Stop Optimizing the Checkout: The JTBD Way to Win Customers Before They Even Buy
Uncover the Hidden Struggles of High-Stakes Business Decisions.
Table of Contents
Part 2: A New Framework: Deconstructing the "Job of Selection"
Part 3: Innovating the Selection Journey: From Today to Tomorrow
Introduction
Think about the last time you had to make a significant purchase for your business. Not a simple transaction, but a complex decision—new accounting software, a critical marketing automation platform, or even a specialized B2B service provider. You likely waded through a swamp of feature-comparison charts, confusing pricing tiers, and aggressive sales demos, all while a nagging uncertainty gnawed at you. Did you feel empowered? Or did you feel overwhelmed, anxious, and ultimately, forced to make a "best guess" rather than a confident choice?
For decades, we’ve been told this is the "customer journey." A neat, linear funnel moving from Awareness to Consideration to Decision. But this model is fundamentally broken because it's built around the company's desire to make a sale, not the customer's need to successfully achieve an outcome.
Companies are obsessed with optimizing the transaction. They A/B test checkout buttons (h/t Jared Spool) and refine sales scripts while completely ignoring the customer's real, and often painful, struggle: making a high-stakes decision with incomplete information.
The good news is that there's a better way. By understanding the "Job of Selection" through the lens of Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD), companies can stop selling and start helping customers choose. This shift in perspective is not just a nice-to-have; it's the foundation for profound innovation, reduced friction, and a sustainable competitive advantage that your competition will struggle to copy.
Part 1: The Anatomy of a Flawed Journey
From Funnel to Frustration
The traditional sales funnel is a relic of a bygone era. It treats customers as passive objects to be pushed from one stage to the next. But customers aren't passive; they are actively trying to accomplish something. They "hire" products and services to get a job done.
When we view the selection process from the customer's perspective, we see it's not a single event but a series of jobs they are trying to execute. These often include:
The Learning Journey: Trying to understand the problem space, the language of the category, and what "good" even looks like.
The Comparison Journey: Trying to evaluate not just features, but how different alternatives will impact their specific context and workflow.
The Integration Journey: Trying to anticipate the hidden costs and headaches of connecting a new solution with their existing ecosystem of tools and processes.
Most companies perform terribly at helping customers with these jobs. They bombard them with solution-first marketing, creating a frustrating experience that forces the customer to do all the hard work of translating features into potential outcomes.
Part 2: A New Framework: Deconstructing the "Job of Selection"
The Functional, Emotional, and Social Components of a Confident Choice
To innovate, we must first define the job correctly. The core functional job a potential customer is trying to get done is not "buy a product."
The core functional job is to: Decide on the best solution to achieve a desired outcome.
This job is far more complex than a simple purchase. It has its own set of steps, each one an opportunity for a vendor to add value and build trust. A customer must:
Formulate the criteria for a successful outcome in their specific context.
Gather information about the different pathways available to achieve that outcome.
Compare the inevitable trade-offs between different potential solutions.
Visualize what success will look and feel like after the solution is implemented.
Anticipate the real-world challenges of implementation, integration, and maintenance.
Resolve the internal uncertainty and anxiety that comes with any significant decision.
Furthermore, this job is packed with powerful emotional and social drivers. No one wants to make a bad choice. Customers are trying to feel confident in their decision, reduce the risk of looking foolish to their colleagues, and gain the respect of their peers for making a smart, strategic choice. When you ignore these emotional jobs, you ignore the forces that truly govern the decision.
Part 3: Innovating the Selection Journey: From Today to Tomorrow
Building a Decision-Enablement Engine
When you understand the real "Job of Selection," you can move from being a mere vendor to becoming a decision-enablement engine. This doesn't require a ten-year technical roadmap; you can start today.
What's Working Today (That Few Are Doing):
Outcome-Driven Configurators: Instead of asking "Which plan do you want?", ask "What are you trying to accomplish?" Guide users to the right solution by focusing on their job, not your product tiers.
Diagnostic Tools: Create simple quizzes or assessment tools that help customers accurately identify and articulate their problem before you ever present a solution. This builds immense trust.
Progress-Based Case Studies: Reframe your customer stories. Stop showcasing feature lists and start telling "progress narratives" that detail the customer's transformation from their struggling moment to their desired outcome.
