November 14, 2023 • 59 mins
About This Episode
Join us as scaling consultant, Zac Stucki, unveils his secrets to using Jobs to Be Done Theory in your marketing program. Zac is passionate about the jobs-to-be-done theory and how it can improve marketing effectiveness. He is an operations consultant with over 7-years of experience. He has a master's degree in business administration from a top-tier university and has worked with businesses throughout the United States. His work has helped to scale companies from 7 to 8 figures by understanding their customer’s jobs to be done, finding and fixing their operational limitations, and reducing project timelines.
This episode is perfect for you if you’re curious about the following:
- How to utilize the jobs to be done theory to improve the messaging to your current and potential customers.
- How to standardize processes to make marketing more efficient and effective, cut waste, reduce project timelines, and reduce customer churn.
- How to conduct compelling customer interviews and build effective customer journeys that will positively impact your marketing efforts.
Tune in for an insightful conversation with Zac Stucki!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Katherine Ong (00:00):
Welcome to the Digital Marketing Victories
podcast, a monthly show where wecelebrate and learn from the
change makers in digitalmarketing.
Great digital marketersunderstand that people are the
most challenging part of doingtheir jobs, and this show
focuses on the people part ofdigital marketing wins what
tactics or skills the guests useto align people with their
marketing strategy.
(00:21):
I'm your host, Katherine WatierOng, the owner of WO Strategies
LLC.
We focus on increasing organicdiscovery for enterprise-sized,
science-focused clients.
Thank you for joining me.
Let's get into it and celebrateour victories.
Today we're joined by Zach.
Zach is an operationsconsultant with over seven years
(00:41):
of experience.
He has a master's degree inbusiness administration from a
top-tier university and he'sworked with businesses
throughout the US.
His work has helped scalecompanies from seven to eight
figures by finding and fixingtheir operational limitations,
reducing project timelines andimproving quality.
Now this show is going to beperfect for you if you're
curious about how to utilize thejobs to be done theory to
(01:04):
improve the messaging to yourcurrent and potential customers,
how to standardize processes tomake management more efficient
and effective, improvingtraining, cutting waste,
reducing project timelines,improving quality, and then how
you can conduct compellingcustomer interviews and build
effective customer journeys.
Zach, welcome to the show.
Zac Stucki (01:25):
Thanks so much for having me, Katherine.
It's a pleasure to be here.
Katherine Ong (01:28):
It's great to have you on, so can you tell me
a little bit more, or tell theguests a little bit more, about
yourself, your background andhow you got into this work that
you're doing now?
That's ancillary to digitalmarketing.
Zac Stucki (01:42):
Yeah.
So I got hired on by aseven-figure business that was
stalled out.
They were just having a lot ofproblems with customer turnover,
employee turnover, cash flow,profitability, you name it and
so they hired me to come on andwe wanted to figure out what was
(02:06):
really stalling this businessout.
So what we did was we startedjust researching everywhere that
we could and we came acrossthis jobs theory and we said
that's it, that's our ticket.
So jobs theory, pretty simply,is just your customer doesn't
hire your product or service or,excuse me, your customer
(02:27):
doesn't buy your product orservice.
They hire it to help them makeprogress in their life.
So we set out very quickly tofigure out what is the progress
our customer is hiring us tomake.
And we actually discovered thatwe had a customer and a user
and they both had very differentjobs.
So we designed the operationsaround the user and the
marketing around the customerand we started hitting 40%
(02:50):
year-over-year growth rates forlike three years.
It was nuts.
Katherine Ong (02:55):
Wow, it was nuts.
Zac Stucki (02:57):
And so I said, huh, there's something to this jobs
theory thing, and so I starteddoing a deep dive and I've just
kind of dedicated my life to itever since.
Katherine Ong (03:09):
So, based on your experience, thanks for the
excellent jobs to be done there,so I wanted to make sure we
were covering that on the show.
But how can organizationsidentify those jobs that their
customers are trying to get done, either their target audience
or their users?
How do you get into that?
Zac Stucki (03:27):
So there's a process that they've got to go through.
The first step is getting clearon who they want to talk to.
So you know, when I coach myclients, what I do is I start
out by doing a clientprofitability analysis where we
determine who are your mostprofitable clients, because I
don't want you wasting your timetalking to clients that you
(03:48):
can't serve profitably.
