Here is why interviewing your best customers is the first step in revamping your go-to-customer strategy and creating demand for your product/service.
You can skip this article if you have all the quality leads and qualified sales pipeline you need.
If you are not familiar with the hashtag JTBD or jobs-to-be-done concepts, please scroll down my feed for prior posts that elaborate on why this concept is so important.
The following is the output I produce for my clients from a 40-60-minute "Switch interview" with a customer—ideally, someone who loves you and your stuff, acquired your product/service in the prior 18 months and was a key player in the decision. These outputs can keep a competent marketing team engaged in content creation and demand generation for months.
1. A 1000+ word four-part, customer hero story, where the buyer is the story's HERO.
2. A condensed four-part customer hero story from the above of about 400 words.
3. The top three jobs she/he is trying to get done
4. A single Customer Job Statement using the format: When I <top struggling moment>, help me <top motivation to change>, so I can <top desired outcome>
5. Their top three struggling moments
6. Their top motivations to change what they were doing to seek a new approach that led them to you
7. Their top 3 desired outcomes from switching to you
8. Their top 3 "aha" or "lightbulb" moments when exploring and using your product/service
9. Your top 3 capabilities that matter to your customer that produce better outcomes
10. The value or impact those capabilities bring
11. The top 3 quotes from the transcript
12. A 160-word customer hero story salespeople can learn to tell in under a minute
13. Three "Why Meet" emails for the top 3 desired outcomes and 3 "struggling moment" emails for use in A/B outbound sequences that link to the relevant customer hero story
14. Three suggestions for a more impactful Website, "Hero Message," based on the motivations of your best customers, that make sense when you prefix the hero message with "Now you can..."
15. With enough interviews, we can create a Customer Messaging Architecture that you can use to revise your brand message and positioning and redefine your category - scroll down to learn more about Messaging Architectures
16. Once this messaging and positioning are in place, it is relatively simple to create a new customer engagement conversation storyboard and whiteboard story to immerse the sales team in learning how to engage customers around their struggling moments, motivation, desired outcomes, and jobs they are trying to get done. This whiteboard story will embed collective insights and a positioning/reframing device, the consequences of not changing, a customer hero story and the capabilities that matter to produce the impact in your customer story.
If you have read this far, you probably have some questions. Please post them in the comments.
#JTBD #SwitchInterview #Marketingmessaging Bob Moesta #B2B