Case Study: Dan and Clarity

What “new me” are customers hoping to become?

Clarity’s website (clarity.fm) in 2015

I didn’t know who Dan Martell was when I started writing this book. Another Customer Jobs practitioner told me about Dan’s success as a serial entrepreneur, angel investor, and Customer Jobs practitioner. When I did catch up with him, I learned that he had applied Customer Jobs principles while building a company called Clarity. Customer Jobs thinking helped him:

1. Improve his research efforts
2. Understand the company’s profit potential
3. Understand how Clarity could stand out to customers
4. Find marketing messages that resonate with customers
5. Know which features his team should — and shouldn’t — add to his product so that more customers would use it.

Founded in 2012, Clarity is a marketplace that connects entrepreneurs with experts who can advise, motivate, and inspire. Dan created Clarity to ensure that entrepreneurs get the advice they need to grow their businesses. It helps them find the right experts and then schedules and hosts calls with them. (Three years later, Dan sold it to Fundable, which is a platform entrepreneurs can use to raise money.)

Dan first heard about Customer Jobs from Eoghan McCabe during Clarity’s early years. Eoghan is CEO of Intercom, one of the companies Dan invests in. Dan, intrigued by Eoghan’s recommendation, believed Customer Jobs could help him grow Clarity faster:

Once I decided I wanted to learn more about Customer Jobs, the first thing I did was to search Clarity’s marketplace. I found some [Customer Jobs] experts and did a few calls. It was really helpful to get real-world experience and advice on how to approach it.

How can Customer Jobs help you do better research? Dan had already been a strong proponent of customer interviews, even before getting into Customer Jobs. Every week, he would call six customers or so and ask questions such as, “How would you feel if you could no longer use this?” or, “How can we improve Clarity?” But Dan knows that such interviews have limitations. In particular, he understands the difficulties inherent in talking with customers about their habits and that people often want to feel as if they are giving the “correct” answers. “I feel like customers have this really bad habit of lying sometimes,” he said. “They’ll say, ‘Yeah. I love your product. I use it all the time.’ Then, you look at the logs, and you realize they haven’t logged in once since signing up — so you know it’s not true.”

Calls with JTBD practitioners helped Dan realize the benefits of framing an interview around what Jobs customers are trying to get done. He did this by changing his questions. Instead of “How would you feel if you could no longer use this?” he asked customers, “Can you tell me about the other solutions you’ve tried? What did or didn’t you like about each one?” In other words, he shifted from asking broad, individual questions to asking questions aimed at understanding customers’ journeys as they searched to find solutions that fit their JTBD. He would then investigate if other customers had similar journeys. Dan said,

What I love about JTBD is that it really helped me to build a framework for those interviews. Before I became familiar with JTBD, I studied interview questions, extracted pain points, customer language, and all these other things. But when you frame it around the question, ‘What is the Job your customer is hiring you to do?,’ then it really puts a lot of things into perspective and helps you uncover key insights.

What do consumers consider as competition? How do you understand what customers do and don’t value in a solution? Dan’s new approach to interviewing customers encouraged him to learn about other ways they had tried to get advice. He also wanted to learn if getting expert advice was really what customers were looking for. “Getting expert advice” is just an activity — a solution for a Job. What was the Job itself? What was the emotional motivation to make the customers’ lives better? Answering these questions would help him continue to improve and promote Clarity.

To help guide him through these interviews, Dan kept asking himself a few simple but powerful questions:

1. What do customers see as competition to Clarity?
2. What would they spend their money on if they didn’t spend it on Clarity?
3. Have customers set aside a budget for using Clarity or some other solution?

He then asked customers questions such as the following:

1. What other solutions did you try before deciding on Clarity?
2. What did and didn’t you like about other solutions you had tried?
3. If you could no longer use Clarity, what would you use instead?

These questions helped Dan learn what his customers considered as competition to Clarity. He learned that before ending up with Clarity, customers had tried solutions such as joining entrepreneur groups, hiring individual advisers (who take equity), using LinkedIn, and attending conferences. “Understanding how people thought about our product and its competition helped us position it to be different,” Dan said. “A lot of people had tried LinkedIn before coming to Clarity. Whereas LinkedIn connects people, it doesn’t let them call in real time. It was also interesting to hear that customers considered Clarity as an alternative to attending a conference.”

How do you learn what pushes customers to make a change? Dan began to learn two important observations as he talked with customers about the solutions they had used: what his customers did and didn’t value in a solution, and what was pushing them to make a change. He found these data by comparing and contrasting all the solutions they had used and asking himself, “What do these solutions have (or what do they not have) in common?” Dan realized that the solutions “use LinkedIn,” “hire an adviser,” and “attend a conference” had an important aspect in common: entrepreneurs were trying to make a connection with a specific person.