So once you know who that is,then you have to get very clear
on the fact that we're gettingout of the office.
We don't know why our customeris hiring us.
We have some good guesses, somehypotheses that we probably
should test, but we don'tactually know.
So you got to get out of theoffice.
(04:09):
Once you get out of the office,you got to actually talk to
these people, and theseconversations can't be
prescripted, because yourcustomer can sense that from a
mile away and they will shutdown.
You have to have theseopen-ended conversations where
you're saying you know, one dayyou had you have this problem
(04:30):
and one day you had a reallydifficult time solving this
problem and you decided thatsomething had to change.
So tell me about that day.
This isn't the day that youdecided to hire me.
That comes later.
I just want to know when wasthe pain from this problem so
severe that you decided that youneeded to change?
And you just start having aconversation there.
(04:51):
Or the other alternative thatsome jobs theory practitioners
talk about is working backwardin the timeline.
So you say you know you hiredus, but before that what
happened, and before that whathappened, and you just kind of
work back on this timeline untilyou can get to a place where
it's causal.
Generally you can go about five, five Y's deep to identify
(05:18):
causal relationships there.
Katherine Ong (05:21):
Would it be okay during that process to ask if
they went to Google search toresearch what keywords they used
to kind of get?
Double value out of thiscustomer interview.
Zac Stucki (05:32):
Yeah, absolutely, you should, Absolutely.
So here's the thing.
This is the value of jobs theoryIs jobs theory is all about
getting into the mind of yourcustomer to understand what
actually caused the purpose thepurchase decision Pardon me the
purchase decision.
So the whole point here is thatyou're asking you know what did
(05:52):
you search for as you weretrying to solve this problem?
You know what I regularly ask,so you know, before you were
working with me, before you wereworking with my competition
because I'll talk with peoplewho hired my competition instead
you know, before you wereworking with my competition,
what are some alternatives thatyou were weighing, what were
some other things that you hiredto try and solve this problem
(06:14):
that just didn't get the jobdone and why.
And you can start to understandwhat were they weighing, what
were the tradeoffs, what werethe alternatives that they were
looking at, and you can buildthis picture of a decision that
they were trying to make and ithelps you design your strategy
and your operations around thatso that you can solve that
(06:34):
problem better than anyone elseon the market and do it more
profitably.
Katherine Ong (06:39):
Does this work better for particular industries
, or B2B over B2C, or can youkind of use the stereo across
the board?
Zac Stucki (06:48):
So you know, I think that a lot of people get very
anxious when you say this is auniversal theory, but this is
one that actually is a universaltheory because it's kind of
rooted in biology as well as,like sociology and a million
different things.
But you know, at the end of thebook that introduces Jobs
Theory, the author, claytonChristiansen, he says you can
(07:10):
apply Jobs Theory to religion,you can apply it to politics.
He asks one of the mostbrilliant questions I think
anyone has asked as it regardspolitics.
He says are we hiring ourleaders to lead us or to give
voice to our fears?
You know, so you can apply thispolitically, religiously, b2b,
(07:34):
b2c, sas, medical, it doesn'tmatter, because everybody our
lives, fundamentally, are madeup of.
We have these problems thatwe're trying to solve.
We have this progress thatwe're trying to make and it
doesn't matter if it's with mycomputer screen, with my lunch
at home, parenting my kids,being a good leader to my team.
(07:58):
There are jobs there that needto get solved and any business
can apply this framework andsolve it.
Now I've found specificallypersonally in my own experience
that there are certain types ofbusinesses that have more need
of this because it doesn'tintuitively fit, and that
(08:21):
generally is marketing agencieslike Basically marketing,
accounting law services,financial services, all of these
sort of businesses that arelike oriented around an expert,
Because the expert they say,well, they're just buying me.
Well, they're not actuallybuying you, they're buying
(08:43):
something that you do for them,and so the expert will build a
business that relies on them andit's unscalable.
Katherine Ong (08:51):
Interesting.
So, based on your experienceseeing organizations sort of
working through this process,are there common mistakes that
they have when they startimplementing or aligning with
this jobs to be done?
Theory process.
Zac Stucki (09:05):
Absolutely, absolutely.
You know.
The first one is targeting thewrong customer.
