Jobs-to-be-Done: How to Analyze the Market of Marketing

You wanted a model, here's a model...and many opinions

Domain: Revenue Development

Core Job: Marketers trying to Develop a Qualified Lead
Mode: Acquire New Customers

Note: Jobs-to-be-Done value models and the ultimate data sets that are created are not designed to provide feature specifications. They are designed to target areas in a market where customer objectives are not well satisfied and/or difficult to accomplish. It’s then up to designers and product developers to put creative thought to determine what concepts/solutions will work best to facilitate the success of customers who are struggling to reach those objectives - and test them carefully with customers.

This is part of the output from Jobs-to-be-Done qualitative research. However, this is only the beginning of the innovation research journey. But don’t despair, this is a universal model that will never need to be created again (well, it’s likely not perfect, but it’s good enough).

One more thing: this is not a complete model. It does not illustrate profiling data needed, situational factors (rated for importance and difficulty), or related jobs - all of which are key to describing segments, and putting job stories in the correct context. Come on! This post is already 17 pages long!

Assumptions

• Solutions are almost always organized the way the company wants, what's convenient to them.

• The argument for combining marketing and sales into a single model will be justified by suggesting that in a perfect world, promotion and conversion can occur within the same period, e.g., direct-response marketing. However, in complex B2B scenarios, this is highly unlikely. Therefore, I am treating them as separate capabilities, and therefore separate functional jobs.

• We will focus on a high-level job, not a specific variation of it, e.g., acquire new customers vs grow existing customers vs encourage referrals/WOM, etc. These will be treated as separate modes to be studied since they are controllable. They may be separate processes having different messaging criteria, but the job is to develop a qualified lead, and those modes may result in different solutions/processes/etc. Since we know those modes exist, there is no reason to rely on needs-based segmentation to discover them as segments - and I would argue should be studied separately.

• We will focus on the company’s job(s) not their buyers job(s), or purchase process (Note: we are actually looking at the company as a customer of technology/service solutions that purport to help executors get the job, or parts of the job done)

• This does not include the user experience with regard to customer journeys, company pathways, etc. It simply addresses objectives for developing a qualified lead.

• This job is a function which can be outsourced (or parts of it can be outsourced) through a variety of solutions, e.g., agencies, lead generation services, etc. Imagine an appliance that could get the entire job done.

Job Story Structure

The job story structure has two roles at this time. First, it can be used to test-fit the Job | Step | Metric construction to ensure consistency throughout the value model...and across value models. This is absolutely required if we are to build a catalog of universal jobs, or a hierarchy of jobs.

Second, it can be used a portable, contextual container for delivering priority metrics to your consuming teams (design, dev, etc.)

To simplify the model, all success metrics will be evaluated for speed and accuracy, and prioritized on importance and difficulty, to ensure that similarly themed metrics are able to be packaged into a portable container for subsequent use by design and product teams who need context in a language they understand. In other words, we cannot force them to learn a new language - effectively communicating to them is our job.

This model still has many more success metrics than I would like. Therefore, you can assume that I will be making modifications that I probably won’t be sharing. It doesn’t matter. This is good enough given that you’ve probably never seen anything like this before.

Job Story

As a [Job Executor/Beneficiary] + who is + [Job] + [Situation] you're trying to [Outcome] + faster and more accurately so that you can successfully [Job Step]

Definitions

• Marketer (the Job Executor) - a person with overall responsibility for developing interest in available products and services in the current period, which can be converted to revenue in current or future periods. This interest is expressed in the form of a qualified lead.

• Closer (the Beneficiary) - A quota-carrying representative (aka Hunter) who takes marketing qualified leads, validates them (Opportunity), and converts subsequent opportunities into revenue in the current period. In B2C scenarios in the Internet age, this job has been heavily automated by Ecommerce, putting pressure on brick and mortar retail operations. While it’s true that there are some Ecommerce options in the B2B market using CPQ (configure, price, quote) technology, these cases will generally include a human touch, because they tend to be more complex, longer-term relationships.

