phase 3: The active evaluation (10 minutes)
"What made you decide to actually evaluate vendors? What pushed you from 'we should probably do something' to 'we need to solve this now'?"
This uncovers the forcing function—the event that created urgency.
Listen for:
- Pain escalating (problem got worse, now it's urgent)
- Opportunity emerging (new market, new product launch requiring this capability)
- Deadline looming (regulation, contract renewal, fiscal year planning)
Phase 4: The selection criteria (5-10 minutes)
"What were the most important things you were looking for? What would have made you walk away?"
This reveals what "good enough" looks like. Not every customer needs your most advanced features. They need specific things that meet their job requirements.
Phase 5: The decision and onboarding (5 minutes)
"What made you finally choose us? And once you started using it, was it doing the job you expected?"
This reveals whether your product actually does the job customers hired it for, or if there's a mismatch.
The Forces Diagram: What Pushes and Pulls Buying Decisions
JTBD uses a "forces diagram" to map what pushes customers toward change and what holds them back.
Push forces (things that create urgency to change):
- Pain of current situation getting worse
- New constraints (regulation, budget pressure, growth)
- Fear of falling behind (competitors moving faster)
Pull forces (things that attract them to solutions):
- Promise of better outcomes
- Proof that it works (case studies, references)
- Vision of future state (how much better things could be)
Anxiety forces (things that create hesitation):
- Uncertainty about whether new solution will work
- Fear of making the wrong choice
- Risk of disrupting current processes
Habit forces (things that keep them stuck in current state):
- Inertia (it's easier to keep doing what we're doing)
- Sunk cost in current tools or processes
- Comfort with familiar workflows even if suboptimal
For change to happen: Push + Pull must outweigh Anxiety + Habit.
If customers feel strong pain (high push) and see clear value (high pull), but they're terrified of implementation risk (high anxiety), they'll stay stuck.
Your job in positioning and sales is to increase push/pull and decrease anxiety/habit.
How to Identify Job Statements from Research
After interviews, synthesize findings into clear job statements that describe the progress customers want.
Job statement format:
"When [situation], I want to [motivation], so I can [desired outcome]."
Examples:
- "When I'm preparing for a board meeting, I want to quickly show revenue trends by segment, so I can confidently answer questions without scrambling for data."
- "When a new team member joins, I want them to understand our positioning and messaging within days, so they can contribute to campaigns immediately."
- "When we launch a new feature, I want sales to know how to pitch it without waiting for formal training, so we can capture demand while it's fresh."
These statements capture:
- Context: The situation triggering the need
- Motivation: What customers are trying to do
- Outcome: The progress they're trying to make
Notice none of these mention features. They describe jobs. Your features are just how you help customers do those jobs.
How JTBD Research Changes Positioning
Once you understand the jobs customers hire you for, positioning shifts from feature-centric to outcome-centric.
Before JTBD: "We're a data visualization platform with real-time dashboards and customizable reporting."
After JTBD: "Stop scrambling for data before every exec meeting. Get instant answers to the questions leadership actually asks."
The first describes what you built. The second describes the job customers hire you to do.
Before JTBD: "We're a knowledge management system with AI-powered search."
After JTBD: "Onboard new hires in days, not months. Give them instant access to everything your team knows."
The job isn't "manage knowledge." The job is "get new people productive faster."
Common Jobs Across B2B SaaS
While every product is different, common job patterns emerge in B2B software:
Job family: Risk reduction
- "Stop losing deals because reps don't follow up"
- "Avoid compliance violations that could cost us millions"
- "Prevent outages that damage customer trust"
Customers hiring for risk reduction care about reliability, security, and peace of mind. Price is less sensitive because failure is costly.
Job family: Time/effort savings
- "Stop spending 10 hours a week on manual reporting"
- "Eliminate back-and-forth getting approval on creative"
- "Reduce time to answer customer questions from hours to minutes"
Customers hiring for efficiency want proof of time saved. ROI cases matter.
Job family: Growth enablement
- "Scale our sales team without hiring expensive managers"
- "Enter new markets without building separate infrastructure"
- "Launch products faster to capture market opportunities"
Customers hiring for growth care about speed and scalability. They want to unlock new revenue, not just optimize existing operations.
Job family: Quality/consistency improvement
- "Deliver consistent customer experience across all reps"
- "Ensure our messaging is on-brand no matter who creates content"
- "Maintain quality as we grow without adding layers of review"
Customers hiring for consistency want standardization and control. They'll pay for solutions that reduce variability.
Understanding which job family your customers hire for shapes everything: pricing, packaging, proof points, and competitive positioning.
Using JTBD to Prioritize Features and Messaging
Not all features matter equally. JTBD helps you focus on features that actually help customers make progress.
For product: Build features that better enable the core jobs customers hire you for. Deprioritize features that are "nice to have" but don't directly help customers make progress.
For marketing: Lead messaging with the job and outcome, not features. Show how customers move from struggling (current state) to succeeding (desired state).
For sales: Understand the forcing functions that create urgency. Help prospects see the gap between where they are and where they want to be.
When JTBD Research Reveals Product-Market Fit Issues
Sometimes JTBD interviews reveal the job customers think they're hiring you for doesn't match the job you thought you were solving.
Red flag: Customers hire you for Job A, but you built the product for Job B.
Example: You built a team collaboration tool assuming customers would hire it for "better cross-functional coordination." But interviews reveal customers actually hired it for "keeping executives informed without constant meetings."
That's a different job. Coordination requires features for project management. Keeping execs informed requires features for summaries, highlights, and async updates.
If the job mismatch is small, adjust positioning. If it's large, you might need to adjust product direction.
How Often to Conduct JTBD Research
During product-market fit search: Constantly. Every customer conversation should probe the job they're hiring you for.
After achieving product-market fit: Quarterly or when entering new segments. Jobs evolve as markets mature, competitors emerge, and customer needs shift.
When to revisit JTBD:
- You're expanding to a new customer segment
- Win/loss analysis shows positioning isn't resonating
- Customers use your product in unexpected ways
- You're considering major product changes or new positioning
JTBD isn't a one-time research project. It's an ongoing lens for understanding customer motivation.
The Difference Between JTBD and Traditional User Research
Traditional user research asks: "What do users do with our product? What do they like? What frustrates them?"
JTBD research asks: "What progress were they trying to make? What job did they hire us to do? What would make them fire us?"
Traditional research optimizes the product. JTBD research clarifies the job—which sometimes means realizing you should be building something different, or positioning what you have differently.
Both matter. But JTBD uncovers the "why" behind the "what."
When you understand the job, everything else—product, positioning, pricing, messaging—becomes clearer. Because you're no longer guessing what customers want. You know what progress they're trying to make. And you can position your product as the tool that helps them make that progress.