You know, if you target thewrong customer and you target an
unprofitable client and youstart understanding the job that
they're hiring you to do beforeyou are profitable or you know
(09:25):
before you're ready, generallywhat you'll do is you'll
reorient your business around anunprofitable service and you'll
build an unprofitable businessright from the beginning.
So that's, that's one majorproblem I see.
Another major problem that I seeis hubris, I guess, where it's
like these business owners theythink, they think that they know
(09:47):
the job that the customer ishiring them to do, or these CEOs
or these managers, but theydon't.
They don't.
They're not God's gift tobusiness, they don't know
everything.
So you know, humble yourself,get out of the office, start
talking to your customers,because you're going to get
humbled real quick and soinnovating in a vacuum is very
expensive, and then you know.
(10:10):
A third problem that I reallycommonly see is basically
siloing that knowledge.
So it's like you do thatresearch, you are a marketing
agency, a digital marketingagency, you do this research.
Then it just is siloed in theor the part of the organization
that did the research.
(10:31):
It's not trained throughout theorganization, it's not spread
around so it can't lifteverybody in the organization.
It causes a lot of problems ifyou do it that way, because then
you have this fighting thatgoes on, because operations
thinks you need to do it thisway because of the rules of
(10:52):
operations and finance says yougot to do it this way because of
the rules of finance.
And you have to take a look atit from a holistic perspective
and make sure that everyone inthe company is on board,
understands the job yourcustomer is hiring you to do and
is speaking that language.
Katherine Ong (11:11):
Does that mean when you implement jobs to be
done theory, you actually pivotthe process of multiple
departments across the board?
So it's not just marketing andsales, but you might actually be
working on operations andpivoting what they're doing,
based on what you've learnedabout the job that needs to be
done?
Zac Stucki (11:26):
Absolutely, absolutely.
I'll give you an example.
So there is an Irish SAScompany that does customer
service like chat support stuff,intercom I don't know if you've
heard of them, they're.
They're.
They're like 10 and a halfbillion market cap, maybe more.
Now they started implementingjobs theory when they were about
5 million market cap and whatthey did is they started doing
(11:51):
their research and they had ahigh amount of churn, customer
churn, and it was just, it wasgoing to sink the company.
So they say we're going to usejobs three, we're going to
figure this out.
Once they understood thecustomer had four jobs, they
were going to orient aroundthose four jobs.
Once they understood what thosefour jobs were, then they
started changing theironboarding processes.
(12:13):
They started changing theirmessaging, so their marketing.
They started changing theirtraining and they started
changing the actual product sothat they had four products that
aligned with these jobs.
They had, you know, a trainingthat said, if this is the job
that you're hiring us to do, ifthis is the result you want to
(12:34):
get, then follow this course.
That is the other course, basedoff of the results that you
want.
So it really impacts your wholebusiness for the better, for
the better.
You know, just very briefly, alot of people like to silo their
organization and they say, well, marketing has nothing to do
(12:54):
with operations.
And I get a lot of marketerswho hate it when I say this, but
I'm going to say it anyway.
Marketing is fundamentally howyou communicate your unique
value proposition to yourcustomer, how you're helping
them make progress.
If you say one thing well, okay, let me add this so operations
is how you deliver that uniquevalue proposition.
(13:15):
So if you say one thing and youdeliver another thing, then
what are you doing?
You're communicating that allof that marketing was a lie.
You're communicating somethingin your operations.
So there's overlap in yourorganization and you have to
make sure that it's a holisticapplication of jobs theory, not
(13:35):
siloed.
Katherine Ong (13:38):
That makes a ton of sense.
So, talking about implementingsome of this and coming back to
marketing, how haveorganizations use the jobs to be
done, research that you'vegotten to change their marketing
efforts and now if there areany best practices around taking
that data integrating into whatyou're doing in marketing.
Zac Stucki (13:54):
Oh yeah, absolutely so.
Intercom is a great example ofthis.
Once they understood the jobthat the customers were hiring
them to do, they changed theirmarketing messaging and within
10 years, they hit unicornstatus, which is it's nuts.
That's a meteoric rise.
Katherine Ong (14:13):
So sounds like to me you've got this data about
messaging.
I heard that, but it also seemslike what you would do is ditch
your personas, update them,start using customer segments
and then does any of thisinformation it sounds like it
would give you information aboutyour customer journey, so you
might be a creating one orupdating that as well for the
(14:35):
marketing end.
