Disrupting the CRM and Martech Space with Jobs-to-be-Done

Let's Explore New Avenues for Growth by Integrating Planning and Execution

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Three years ago I wrote a series of blog posts that put a Jobs-to-be-Done perspective on the CRM industry. Indirectly, I was pointing out that an industry is not a market. For the purpose of innovation, markets need to be defined differently so growth opportunities become clearer, and more tangible. Markets are also hierarchical in this regard, because there is always a higher-context objective that groups of people are trying to realize. We may not understand how we accomplish that today, but we can certainly describe the characteristics of that future world.

Imagine if we could just listen to music, on demand, in our head without any effort? ~me, 40 years ago

In order to monitor the evolution of capabilities and resources, and determine how they might be integrated into a higher-context, broader solution (the new ideal) we need to look at the world differently. We also need to constrain ourselves within the functional realm because personal aspirations are simply horrible inputs into the innovation process. While feelings and emotions are necessary inputs for fine-tuning your marketing messaging, without functional value, your message will be quickly discarded.

What is Jobs-to-be-Done?

Let’s look at something we all understand, meetings. The meeting itself isn’t a Job-to-be-Done, the purpose of the meeting is. However, it can serve as an example that most of us are familiar with. Holding the meeting is the same as executing it. However, wouldn’t you agree that in order to be successful, there are things that must be accomplished (or done) prior to the meeting? How about after the meeting?

Before:

• Determine the objective of the meeting

• Plan an agenda for the meeting

• Identify and gain access to resources needed for the meeting

• Set up a meeting space (digital, physical, or both) to hold the meeting

After:

• Put resources back where you got them

• Track action items

• Update resolution for next meeting

• Change actions as new information emerges

• Store details and results for future reference

Today our meetings are increasingly held over videoconferencing technology like Zoom, or Teams. Do these solutions help you with any of the points I made above? Can you envision a solution that did?

This is the basic concept behind a job map in the world of Jobs-to-be-Done. Many products that we use are focused solely on executing something. But if you think hard, you will see that they can also have services embedded in them (formerly separate lower context Jobs-to-be-Done). Think about a hammer. Do you know how to chop down a tree and whittle a handle? Do you know how to forge the metal for the hammer head needed to drive a nail? Do you know how to make nails? At a point in time, you would’ve needed many skills, and a lot of time, in order to fasten two pieces of wood in this manner. Now you just buy a bunch of nails, and strike them with a hammer.

How much planning, learning, and preparation would be required for each of those separate competencies?

Eventually, someone integrated those services into the hammer (which is why you’ll hear some people say a product is a really a service). One day 3D Printing could make hand tools rather obscure…kind of like turntables and cassette deck are today.

It’s easy to look backwards, but have you ever though about hammers that way? Are you evaluating CRM / Martech platforms using this lens?

CRM Focuses on Execution

A simple way to look at the structure of Jobs-to-be-Done is to consider a number of stages that detail the before, during, and after concept.

Are we getting the entire job done on a single platform?

The vast number of brands now in the Martech landscape prevents me from mapping where each of them play in the landscape above. However, there has been analysis done by others [which I allude to in an earlier blog post] which indicates they are all trying to do parts of the execution step, but they’re not introducing any new value. And as a result, these brands are only capturing a small number of seats compared to the more established platforms. Why are they chasing this? It’s simply not disruptive!

You can certainly point to the success of the large, cumbersome, expensive platforms and tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about. But, let me ask you this, if I told you that I could take a handful of inputs from you and for a million dollars a year I could guarantee you a million dollars in profitable revenue each month, would you take that offer? Yes, as long as the profit for the year was greater than the investment.

Execution technology has certainly evolved over the years, and has incorporated services that once required a great deal of manual and mental effort. But, did it add new value, or did it simply make execution incrementally better (at the risk of overcomplicating things and adding cost)? Certainly, there was a point where it did, but that is long in the past.

The map above is a basic outline of my recent look at the industry. I’ve looked at various levels of context (e.g., developing a qualified lead) and also a higher level of context such as Generating Profitable Revenue Growth (link to research catalog). The primary character in the latter is a Chief Revenue officer (or it could be anyone above the sales and marketing functions). A CRO Generating Profitable Revenue Growth is therefore the definition of the market for innovation purposes. It takes current solutions completely out of the picture.

Have you ever looked at CRM technology through a lens like this? We have all focused on execution and left strategy and planning to the more gifted people. Just ask them.😉

As many of you know, each of the bullet points I’ve listed have 10-15 customer success statements supporting them, so this model gets very detailed, very fast. That turns many people off, even some people that say they like data! So let’s just look at this logically. We can worry about data models, prioritization, and segmentation some other time.

CRM/CX/Martech platforms (choose your flavor) are focused on Execution. The theater is what we all get excited about because it’s where individual performers make a name for themselves. Execution is also where we eventually convert opportunities to cash…cha-ching! Here’s the problem, companies are increasingly not able to sustain that revenue machine because the digital world is moving faster and faster. People are simply not scalable in this scenario, even the super expensive experts.

So let’s think about systems.