• Lead Beater - Beaters beat the bushes for opportunities. The effective ones are generally using multi-cycle, multi-touch, multimedia programs to filter down a list of prospects to the few that are ready to buy now. Then they are passed off to Closers. Since this can take time well beyond the current period, the most effective teams have no closing responsibilities.

• Lead Farmer - Farmers plant seeds for future crops, and farm the fields for up-sell and add-on opportunities.

• Target Audience = Job Executors + Job-to-be-Done +  Market Segment + Winning Solution Concept; e.g., a market segment with opportunities being addressed by a solution, an addressable market

• Offering = An offering in marketing is the total offer to your customers. An offering is more than the product itself and includes elements that represent additional value to your customers, such as availability, convenient delivery, technical support or quality of service.

• Value Proposition = A company’s statement that differentiates it from other offers in the market

• Suspects = typically long term potential to become a prospect that will likely buy from you or a competitor within a year. They should be appropriately nurtured into prospects.

• Prospects = the population of target audience members that will be marketed to. This may or may not be the entire target audience. A long-term suspect is not a prospect. Suspects are put into a multi-cycle, multi-touch, multi-media nurturing campaign

• Lead = a prospect that has expressed interest in the offering

• Opportunity = a marketing qualified lead that has been re-certified by the sales team and is placed in the sales/conversion pipeline

• Customer/Client = An account that has at least one opportunity that has converted to revenue. They can also be a prospect for additional offerings. 

• Resources = information, tools, knowledge, or human assistance that are integrated into interactions and exchanged with prospects in order to facilitate the decision-making process related to an offering

• Channel - a communication pathway that a company offers its customers. Not every channel supports two-way communication (e.g., a billboard). A channel can be analog (a local retail outlet) or digital (a company’s website). A channel consists of one or more touchpoints.

• Touchpoint - a location within a channel where interactions occur, e.g., a landing page, a web form, etc. A touchpoint, however, is not an interaction. It is the medium/mechanism that supports interactions. A touchpoint can therefore have numerous interactions with a single customer and/or many customers.

• Interaction - An occurrence between one or more parties at a touchpoint. Seeing a billboard is an analog interaction, entering a retail store is an analog interaction, submitting data through a web form is a digital interaction, etc. 

• I’ve excluded the definitions for Skateboards, Mattresses and Milkshakes purposely 😏

Interested Parties

• Marketing Technology Vendors: wish to grow by addressing additional unmet needs in the market

• Marketing Organizations: wish to evaluate the best solutions against a fixed baseline to help them get a job of developing a qualified lead done faster and more accurately

Trigger

All businesses must generate valid interest in their offerings to ensure that other resources downstream (e.g. Closers) are not wasted in pursuit of unlikely revenue. The development of solutions to address opportunities in the market, and the need to create customers for them is the trigger for marketing.

Inputs

Previously developed solutions + strategies + information about the target audience (market segment) for which the solutions were designed. It is not the job of a marketer to identify market strategy. While many try, I define marketing as a downstream execution/operational role…not strategy. When I see marketers move upstream, it tells me the upstream capabilities are also failing. You can disagree all day long.

Job Map

1. Select a target audience

2. Understand how to approach the selected target audience

3. Establish the business objectives for your offering

4. Establish the necessary marketing capabilities

5. Finalize your offering for the target audience

6. Establish characteristics of a qualified lead

7. Define your list of prospects

8. Define your plan to interact with prospects

9. Gain access to your list of prospects

10. Ensure you are ready to interact with your prospects

11. Engage with prospects about your offering

12. Validate a prospect’s level of interest

13. Increase a prospect’s level of interest

14. Filter out disinterested prospects

15. Conclude your marketing interactions

For those who prefer pictures…

Lead Development Success Metrics

The following is a linear map of the Job of developing a qualified lead. This is a logical/semantic model that is void of solutions. As a result, it should have been relevant 50 years ago, today, and 50 years from now. The solutions will change, and the data this model can generate will help us discover how to get the entire job done on a single platform, and possibly automate-away the tedious tasks which are expensive and inaccurate. You will find many gaps in both capability at each step, but more importantly integration across the steps in today’s solutions.