Zac Stucki (14:36):
It's absolutely updating the marketing journey,
the customer journey, absolutelyjobs theory.
We look at the customer journeythrough six segments.
The first one is the firstthought.
So Clayton Christiansen saysthat a question is an answer, is
a hole in the brain for ananswer to slot in.
If you don't have that whole,then you're not going to be
(14:57):
looking.
So you've got to create thatfirst thought.
Jobs theory allows you tounderstand because if you're
doing your interviewing right,you're asking this question what
caused that first thought inthe first place?
I'll give you an example Verybriefly.
Some of the people that Iinterviewed, the thing that
caused their first thought wasoriented around their vacation.
(15:18):
One woman was on a cruise andshe was still working part time
while she was on this extendedcruise with her family and she
was at the very, very front ofthe cruise ship because that's
where the Wi-Fi reception wasbest and she was still doing
this digital marketing work forher clients.
And this couple walks up, or upto her, this old couple, and
(15:40):
they say you know, you work alot and she just sits there and
it hits her like a ton of bricksI absolutely do work a lot.
The next part is this passivelooking phase where people are
just kind of looking.
They're not actively dedicatingtime, money or emotive energy
to solving this problem.
(16:00):
They're kind of looking aroundseeing what other people are
doing, they're weighing theiroptions and they're looking at
how effective their currentsolution is versus other
solutions out there.
So step three is this activelooking, where they're
dedicating time, money andemotive energy.
They are actively weighingoptions.
(16:21):
You know, and you need to know,what those options are, because
those options are who yourcompetition really is.
And the next step is thedeciding phase, where they're
actually making a decision andthey're looking at trade offs.
So you've got these differentpeople.
They've made a decision on whoin that active looking, who
(16:41):
they're actually going to sortit down to probably three to
five options at the most.
And you're making these tradeoffs and you need to know what
those trade offs are, becausethat's how they're determining
what the value is.
After that, you've got the firstuse.
This is where rubber meets theroad and when they're actually
starting to use your product orservice.
(17:02):
And then, after that, you'vegot ongoing use, which is every
time that job comes up in theirlife.
Do they look to you or do theylook to another option.
Do you constantly have tore-win this customer because
they're not so certain thatyou're helping them make
progress?
So that's the customer timeline.
And then in terms of personas, Idon't look at things in terms
(17:24):
of personas per se.
I don't think personas arenon-compatible.
Which jobs theory?
It's just that the personashifts.
Because the persona doesn'tlook as much at demographics or
correlations, becausecorrelation isn't causation.
Correlation is more like it'shot outside, people eat more ice
(17:45):
cream and more murders happen.
When it's hot outside,correlation would say okay,
there's a relationship betweenice cream consumption going up
and murders going up.
We don't want people believingthat ice cream causes murder,
especially because I lovegrasshopper ice cream.
But the other part of this isthat causation is the underlying
(18:09):
thing that actually creates thecircumstances that lead to a
change.
So we wanna understand thatcausation.
So persona is not necessarilydemographics, although
demographics can cause a job,right, like menopausal women
have certain jobs that arepretty universal, based off of
(18:30):
the circumstances of their bodyor their life.
But by and large we're lookingat the progress, because just
because a certain demographichas that progress does not mean
that another demographic willnot have that same job to be
done.
Katherine Ong (18:47):
Hmm, okay, yeah, now this is very interesting.
I'm thinking through some ofthe personas that I've worked
with that I thought were sort ofoff base for bigger brands and
it clearly would make more senseto orient toward the jobs to be
done.
Zac Stucki (19:01):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, if I may just really really
briefly, the whole thing thatgot this started was Clay
Christensen talked with TonyOlwick.
Tony Olwick kind of put a bugin his ear and then Clay
Christensen got hired byMcDonald's to do a research
project and he found that mostpeople were buying milkshakes at
(19:23):
two different times in the day.
The first time was 6 am to 9 amand the second time was 6 pm to
9 pm and he said this is reallyconfusing, why are they selling
so many danged milkshakes atsix in the morning?
And so he and his team, theyactually went out and they
confronted people as they werewalking out of McDonald's at 6am
(19:45):
.
Katherine Ong (19:48):
Tell them you're weird, but it looks like yeah.
Zac Stucki (19:50):
Yeah, no, exactly.
It was like I'm really confusedhere.
Why are?