Dan and his team saw that entrepreneurs seeking advice valued the messenger, often more than the message. When it comes to getting advice, it’s not just about the content. It has a lot to do with who’s delivering it. Dan said,

There’s real value in going after that person who is going to motivate you to make a change. It’s not just having someone tell you, ‘Go get ten sales tomorrow.’ It is having billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban tell you, ‘Go get ten sales tomorrow.’

Dan now knew what was pushing customers to seek a solution: entrepreneurs who were in a slump wanted inspiration from a particular person. Getting advice is just an activity. If the seekers merely wanted advice, they could have read a book or watched a video. They wanted more. They were hoping that someone else’s success would rub off on them. This is why they wanted someone they respected to inspire and motivate them to get out of an entrepreneurial slump. That was their emotional motivation to make a change. Making progress with this Job is more valuable to these customers than getting advice. Dan said,

I’ve got a list of competitors that tried to build competing solutions. Their marketing and positioning was all about, ‘Oh, if you want to talk to this type of person, we have them.’ But it was never about a person having the knowledge. It was what [you knew] the person you talked with had accomplished.

How can understanding the customer’s moment of struggle help you market a solution? These insights helped Dan and his team make two changes to how they advertised Clarity. Each change would differentiate their solution from what customers considered its competition and help customers realize that Clarity was better. The first change was to emphasize that Clarity would serve its customers on demand. As Dan put it:

We started saying Clarity gave “on-demand business advice.” It was adding the words on demand that differentiated us from LinkedIn — which is an e-mail exchange from which you may or may not get a response. It also differentiated us from attending a conference — you didn’t have to wait until the next one came up. We mentioned all that in the copywriting.

The second change was to highlight the fact that using Clarity was cheaper than attending a conference. Dan said, “Understanding what customers considered as competition also helped us position Clarity against the cost of going to a conference. Why invest thousands of dollars in expenses and the cost of a ticket if you can just talk to the speaker today?”

How did the product attract more users and customers? Clarity is a marketplace for connecting buyers (entrepreneurs looking for advice) with sellers (those offering advice). This means that Clarity needed to attract two different groups of people — each with its own motivation for using Clarity.

The motivation for advisers is simple: they want to make money by helping people. The entrepreneurs who use Clarity, however, are different. They want to be motivated and inspired, usually by a particular person. This meant that for its marketplace function to work, Clarity had to find experts whom customers recognized and respected. Dan said,

Understanding what customers were trying to achieve with LinkedIn and conferences helped us with the supply side of the marketplace. We said to ourselves, “OK, if we recruit experts, we need to recruit a certain type of expert.” One of the creative solutions that we came up with was to source experts from SlideShare (a website where conference speakers share their presentations with the public). If you think about it, people who are regarded as inspiring and motivational are those who give creative presentations at conferences. When we wanted to add topics or categories for Clarity, we would source experts who had presentations on SlideShare.

How did Clarity realize its revenue potential? It was Dan’s understanding of what customers considered as Clarity’s competition that also helped him realize Clarity’s revenue potential:

We learned from customers that their budget for Clarity wasn’t coming from the IPO, or from a monthly membership, or from a training budget. It was coming from spending money to go to an event to meet people and to learn.

Dan realized that Clarity wasn’t taking money away only from lower-cost alternatives, such as LinkedIn, or from the price of a conference ticket. He learned that Clarity was tapping into the budgets for big-ticket items, such as hiring advisers and consultants, as well as entire budgets for attending conferences, which include airfare, hotels, and meals. This explained why his customers were willing to spend thousands of dollars on calls. This insight helped him understand how valuable his product was to customers. It also helped him understand Clarity’s true value in case it was acquired, which it eventually was.

Clarity discovered a silent competitor: anxiety. Nobody comes to Clarity when he or she is having a great day. Dan and his team learned that entrepreneurs were hoping they could get inspired by someone they respected. Without this inspiration, these entrepreneurs would struggle to put into action any advice they were given. This generated demand for the product. But were there any forces that blocked this demand? Dan said, “The biggest competition for us is when a customer chooses to do nothing. I think that’s true for a lot of innovations. In Clarity’s case, entrepreneurs and innovators continue struggling in the dark. They wouldn’t choose to become a self-educator and solve their problem.”

Dan began to learn about the anxiety that blocks people from using the product or keeps them from using it more, even when they do decide to reach out to an expert on Clarity:

One of the questions that I would ask, which was about Clarity as a solution and not their JTBD, was, “What can we change to better meet your needs?” We found a bunch of anxieties around using Clarity. A majority of them were, “What if the expert doesn’t answer my question? What’s your guarantee? Is the call going to be recorded? What should I do to prep?” That last was one that really threw me off. Both the seekers and experts themselves felt we should teach them how to prepare for a good call.

