The jobs-to-be-done method is a sales approach that assumes that each buyer has a specific goal that he or she wants to achieve and to do it, s/he buys some kind of product or service. If the purchased tool no longer does its job, they stop buying it, renew it or get rid of it. With the help of JTBD, we can make predictions about which product will be in demand in the market and which will not. The point of the theory is that people do not buy products, but “hire” them to perform certain tasks.
For instance, we don’t buy an irrigation sprinkler because we need an irrigation sprinkler. We need a beautiful lawn as well as a beautiful yard. This idea suggests that the global goal of people is to become better, and the product should help them to reach this goal. It doesn’t matter how people use the products, what matters is why they bought them. Every person before buying any product experiences struggle moment. JTBD helps to find out what moment it was. At the same time, the theory does not exclude the use of other research methods.

Audience data can be overlaid on JTBD and become even more useful. After all, you will know not only who your potential customers are, but also why they buy from you. We can learn what drives people at the moment of making a purchase decision, which means that we have the opportunity to create products that will better respond to internal customer requests. The goal of JTBD is to understand why users have bought products in the past and predict whether they will buy them in the future.
JTBD theory helps to get as close as possible to the true desires of the user and, based on these desires, create products that are more likely to be in demand in the market.
You need to learn how to deal with the JTBD method if you want to:
- Understand why users have bought your products in the past.
- Predict what products users will buy in the future.
- Identify non-obvious competitors.
- Understand how the decision-making system works.
- Learn how to properly analyze data.
- Collect data and draw the right conclusions from it.
- Create innovative and in-demand products.
JTBD helps with product creation and its further promotion. Through theory, you can learn how to increase revenue, reduce costs, become competitive, and develop more predictable innovative products. Determining the global result of your product helps not only to correctly position yourself in the market but also to work with competitors.