What is the job that you werehiring this milkshake to do and
the early morning crowd?
It was basically.
I have a long commute about 20minutes.
I need something that's gonnajust stay in my stomach until
about 11 am.
I only need to use one hand todrive, so I want something to
(20:17):
keep this other hand occupiedand that's it.
And the competition on that wasstuff like bagels, bananas,
snickers, bars, donuts, and theyall had their trade-offs right
that were involved with thesedifferent competitors.
Now in the evening it wasdifferent, because it was a dad
(20:38):
or a mom that had been saying noto their kid all day and just
wanted a way that they could sayyes and feel like a good parent
and adding a milkshake to a BigMac meal that worked great.
And so these two different jobslead to two different personas
(20:59):
that are hiring the same productto get two completely different
jobs done.
Now McDonald's can then say,huh, how could we innovate what
we do in the morning to betterserve that job and how can we
innovate what we do at night tobetter serve that job and design
around that.
Katherine Ong (21:17):
Yeah, yeah, that totally makes sense.
All right.
So we talked a lot about thiscustomer interview part, so I'm
very curious because I thinkyou'd have a lot of tips.
So what kind of tips do youhave around finding the pain
points, the motivations, thestruggles and I know you've got
a formatted customer journeyDoes it ever deviate, Is it ever
(21:37):
different, or is it alwaysthose, whatever?
That was about six steps thatyou have in mind there, so kind
of two questions.
One was like this how do tipsfor interviews?
And the second part was are thejourneys always the same six
steps?
Zac Stucki (21:50):
Yeah, so I'll go with the first, with the second
question first.
So the thing that's importantabout this is that the customer
journey is always gonna gothrough those six steps.
The length of time that acustomer is going to stay in
those six steps varies,depending on a lot.
(22:12):
So there are, when you look atjobs part I should have
explained this sooner, but partof the important thing of jobs
is that jobs isn't just thefunctional aspect of the job, so
there are actually social andemotional motivators or energies
as well.
So it's like you buy a toasterbecause you want toasted bread.
(22:33):
That's largely a functionallydriven purchase, but they're
also social and emotional.
So the social is you buy aBugatti Veyron or whatever the
new versions are.
It's like a $5 million supercar.
And I know a guy who does themarketing research for Bugatti
(22:57):
and he told me somethinginteresting.
He said people don't buyBugatti's because they're
regularly taking them over 250miles an hour.
People buy Bugatti because theywant to connect with their
family and share a passion forracing culture, which was really
fascinating.
It was this social thing whereI wanna feel connected to my
(23:19):
family or I want other people tolook at me and see how cool I
am that I can afford thissupercar.
Katherine Ong (23:27):
So something I would have guessed at.
Zac Stucki (23:30):
Yeah.
Katherine Ong (23:31):
Yeah, that was my rocket science.
Zac Stucki (23:34):
Yeah.
So the next one is emotional,so it's largely an emotional
driven decision.
So, understanding these jobsright, the length of time that
people are spending in thesedifferent segments of the
timeline, the customer journey,is dependent on how weighty
(23:54):
those different things are,because you're not spending a
lot of time buying a toaster.
You are spending a lot of timeweighing whether or not you're
gonna buy a Lambo or a Ferrarior a Bugatti.
Katherine Ong (24:07):
One part of the journey I did here that would be
like an normal no, not normal.
The customer journey that's allover marketing is that there's
this influencer piece at the end.
Like you've bought the thing,you love the thing, you become a
brand advocate and I wasthinking with my work with
National Cancer Institute itseemed similar but like you
advocate on behalf of theresources nationally, like you
(24:29):
become a free marketing personright, that kind of raving user.
Zac Stucki (24:34):
Yeah, raving fan.
Katherine Ong (24:35):
Right raving fan.
So how does that work into this?
Jobs to be done?
Is that a separate thing?
Is that just part of the reuse?
Do you think about that at all?
Zac Stucki (24:42):
Yeah, that's the ongoing use, and we do think
about this, because if you areconsistently hiring that product
or service to do that job,you're gonna tell other people
when that job comes up.
It's a natural part of thatphase.
So thank you for bringing thatup, because that is an important
aspect of it.
If you don't do a good job withthat first use, then they're
(25:05):
largely gonna turn over.
I was talking with someonetoday, actually, who has a big
turnover problem where theyreally don't last.