Dan and his team had taken it for granted that people would be prepared for a call. He assumed that both parties would set up the topic and then have a conversation. This was partly true. Customers had specific questions, but they didn’t know how to organize them or what made a question good or bad. Both sides wanted to prep, but they didn’t know how.

Another anxiety that both parties shared was the fear of sounding stupid or not putting their best foot forward. What if an expert doesn’t have a good answer for a question? What if he or she temporarily forgets the best answer? What if I get nervous and forget my follow-up questions? These anxieties prevented both groups — entrepreneurs and experts — from using Clarity more.

How can you reduce the anxiety customers face when using or buying your product? To fix the problem, Dan and his team added some prep questions and guidelines to the e-mail templates they sent out to notify both parties of a call. They also provided notes that outlined what a great call looks like and what expectations the parties should have going into the call. Dan said,

Discovering anxieties like those — that is the interesting part. What I love is thinking, ‘Here is the problem, and here is the anxiety point. How do we solve it in a way that’s elegant, simple, and doesn’t confuse the interface?’ That was always the fun part for me.

How can JTBD be used to research new features? As Dan became more familiar with JTBD, he began to develop his own tools and processes that would help him apply JTBD principles to improve Clarity. One such process was aimed at helping his team quickly validate ideas for new features.

Before committing to developing a feature, the Clarity team wanted to make sure the problem they intended to solve was actually one that customers had. The best way to learn this was to find out if customers had tried to solve the problem before. Dan said, “An interview about how customers had tried to solve a problem in the past was more like a feature-usage time line than a purchase decision.”

An example of a feature the Clarity team chose not to build was one that saved search results when users looked for experts on Clarity’s marketplace.

We asked customers questions like, “Have you ever tried to save results when you searched for an expert?” If they said no, then we’d move on. We then asked, “Do you have a browser bookmarklet? Which ones?” Then, they would say, “Evernote, Buffer…” It would provide so much context outside of the feature. It was more about how the customer had tried to solve their problems in the past.

So, Dan’s team decided not to build the browser bookmarklet. They didn’t think it delivered enough value because the problem it solved wasn’t one their customers had struggled with. Dan said,

A lot of people — especially if they’re committed or already invested in a solution — are looking for that confirmation bias that it’s something they should do. It’s a different question to ask customers how they solved the problem in the past. I could ask them, “Hey, what do you think of this?” They might say, “Oh, it’s prettier. It works great.” But that’s not really answering the question we’re asking. We want to know, “Are you going to use it? Are you struggling to make progress? Have you tried to solve this in the past? Do you want to hire someone or something to solve this Job to Be Done?” If the answer is no, then cool. We write that down and move on.

How does JTBD help innovators? Dan appreciates the focus JTBD puts on exploring customer motivation. He also wishes more companies would do that rather than “spy” on customers.

I think the biggest thing that Jobs [JTBD] encourages people to do, which I’m a big fan of, is to stop spying on customers and start talking with customers. I feel that way especially with software because we have the analytics and the geeks who are building the software; they’re all about tracking and logging and all these data…I always give the analogy of being a retail shop owner and hiding in the back room and trying to learn from your customers by watching the closed-circuit television.

You could watch [customers] come in, walk around your store, pick up things, put them down, try things on…or you could just walk out and ask them, “Hey, what brought you in here today? What are you looking for? What other places did you try in the past?” Talking to customers about their motivations is where you’re going to learn the most.

What’s the JTBD?

From the data Dan has given us, I’d say that the struggle for progress is:

More about: getting out of a rut, making a connection with someone whose accomplishments I respect, being inspired, being motivated to act, feeling like I’m on the right path, having confidence in what I’m doing, having success rub off onto me, on demand

Less about: getting expert advice, talking with an expert, giving away equity, having a video chat with a mentor, emailing a mentor, mentoring, meeting other entrepreneurs, seeing a mentor live

Here are some possible descriptions of the one or more Jobs to be Done Clarity is hired for:

Help me get out of an innovation slump with inspirational advice from someone whom I respect.

Give me the motivation to act with a kick in the butt from someone I respect.

Take away the anxiety of making a big decision with assurance from someone else whose has been in a similar position.

These work for me because they don’t describe an activity or task. They describe the motivation that comes before engaging in an activity (i.e. using a solution). Also, notice how these descriptions can be used to describe the other solutions customers had tried in the past (e.g. attending a conference, giving away advisory shares, and using LinkedIn). This is important because a JTBD either doesn’t change, or does so slowly. If a description of a JTBD works for solutions from one hundred years ago, it’ll probably work for solutions one hundred years into the future.