Each of the metrics in each step will be rated on two scales:

1. Importance - How important is it that you are able to…”know how your solutions address the needs of each target audience”

2. Difficulty - How difficult is it for you to “know how your solutions address the needs of each target audience”

For ODI purists, you will notice I’m not using satisfaction. This will be an experiment, and here’s why: people can be satisfied with a solution because they are unaware of the possibility of a new solution that makes the outcome less difficult to achieve. So, let’s just ask them how difficult it is ;) Of course, this means the opportunity algorithm will not work because the two metrics are not necessarily correlated and inverted. Stay tuned…

Select a target audience

Question: Given your current solution, methodology or the inputs provided to you, how difficult is it for you to quickly and accurately select a target audience?

If you think about this, you will come to the same conclusion I have; there is no perfect solution for this the way I describe it. There is certainly no technology platform that incorporates this with the theater activities of marketing activities.

1. Know what potential target audiences exist

2. Know which needs are a priority for each audience

3. Know how your solutions address the needs of each target audience

4. Know how much each audience spends to address their needs

5. Know how frequently each audience spends money to address their needs

6. Know how motivated each audience is to find a new solution

7. Know the ability of each audience to use a new solution

8. Know your cost to gain the interest of each audience

9. Know that the decision-makers in each audience are accessible

10. Know when new marketing capabilities will be needed to access each audience

11. Know your potential for being a market leader with each audience

12. Know your ability to establish barriers to entry with each audience

Understand how to approach the selected target audience

Question: Given your current solution, approach, or inputs provided to you, how difficult is it for you to quickly and accurately understand how to approach your target audience?

Do you really take the time to understand key roles, their level of influence, their share of influence, and their needs in the market? I know for a fact that some of you do. However, I’ve yet to see a software/AI/other solution that can define, locate and prepare this information for use. And certainly there is no solution that integrates this step with the theater of marketing activities today.

1. Know all of the key roles, e.g., distributors, business partners, consultants, etc.

2. Know how to gain access to each key role, e.g., available contact methods, preferred contact methods, willingness to be contacted, etc.

3. Know each key role’s share of influence, e.g., frequency of involvement, number of relationships, etc.

4. Know each key role’s level of influence, e.g., perceived capabilities, perceived credibility, proximity to decision-makers, etc.

5. Know the needs of each key role, e.g., need more value, need less cost, etc.

6. Know how your solution will impact each key role, e.g., income disruption, income opportunities, etc.

7. Know the level of impact each key role will have on a purchase decision

Establish the business objectives for your offering

Question: Given your current solution, approach, or the inputs provided to you, how difficult is it for you to quickly and accurately establish the business objectives for your offering?

Do you just whip together a few PowerPoint slides and reference a spreadsheet with numbers that are traceable to another PowerPoint deck? Come on, admit it. This approach is clearly not integrated into a platform that supports the other core sub-objectives of the Job.

1. Know how many prospects can be qualified each period

2. Know the average time needed to qualify a lead, e.g., how many periods, how many interactions, etc.

3. Know the average potential revenue from each qualified lead

4. Know the average potential profit from each qualified lead

5. Know the average number of qualified leads that will be converted to revenue

6. Know the number of qualified leads needed each period to achieve company goals

7. Know the marketing capacity needed to qualify the required number of leads, e.g., people, systems, partners, etc.

Establish the necessary marketing capabilities

Question: Given your current solution, approach, or the inputs provided to you, how difficult is it for you to quickly and accurately establish the necessary marketing capabilities?

How do you know what resources you need? What will your prospect need to make a decision? Who do you need and how do they need to be prepared? How will you work with them? Am I talking about Marketing Resource Management? Not even close. Read the following carefully and ask yourself how difficult this work really is (if you even bother to do it), and how much you’d like to automate it.

1. Know what resources should be offered to support a prospect’s decision, e.g., information, tools, support, etc.

2. Know what data you will need from each prospect, e.g., personal information, interaction details, etc.

3. Identify which internal groups you will need to collaborate with

4. Know how to collaborate with internal groups

5. Identify which external groups you will need to collaborate with, e.g., partners, prospects, etc.

6. Know how to collaborate with external groups

7. Know what roles and responsibilities will be needed

8. Know what business processes will be needed

9. Know what business rules will need be needed

10. Know what technology will be needed

Finalize an offering for the target audience

Question: Given your current solution, approach, or the inputs provided to you, how difficult is it for you to quickly and accurately finalize an offering for the target audience?