40% of their customers don'tlast through that first use,
which is massive.
Yeah, that's a lot of saleseffort yeah For new people in.
Oh yeah, so that's where that is.
(25:28):
Now, one thing that the reasonI bring this up is because one
thing that gets really trickytransitioning into that first
question of what are some tipsand tricks as you're identifying
this customer timeline, one ofthe things that I fell into the
trap of was thinking that thething was the first thought that
they say was the first thoughtwas the first thought.
(25:48):
It's not the first thought.
They've been thinking about itfor a while and when they bring
up what that first thought is,most of pardon me, most of the
time, what they're bringing upis this event, this catalyzing
event that took them frompassive looking into active
looking, and so that's somethingto be very, very aware of,
(26:11):
because it can be really trickyto understand what are the
options that they're weighing intheir mind if you're thinking
that they're in the passivelooking phase when they're
actually in the active lookingphase.
For the actual interviews.
A couple of things that Ispecifically look for are body
language cues, vocal cues liketone, tonality, the language
(26:34):
that they're using, the energythat they're saying things with
Like I love Indiana Jones, but Ihate this woke stuff, right,
there's energy there that youcan work with and understand.
Or man, I love motorcycles.
Those are really cool, but letme tell you why I chose a Honda
(26:59):
over a Harley.
There's less energy there, soyou can kind of weigh.
Okay, this isn't as hefty anissue for them as this other
stuff.
Another thing that I like to dois look for contrast, so you
know when they say somethinglike it was I needed a computer
(27:21):
and I needed the computer to runreally, really fast, okay, well
, what does that mean?
I need you to quantify that,because if I'm going to change
my operations in my business, Ineed to have that quantification
there.
I need to be able to measurethat.
Another one is being sure thatyou get clarity when they're
(27:42):
using additional terms orjargony terms, like today I was
in an interview with someone andit was a firm that did some
market research and when we werestarting out, you know people
use words like customer, clientand user interchangeably, but in
this instance those had veryspecific meanings and so I had
(28:05):
to stop the interview and say,okay, I just want to be sure
that I understand.
Client means this, customermeans that, user means this.
So is that true?
Oh, yeah, that's true.
Okay, now we can have a uniformstate through which we can
interact and interpret what theother person is saying, because
(28:27):
when I'm saying customer, I'mmeaning something totally
different than what they'resaying in meeting.
So you know, making sure thatyou have that clarity is really
important, and then you know.
Another thing that I'm lookingat is just like, over the course
(28:48):
of that interview, I play dumba lot.
I play dumb a lot because I canoften get more out of them in
terms of, like, what's causingthis stuff?
When I say what do you mean bythat?
I don't really understand that.
(29:08):
I'm confused.
Can you help me understand thatmore?
So playing dumb is a really,really good thing.
One thing that I'd love to tryhaven't been able to try yet,
but Bob Mesta swears by, andhe's another big jobs
implementer is good cop, bad copIf you can have two people in
the interview and kind of playthis good cop, bad cop.
(29:30):
And he has a whole methodologyto it that you can check out in
a book called demand side sales101.
It basically allows you to getmore out of it and have someone
who's who's positioning as afriend.
And then one last tip that Ihave I had to learn it the hard
(29:50):
way, so please learn.
Please learn from my mistake mymistakes is, before you start
digging, take three to fiveminutes that's all it takes and
just explain the purpose of theinterview.
So you know I'm doing thisinterview.
I'm just trying to understandthis story and explain it like
(30:12):
you were making a documentaryfilm.
So it's like I'm trying tounderstand this story.
You know you, you made adecision to hire this person and
I just want to understand yourjourney.
Help me understand your journey.
To give you context.
What I'm trying to do is I'mgoing to be asking you some
questions that are probablygoing to feel a little
uncomfortable.
You're welcome to say I'm notcomfortable answering that, but
(30:34):
you know, just, the more datathat we have, the better, the
more helpful it is.
But I'm trying to implementthis thing called jobs theory,
and this is what jobs theory is.
So it's customers don't buyproducts, they hire them to make
progress, and progress hassocial, functional and emotional
aspects, and I'm just trying tounderstand what that is over
the course of your personaljourney.
(30:55):
So you know, and then you canstart into it.
But by giving them thatgrounding, what it does is it
gives them the confidence toknow that they can do a good job
and helps them contextualizewhat you're looking for so that
they can actually be morehelpful.