Novel Concepts (Elevating the Level of Abstraction):
The true future of this innovation lies in elevating the level of abstraction, creating solutions that get the job done so well that the selection process itself becomes frictionless, or even invisible.
The AI-Powered "Selection Sherpa": Imagine an intelligent system that doesn't just list options but conducts a consultative JTBD interview. It would ask about the user's context, their desired outcomes, and their anxieties, then co-design the ideal solution architecture—often combining products and services—to perfectly fit that unique need.
The "Invisible Choice": This is the ultimate destination. A higher-level service that completely absorbs the selection journey for the customer. They don't buy the individual tools; they buy the guaranteed outcome. The provider manages the complex web of technologies behind the scenes. Think of it like electricity: you don't choose the generator and the transformer; you just flip a switch and get light. This model delivers the job better, at a lower cost, and with far fewer visible features, fundamentally changing who is even performing the job—the provider, not the user.
Part 4: Go From Theory to Practice in Minutes
Stop Admiring the Problem and Start Solving It
Reading about these concepts is one thing. Putting them into practice is another. Mapping the "Job of Selection" for your customers can seem like a daunting task, one that often takes days or weeks of intense workshops and analysis, leading many teams to never even start.
This is the exact bottleneck I want to help you smash.
That's why I've created a suite of FREE tools within our community that enable you to construct complete journey models in minutes, not weeks. These aren't just templates; they are structured systems designed to guide you through the process of defining and analyzing any customer journey from a JTBD perspective.
Furthermore, to accelerate your workshops and strategic discussions, I've published a set of free, universal journey models. You can grab these pre-built frameworks—covering jobs from initial learning to replacement—and apply them to your own context immediately, saving valuable time and aligning your team with a proven, customer-centric foundation.
The future of business isn't about having a slightly better product. It's about creating a radically better decision-making experience for your customers. Shifting your focus from the selling funnel to the "Job of Selection" is the most direct path to creating durable value and leaving your competitors behind.
Don't just agree with this concept—act on it. Join our community for free and get immediate access to the journey modeling tools and universal frameworks. Stop guessing what customers want and start mapping what they're trying to do.
What is the one thing a vendor in your industry could do to help you make a more confident decision, instead of just trying to sell to you? Share your thoughts below.
If you’d like to take action, I would love to help. Here’s are some steps you can take to make that a reality for us:
Join my community and get access to more content and tools
Apply for coaching so we can do projects together and build a new business-as-usual with someone who will share the knowledge, and hold you accountable. (I have limited seats so hurry!)
I do project work as well. Use the coaching link and we can discuss.
Why Me?
Clients who engage with me early in their innovation journey often see exponential benefits.
I’ve been trained by the best in Outcome-Driven Innovation. Part of that training involved how to understand what the future should look like. As a result, I’ve taken what I’ve learned and begun innovating so I can get you to the outcomes you’re seeking faster, better, and even more predictably. Anyone preaching innovation should be doing the same; regardless of how disruptive it’ll be.
How am I doing this?
I’ve developed a complete toolset that accelerates qualitative research to mere hours instead of the weeks or months it used to take. It’s been fine-tuned over the past 2+ years and it’s second-to-none (including to humans). That means we can have far more certainty that we’ve properly framed your research before you invest in a basket of road apples. They don’t taste good, even with whipped cream on top.
I’m also working on a completely new concept for prioritizing market dynamics that predict customer needs (and success) without requiring time-consuming and costly surveys with low quality participants. This is far more powerful and cost effective than the point-in-time surveys that I know you don’t want to do!
I believe that an innovation consultant should eat their own dog food. Therefore, we must always strive to:
Get more of the job done for our clients
Get the job done better for our clients
Get the job done faster for our clients
Get the job done with with fewer features for our clients
Get the job done in a completely different and novel way for our clients
Get the job done in a less costly manner for our clients
But more importantly, I strive to deliver high quality and high availability. That's why I also have to be choosy.
All the links you need are a few paragraphs up. Or set up some time to talk … that link is down below. 👇🏻
Mike Boysen - www.pjtbd.com
Why fail fast when you can succeed the first time?
📆 Book an appointment: https://pjtbd.com/book-mike
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