In its most traditional form, an offering is the total offer to your customers. It is more than the product itself and includes elements that represent additional value to your customers; such as, pricing, availability, convenience of delivery, technical support, or quality of service. An offering must fulfill the needs of prospects, and also the objectives of the business.

Do you currently use software that can consume inputs from other sources, locate inputs automatically, prepare the inputs appropriately and spit out an offering package? If so, how well does it tie into the theater of marketing so that it can be tested, and improved during and after lead development cycles seamlessly?

1. Know what features you can offer

2. Know which features deliver tangible benefits to the end user, e.g., improves performance, scalability, minimizes cost, etc.

3. Know which features deliver intangible benefits to the end user, e.g., a memory, peace of mind, a good feeling, etc.

4. Know a pricing structure that will achieve the best results

5. Know the total cost of ownership for the offering, e.g., product dimensions, price dimensions, service dimensions, etc.

6. Know how to fit the offering into your existing portfolio, e.g., augments the breadth, augments the depth, extends the line, etc.

7. Know how to differentiate your offering from a competing offer

8. Know how to position your value proposition for each key role

9. Define a value proposition for the offering, e.g., what message should be communicated, who should be communicated to, etc.

Establish the characteristics of a qualified lead

Question: Given your current solution, approach, or the inputs provided to you, how difficult is it for you to quickly and accurately establish the characteristics of a qualified lead?

In a needs-based segmentation scheme (no, not pain) the characteristics for becoming qualified is basically a map that demonstrates how each prospect’s situation, profile, likelihood to purchase in the current period, and other characteristics intersect with the needs of the business. These are critical elements when a business has to allocate costly resources effectively.

What technology exists that helps you to capture the information you need, prepare it for use, and provide you with a set of criteria that prospects can be tested against quickly and accurately? How well integrated is it with execution cycles, so that it can be modified in real-time as feedback demands?

1. Know what makes a prospect likely to purchase

2. Know when to remove prospects from your list, e.g., take off the contact list, move to another list, etc..

3. Know the budget each prospect must have

4. Know how to measure characteristics of a prospect

5. Know how to compare the value of one characteristic to another

6. Know when a prospect is ready to purchase

7. Know how individual measures aggregate into a prospect score

8. Know how to prevent false positives during your prospect interactions

Define your list of prospects

Question: Given your current solution, approach, or the inputs provided to you, how difficult is it for you to quickly and accurately define your list of prospects?

When dealing with large universes of names (multiple lists/or multiple list segments) it is helpful to break them into smaller, homogeneous cubes (or layers) of like individuals or companies. Once these cubes are identified, the response from each can be separately analyzed for their performance toward your goal.

Having talked to some of the best lead development pros out there, the solutions are often cobbled together and proprietary and only accessible through a service offering. What if these capabilities were tightly integrated into the platform you’re already paying for and worked both quickly and accurately?

1. Know which audience members will make the best prospects, e.g., have the desired characteristics, fit the ideal customer profile, etc.

2. Know when a prospect is interacting with a traditional competitor, e.g., in lead cycle, in buying cycle, etc.

3. Know when a prospect is interacting with a non-traditional competitor

4. Know which competitors a prospect is interacting with, e.g., traditional, non-traditional, etc.

5. Know how to group your list of prospects, e.g., by role, characteristics, etc.

6. Know how to rank your list of prospects, e.g., propensity to purchase, etc.

Define your plan to interact with prospects

Question: Given your current solution, approach, or the inputs provided to you, how difficult is it for you to quickly and accurately define your plan to interact with prospects?

Each offering will have a unique plan which addresses where to reach prospects, how to interact with processes, when to facilitate contacts, what resources should be available to prospects and what information should be captured about prospects. The plan acts as a performance baseline, which is later evaluated and improved when necessary.

If you’re doing these plans in PowerPoint, or not at all, imagine how effective it would be to formulate the plan and execute the plan on the same platform.