(31:16):
Before, when I was doing theseinterviews and I was just kind
of jumping in and trying to be alittle bit more secretive about
it what I found is that theinterviewee, the person being
interviewed, was trying to help,but they didn't understand the
context of these questions thatI was asking, and so some of
these questions became veryrepetitive because they would
(31:39):
give me an answer and it wasn'tquite what I needed.
So I'd come back and ask itjust like five degrees different
, and so it could be kind offrustrating for them, and you
know I would.
I would often find myselfstopping in the middle of the
interview and saying just so youknow, this is why I'm asking
these questions, and then, likea switch, all of a sudden the
(31:59):
interview went a lot smoother.
Katherine Ong (32:01):
Interesting.
So a few logistics around theseinterviews.
You do not script what you'reasking, necessarily, but it
sounds like you do them face toface or via video and do you?
I'm assuming you don't takenotes, but you do record?
Zac Stucki (32:16):
So I actually do take notes and I do them face to
face or via Zoom and I let themknow I'm going to be taking
notes on what you're telling me.
I also tell them that whatthey're sharing with me is, you
know, deeply confidential unlessthey're willing to share.
And we'll reach back out tothem if we need to get
permission to share.
(32:37):
But that confidentiality canoften bring out a lot of insight
that they wouldn't have sharedotherwise.
And yeah, you can do it overZoom, you can do it over face to
face and I do record thesecalls and they're aware that I'm
recording the calls.
I let them know.
But the purpose is is that Ioften will go back and look at
(33:00):
these and contextualize them inall of the framework.
After the fact, when I'm havingthat interview, I'm not so
worried about necessarilyanswering all the all of the
being able to in that instantput everything in the boxes.
It's more about understandingthat journey and walking that
customer through that journeyagain and then, if I have follow
(33:24):
up questions, I'll send them anemail or schedule a follow up
appointment.
But most of the time a goodrule of thumb is to expect that
these calls are going to take atleast an hour, Because you you
cannot in 30 minutes get thelevel of depth that you need.
Otherwise, I've tried, itdoesn't work.
Katherine Ong (33:43):
And these are.
These are.
It's not group, it's 1 on 1.
Confidentiality is with you asan outside consultant versus the
organization, or could you makeso the confidentiality or?
Zac Stucki (33:55):
Right.
So the confidentiality is likeif you're doing a B2B interview,
right so you're interviewingsomeone who's in a partnership.
So I'll give you an example II'm a B2B business, so I often
interview companies that havepartnerships.
Now if I'm interviewing onepartner and they're saying
(34:16):
things that frustrate them aboutanother partner, it can
severely damage the partnershipif that gets out.
But obviously there was a jobthat was involving that
partnership that they needed tobe able to bring up and feel
confident that whatever solutioncould help solve that problem.
But if that confidentialityisn't in place, then it damages
(34:36):
that.
Katherine Ong (34:37):
Yeah, that makes sense.
Zac Stucki (34:39):
I just I want to go back real quick to this idea of
scripting as well, because thisis another really important
thing.
A lot of marketing researchersout there.
They will script these callsand they'll say I have 10
questions that I want to ask youand then they'll ask these 10
questions.
The problem with that is thatit assumes that in 10 questions
(35:00):
you're going to be able to getthe level of detail that you
need to understand something asextremely complicated as a
causal relationship, and wedon't, with jobs theory, we
don't even do one interview andsay that's the cause.
We're looking at doing as manyinterviews as we can.
You know, depending on the sizeof the company, depending on on
what you're doing for them andfor their customers, what they
(35:23):
do for their customers, you'relooking at hundreds of
interviews.
So it really is important tonot fall into that trap, and
it's one of the things that justdrives me crazy about market
research.
Let me give you an example.
So in a former clients of minehave been these business coaches
and they would hire thesemarket researchers to go out and
(35:46):
they're delightful people, veryinsightful, but they would do
this market research and sayhelp me understand why I'm not
churning why I'm not re signingthem.
And so they would do theseinterviews.
They would have these 10questions and they would say you
know, I'm going to ask youthese 10 questions and then just
answer to the best of yourability, and they wouldn't
really do a lot of digging.
(36:06):
The 10 questions wouldinvariably produce three answers
that were you know, help me bemore accountable, I needed more
structure and I needed bettercommunity or something to that
effect.