Systems Thinking

A system is a set or arrangement of things connected or interrelated in such a way that they work together as a unified whole. These things can be objects, parts, elements, components, or even other systems. ~ChatGPT v4.0

The definition above is your secret to understanding innovation in the CRM space (or any space). A component stereo was a system, but also a sub-component of a larger analog system. Spotify is a system at a much higher context that includes the now integrated capabilities of the earlier system(s). The components and other systems have been connected or interrelated in new ways, digitally, which enabled us to automate away much of the work we had to do - not the least of which was finding, buying, storing, and retrieving music. A better turntable did not, and would not, do this.

While there have been some much needed inventions to help manage emerging channels and customer journey complexity, there has been little to no integration between the front and of the process, the execution, the monitoring, the real-time adaptations, and the conclusion. Much of that is still requires a hefty manual and mental challenge. The lack of digitalization in adjacent planning and strategy tools, as well as any tight integration with execution and steps and beyond, is a huge opportunity to be exploited. While I have modeled this in an attempt to convince you, I’m not the only one who has pointed this out…

An article on elearningindustry.com suggests that most businesses fail to reach their strategic goals because there is a gap between strategic planning and how teams execute their plans. It’s also possible that the planning itself underperforms. The pseudo-integration I referenced in the diagram basically means that the execution tools can be configured and do some monitoring, but none of that is tightly integrated with the rest.

What if we had Martech platforms that helped us define attainable objectives, facilitated planning and strategy to achieve them, helped to define performance measurements so we could measure our progress, configured the platform to execute, and monitored the results against KPIs it defined, so the plan could be updated and/or the platform could be reconfigured in real-time? (deep breath).

We’d get the entire job done on a single platform. We would march toward the concept of a marketing appliance.

This sounds complicated, and who wants to deal with all of this when we are all compensated on short term success? But we live in a digital age and my bet is that the technology to enable it exists. If we digitalize planning, allocation and preparation, we can then integrate it with execution and monitoring. That gets us a step closer to automating it, and that’s essentially the difference between Spotify and a component stereo system…with some artificial intelligence thrown in.

The first steps toward toward a new way to consume music weren’t as good as what we have today (as we look back). But, disruption comes from the low end of the market. Let me explain by having you check out a blog post I wrote about how this might happen. It was written with tongue-in-cheek.

The Subjective Quadrant (SQ) for Digital Marketing

In that piece I suggested that we focus on the entire process of marketing, not just the execution of marketing activities. I emphasized the importance of planning, analysis, logistics, and design, which are often overlooked in the digital transformation process. I suggested that growth in the CRM and Martech markets will come from platforms that help customers accomplish more of their job, or multiple jobs, on a single platform.

My theory was that marketers would value a solution that goes beyond execution and monitoring to also manage or facilitate planning-phase objectives. I still believe that potential disruptors in the market could come from the planning side, either partnering with or being acquired by incumbent CRM platform brands. I didn’t run the numbers (so-to-speak) but most disruptive solutions follow a pattern similar to this.

Adding more channels and execution features into Martech and CRM platforms is not a viable growth path for incumbents. It just adds complexity and cost. When you overserve a market, you are ripe for disruption, and that is what I see today.

Here are two things you can look for without doing any modeling whatsoever:

1. Have you ever heard anyone complain that the software they use is too complicated, e.g., hard to learn, hard to use, confusing, slow, etc.?

2. Have you ever heard anyone complain that the software they use is too expensive?

Immature competitors translate the concept Clay Christensen introduced - that disruptors come from the bottom of the market - as meaning that they are simpler and less expensive. One of the examples Christensen used was the automobile industry where lesser brands from Asia leveraged a production advantage to win on price. While they had fewer features, that doesn’t mean they were low quality. Software production has already simplified this for everyone, so there’s not as much of an advantage there. Price and simplicity need to align to new value. This is completely different than what the Japanese and then the Koreans did with cars. They were using continuous improvement. I’m talking about disruption.

Where’s the Beef?

If new value can’t be found in digital production advantages then the focus needs to be realigned to the customer directly. Therefore I’d like to introduce several concepts to consider as we look for innovation and growth opportunities in the CRM/CX/Martech world:

1. A disruptive solution needs to get more of the job done - think of the map I shared above as the entire job. What could vendors do, who could they partner with, to address integrations with solutions in adjacent steps, or develop adjacent capabilities themselves? After all, CRM vendors market and sell too, so they must have some internal competency they could leverage.

2. A disruptive solution will get the job done completely differently - an integrated solution exposes more of the job to other parts of the job, and there will be obvious efficiencies gained through resource simplification.

3. A disruptive solution will ultimately have fewer features - I visualized this in a post on ZDNet a few years ago. Anything you can see or are required to interact with is a feature. Again, I used an example many of us can relate to. We progressed from getting a single step done with technology to getting the entire job done, automatically.

This consumer Job-to-be-Done is no different than the reality facing the Martech world. Planning and resource access / preparation were always a part of the music job. Now we don’t even think about any of that because it’s become automatic. Imagine a future in Marketing where we’ve accomplished something similar. Given our current digital infrastructure, I doubt it’ll take 40 years. Who’s paying attention? How much time is left?