1. Know what pathways exist to your prospects, e.g., channels, media, etc.

2. Know which pathways will be most effective with each prospect, e.g., preferred by prospect, accessible to company, etc.

3. Know how to prioritize pathways for prospect interactions, e.g., where to initiate, where to fallback, etc.

4. Know which party should initiate contact, e.g., wait for the prospect, company initiated, etc.

5. Know when to interact with a prospect, e.g., prospect is ready, business is ready, etc.

6. Know how to handle unplanned interactions

7. Know what information needs to be captured directly from each prospect, e.g. meta data, personal information, budget information, etc.

8. Know what additional data is needed to enrich the prospect record, e.g., correct it, expand it, validate it, etc.

9. Know how much control each prospect wants over their personal information, e.g., identifying information, communication preferences, etc.

10. Know which resources should be offered to help with a prospect’s decision, e.g., information, tools and enablers, human assistance, etc.

11. Know how to integrate resources into each touchpoint, e.g., how to gain access to resources, how to transfer resources, how to present resources, etc.

12. Know what to measure during each interaction

13. Know how to capture measurements during each interaction

14. Know how to leverage measurements in future interactions

Gain access to your list of prospects

Question: Given your current solution, approach, or the inputs provided to you, how difficult is it for you to quickly and accurately gain access to your list of prospects?

Prior to launching a plan, it is essential that a brand can reach prospects in the target audience (market segment). Access can be achieved in a variety of ways; both actively and passively. In either case, the target audience members that can be reached, and you intend to reach, are considered to be prospects for the purpose of this study.

The imaginary system that has helped you identify the target audience, then figure out which should be contacted and how to further sub-group them should also be able to go out and find them for you. Does your platform do all of this? Do you outsource this to an agency who only makes it appear as though it’s automated? How much does that cost you?

1. Know what sources are available to get prospect information, e.g., data services, internal databases, referrals, social media, etc.

2. Know which sources can provide prospects that match your desired characteristics, e.g., member of target audience, fits ideal customer profile, etc.

3. Know which sources can provide the number of prospects you need, e.g., monthly total counts, monthly total deal potential, etc.

4. Know how to integrate a source with your internal systems, e.g., marketing databases, customer master database, etc.

5. Know how to integrate a source with external systems, e.g., data enrichment services, agencies, telemarketing services, etc.

6. Get prospects from the source, e.g., short lead time, quick access, the correct characteristics, etc.

7. Know that a prospect you retrieve matches your desired characteristics, e.g., member of market segment, fits ideal customer profile, etc.

8. Get your prospects into an internal business system

9. Get your prospects into an external business system, e.g., partner system, etc.

10. Get your prospects into the correct contact process, e.g., marketing list, etc.

11. Get your prospects assigned to the correct internal roles

12. Get your prospects assigned to the correct communication path

Ensure that you are ready to interact with prospects

Question: Given your current solution, approach, or the inputs provided to you, how difficult is it for you to quickly and accurately ensure you are ready to interact with prospects?

With a plan in hand, the resources that will be used must be set up, trained, scheduled, etc., so they are ready to perform in unison. These resources could be internal and external, tangible and intangible. Either way, if they’re not ready you will not be successful.

Do you currently have a technology that can perform a readiness check on all of the steps I’ve outlined above? If so, how well does it integrate with the theater of marketing (and shoot me an email with more details)?

1. Know which communication pathway to use for the initial interaction

2. Know that your resources are prepared for prospect interaction, e.g., team members, technology, partners, etc.

3. Know that your technology is configured for prospect interaction, e.g., databases, landing pages, analytics, etc.

4. Know that your team is trained and ready for their roles, e.g., telemarketers, data analysis, web developers, etc.

5. Know that the content needed to help prospects make a decision is ready, e.g., draft an email series, design/write landing pages, develop call scripts, etc.