Put it to work

Dan’s case study is a great introduction to Customer Jobs. Here are some suggestions to help you get started today with applying Customer Jobs thinking.

Ask customers about what they’ve done, not just what they want. Confirm it if you can. Customers will often tell us what we want to hear, even if it’s partially (or completely) untrue. Customers may tell you that they use your product “all the time,” but they really use it only intermittently. Also, people build easy-to-remember narratives between themselves and the products they use. Phenomena like this are why it’s tricky to ask customers, “What do you want?” and “How can we make things better?”22

The answer for these problems is to talk with customers about what they actually did, not just about what they say they want. What were their revealed preferences, not just their stated preferences? Even the answers about actual action taken won’t be 100 percent accurate, but they will be a great deal more reliable than their answers to what-if questions.

Understanding how customers have solved problems is a crucial part of understanding their JTBD. Not only does it help you understand what customers expect from a product, but it also helps you design features for new products.

Ask the right questions to learn how your customers view competition. Accurate models of competition can come from only customers. Any model of competition that doesn’t come from them is invalid. One way of getting the information you need to build a correct model of competition is through customer interviews and surveys. Ask them questions such as the following:

1. What other solutions did you consider before trying the product?
2. What other solutions have you actually used?
3. If the product wasn’t available to you, what would you have done instead?
4. What solutions have the people you know tried or used?

Learn what kind of progress customers are seeking. What’s their emotional motivation (JTBD)? Use that to segment competition. Dan learned that Clarity’s customers saw its competition as attending conferences, using LinkedIn, and hiring advisers. These solutions have vastly different functionality and qualities. However, from the customers’ point of view, they appeal to the same aspiration: “Get me out of an entrepreneurial slump with motivational advice from someone whom I respect.” Discover your customers’ motivation through comparing and contrasting the solutions that they consider as competition:

1. What do the various solutions have in common? What is different about them?
2. What did or didn’t the customers like about each solution?
3. What would customers do if they couldn’t use their existing solution for their JTBD?
4. What would the consequences be?
5. How are they expecting life to be better once they have the right solution for a JTBD?

These types of questions help you understand two things: what customers are struggling with now, and how they hope life will be better when they have the right solution. Put these two together, and you’ll have their JTBD.

Ask yourself, “From which budget will my product take away money?” Also ask, “When customers start using my product, what will they stop using?” Dan learned that his customers were willing to spend thousands of dollars on Clarity calls. This number didn’t come from looking at how much other “talk to an expert” products cost. He learned this by understanding that his product — from the customers’ point of view — was replacing the entire budget of going to a conference.

I’ve noted that when it comes to solutions for a JTBD, customers can use only one at a time. When they start using one solution, they have to stop using something else. This helps you understand what the competition is. It also helps you gauge how to price your product properly and figure your revenue potential. Should you charge less or more? You have two big factors to consider: the amount customers are already accustomed to spending on a solution for a JTBD, and the intensity of their desire to change. The more they hope to change, the more they are willing to pay.

Create better marketing material by speaking to your customers’ JTBD. Dan Martell described Clarity as “on-demand business advice.” He also featured access to experts whom customers would recognize. He also positioned Clarity as an alternative to going to a conference: Why spend the time and money going to a conference? Talk with the speaker today! Both of these messages spoke to customers’ motivations and distinguished Clarity as unique.

Talk with customers to learn what messages connect with them. It can be as simple as asking them to describe why they like your product. Sometimes, you have to probe deeper and ask them questions such as, “Before you bought our product, how did you know it was right for you?” The best promotional material, however, comes from speaking directly to their desire for progress.

Focus on delivering emotional progress (getting a Job Done). Don’t focus solely on functionality. Dan mentioned a list of people who had tried to create solutions similar to Clarity. They failed, and Clarity won because Dan designed and marketed it in a way that spoke to customers’ emotional motivation. The Clarity clones thought of themselves as “talk to an expert” products; they were focusing on functionality, activities, and tasks. But Dan focused on the emotional quality — that is, customers’ JTBD. He knew that customers wanted to be motivated and inspired by someone whom they respect. This made Clarity stand out, and it’s why Fundable acquired it. Clarity’s former competitors, however, have already been forgotten.

Your guiding star in understanding your customers’ JTBD is their motivation to better their lives. Focus on that. Focusing on functionality will distract you.

Learn more

This story is an excerpt from the book When Coffee and Kale Compete. You can download it as a free PDF, or buy it in paperback & kindle right here.

When Coffee and Kale Compete

If you have more questions about Jobs to be Done, or want help applying JTBD concepts to your business or startup, contact me.