6. Know that each touchpoint is supported by business rules

7. Know that the contact frequency is correct for each prospect, e.g., not over-contacting, not under-contacting, etc.

8. Know that you will not spend more than a contact is worth

9. Know that you can capture prospect information that is needed

10. Know that you will make the correct business decision during an interaction

11. Know that you will offer the best options to the prospect, e.g., pricing, bundling, levels of service, etc.

12. Know that you will leverage a key role’s influence effectively

13. Know that the process will produce a sales accepted lead

Engage with prospects regarding your offering

Question: Given your current solution, approach, or the inputs provided to you, how difficult is it for you to quickly and accurately engage with your prospects regarding your offering?

Whether interactions are actively, or passively generated, each touch point is designed to facilitate the capture of information about prospects, and to provide tools, information, or human contact needed by the prospect as they evaluate and/or make a decision about your offering.

I know there are emerging analysis and orchestration platforms that are a level above the rest. But, they only get part of the job done. Imagine a world where this new form of execution is tightly integrated with all of the planning that is required, e.g., no consultants required, etc.

1. Make contact with a prospect, e.g., initial contact, respond to contact, etc.

2. Know the information you captured from prior interactions, e.g., access to a system of record, transaction history, preferences set, etc.

3. Use the information from your prior interactions

4. Coordinate resources across channels, e.g., messages, tools, etc.

5. Coordinate resources across touchpoints, e.g., messages, tools, etc.

6. Monitor the prospect across channels

7. Monitor the prospect across touchpoints

8. Analyze the prospect across channels

9. Analyze the prospect across touchpoints

10. Offer resources to help your prospect make decisions, e.g., information, tools, human assistance, etc.

11. Capture information from your prospect interactions

12. Store information from your prospect interaction

13. Share information from your prospect with partners

Validate a prospect’s level of interest

Question: Given your current solution, approach, or the inputs provided to you, how difficult is it for you to quickly and accurately validate a prospect’s level of interest?

Marketing is a nurturing process since current marketing activities rarely result in current period revenue. Therefore, we need to capture the information needed to understand what stage they have reached in their decision journey.

Are you able to capture the information you defined in earlier steps? How difficult is it to take that information and configure your execution system? Why aren’t these steps integrated into a single platform? Does your current process get it right 80% of the time, 50%, 10%?

1. Know that your prospect has a problem you can solve

2. Know the severity of your prospect’s problem

3. Know that a prospect understands the value of your offer

4. Know how your prospect aligns to the characteristics of a qualified lead

5. Know how much time it will take to change the level of interest, e.g., how many more cycles, etc.

6. Know that your prospect is ready to purchase

7. Know that your prospect has the budget, e.g., the amount, the period it can be used, etc.

8. Know your prospect’s decision-making timeline, e.g., ready for a sales call, identified future period interest, etc.

9. Know your prospect’s decision-making authority, e.g., what is their cap, their scope, etc.

Increase a prospect’s level of interest

Question: Given your current solution, approach, or the inputs provided to you, how difficult is it for you to quickly and accurately increase a prospect’s level of interest?

Learn from previous interactions to determine what messages, information, or tools a prospect needs to make a decision so they are available during the current, or subsequent, interaction. Also, what additional information should you, can you, and should you capture about the prospect? How can you better manage such data and information as a strategic asset?

1. Know what resources to offer during the next interaction, e.g., information, tools, etc.

2. Know what information needs to be captured during the next interaction

3. Know which party should initiate the next interaction

4. Know what type of interaction should take place next, e.g., message, action, offer, etc.

5. Know where the next interaction should take place, e.g., which channel, which touch point, etc.

Filter out disinterested prospects

Question: Given your current solution, approach, or the inputs provided to you, how difficult is it for you to quickly and accurately filter out disinterested prospects?

It’s wasteful, and often damages your brand, to engage with prospects that will not purchase in the foreseeable future. It might be better to disengage from the current effort, and determine if they should be contacted at a future date or for a different offering. Their record might be updated to leverage what has been learned so it can be used in future efforts, or current efforts underway related to a different offering. This implies persistence of information across time and systems.

1. Know when your prospect is more likely to purchase a different offering

2. Know when to pause interactions for the current offering

3. Know when to restart interactions for the current offering, e.g., more interest in a future period, in a different cycle, etc.

4. Know when a prospect has purchased from a competitor

5. Know what competing offer was purchased

6. Know when information you shared was leveraged by a competitor

7. Filter out your prospect that is not interested in your offering

Conclude your marketing interactions

Question: Given your current solution, approach, or the inputs provided to you, how difficult is it for you to quickly and accurately conclude your marketing interactions?

To deal with accountability, and reliability, it is important that the subsequent hand-off of the qualified lead is tightly integrated. In this case, the hand-off is to an internal customer, or beneficiary. I’ve called this the Closer. 

Solutions today look backward at the activity that takes place. But do they tell you whether the objectives were met? Do they anticipate where prospects will enter the process, drop out, or re-enter? Does the prospect struggle to find information they were presented with in prior interactions?

1. Know what combinations of interactions were most effective, e.g. discrete interactions, combined interactions, resources exchanged, etc.

2. Know what external factors contributed to a successful process, e.g., product lifecycle, audience member life stage, etc.

3. Know when to hand-off the qualified lead

4. Know who to hand-off the qualified lead to

5. Know how to hand-off the qualified lead

6. Know when a qualified lead converts to revenue

7. Know when a qualified lead drops out of the sales funnel

8. Know why a qualified lead drops out of the sales funnel

9. Know when your qualified leads are rejected by the sale organization

10. Know why your leads are rejected by the sales organization

11. Know when the sales organization sources leads independently

12. Know why the sales organization sources leads independently

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A Value Model for the Market of Marketing © 2021 by Michael A. Boysen is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0 

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In Closing

Keep in mind that this is designed to study only part of what the MarTech stack is currently failing to deliver. If I seem harsh, I’ve already demonstrated in prior posts that there is a huge delivery deficit on the front-end of this model (check my posts from 2020). I would also argue that much of the execution capability is lacking; although new entrants in the market have begun to address this. How could companies like Thunderhead be creating new value if we have been doing such a great job?

We have much still to do within each step, we have numerous steps that are not addressed at all, and there is simply a lot of room to systemize this process much, much more completely. That will require some standardization which is antithetical to the desires of most brands. Oh well. It’s going to happen anyway, so why not be the trailblazer that makes it happen sooner? I’ve given you a path to study.

But, it’s not a complete path because there is a cornucopia of other, related jobs that must be done better, faster and more accurately that expand the catalog beyond this single job. And all of them will ultimately need to be tightly integrated, just like the steps within this job.

Innovation opportunities abound. It’s time for you to know instead of continually guessing.

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I stand on the shoulders of giants. While they may not all appreciate how I adapt their thinking, their inputs and hard work over the years have helped me to think more critically about not only innovation, but the profession I spent decades in (not sure what it’s called…CRM/Digital Transformation/CX?). Nothing stays the same. All industries drive to zero. No models are perfect, but some are useful. We need to face those facts and keep on learning.

• Tony Ulwick - inventor of Outcome-Driven Innovation upon which I pursue problem solving at scale. Tony has taught me a lot!

• Dr. Graham Hill - the ultimate consultant, scientist and proponent of integrating Jobs Theory into the broader system of problem-solving. I can’t describe how influential he has been in my thinking - even though we are half a world apart

• Eric Eskey - inspires me to experiment to find new ways to answer critical business questions and not be afraid of change

• Paul Greenberg - a connector of people. God Father of CRM. Without him, I would never have met the others. He has been a friend for almost 15 years now. We can just pick up a conversation from a year ago. Thanks for being there when I need to talk

• Jon Ferrara - it’s great when you can get someone so successful in the CRM space to listen to your ramblings about the future of CRM. Another friend who I can just pick up where I left off. He may not agree with me on this model, I’m not sure. 😅 But, I do like the way he thinks about leads vs. sales! I got him into BBQ.

• Dan McDade - I don’t know Dan well, but he is/was a fellow Atlantean and I’ve studied his system for lead development. Much of what I learned is incorporated into my thinking here.

  …wait, one more…

• Joe Hughes - He was a huge supporter as I experienced the chaos of Big 4 consulting later in my career. He allowed me to bring my ideas to the table when others weren’t so sure. It was sometimes painful, but it was a critical step forward