So they would ask these threequestions, or ask these 10
questions, get these threeanswers, but they would never
(36:27):
follow up with those questions,with those answers, to
understand what those answersactually meant to that customer.
So then the business would thensay great, I know that my
customers want greater structure, greater accountability,
greater communication.
What does that mean?
I don't know, so I have toguess and put it in place.
So you're still wasting time,money and energy trying to
(36:50):
implement based off of that,instead of just going in
unscripted without any sort ofwhich way you want to lead this
interview and just being open towhere the customer will take
you.
There's there's a lot of costinvolved in the first option
versus the second, so that's whyI wanted to touch on that
difference and why it's soimportant not to go in with
(37:12):
scripting.
Katherine Ong (37:14):
Let's go back to that, the logistics around
people.
So I think we talked prior tothis call that you offer up
payment to the folks who arewilling to talk to you from your
clients organization, the users, but then you know if it's a UX
type research project.
The general rule of thumb is 10folks are enough, and I think I
(37:36):
just heard you say hundreds.
So what's the bare minimum gotonly because I'm thinking about
clients and asking about budget.
Zac Stucki (37:43):
Yeah.
Katherine Ong (37:44):
What's the bare minimum of people you think you
need to talk to, and I'm sure itdepends on how big the
organization is, because Iworked with some organizations
that cover 1000 different topics, so obviously different job
sprawl topics, you know honestly.
But if it's relatively a smallbusiness, maybe they have two
service areas.
We'll just take that as anexample.
Yeah, how many folks would youneed to talk to?
Zac Stucki (38:04):
Great question.
So what you're exposing here isthere is a deeply divided
debate, and statistics which ishere like what who would have
thought?
Statistics is divided betweenBayesian statistic statisticians
and I think it's Haley, andthere's another guy, and this
base wrote this thing called thecentral limit theorem and it's
(38:27):
basically based off of the sizeof your market.
If you can have 30 data points,you can get what's called a
normal distribution, which is abell curve.
That that you can, because ofmathematical wizardry, guarantee
that about 90% of thepopulation will be will fit in
that bell curve.
And another group says no,that's that's.
(38:49):
While it may be mathematicallyaccurate, it is not.
It is not factually correctbased off of what the real world
looks like.
So the thing that I say is erron the side of getting more
interviews, not less.
And you know, if you can onlyget 10 interviews, get 10
(39:11):
interviews.
If that's what your budget canafford, and get 200, get 200,
because the more data you have,the more you will increase your
ability to find and track thesepatterns that go on in these
customer experiences that leadthem down to hiring your product
(39:34):
or service.
Now you touched on saying thatthat I do compensate these
individuals when they interview.
My rule of thumb is if I canget them in an interview for
free, I'm doing it for free.
If I, if if I have tocompensate people to get them
into the interview, then I'llcompensate them, and it's
(39:56):
generally compensation isrelated to who the user is and
how much they value your value,their time.
So if I'm a B2B and I want tospeak directly to the, the CEO,
I'm probably going to pay him$300 for that hour.
If I am doing B2C and I want totalk to a mom of young kids,
(40:20):
I'm probably gonna say I'll giveyou a $20 Amazon gift card.
Or some guys even get by withsaying I will enter you for the
chance to win a $20 Amazon giftcard.
So like, the more that you cando it to stay free or low cost,
the better.
Katherine Ong (40:40):
Yeah, that makes sense.
All right, so you've got togive us all these tips around
gathering information about yourcustomers.
You've got new informationabout segments, personas, who
you're gonna target, what themessage might be.
Also, information that needs tobe integrated through the rest
of the organization, and once weknow, a lot of organizations
are siloed.
So how do you engage theseteams in this sort of
(41:03):
cross-functional way to makesure that this all flows through
the organization?
And if they're notcross-functional at all, do you
have any tips around how to makethat successful?
Zac Stucki (41:13):
Yeah.
So Job Series is actually areally, really great tool to use
to make things cross-functional, because what I experience is
that when businesses understandthe actual progress that their
customer is hiring them to doand you orient around, that
you're able to tell your team.
This is the measuring stick bywhich all your decisions should
(41:36):
be looked at Are you helping thecustomer make progress or are
you making it more difficult forthe customer to make progress?
Finance is your billingmethodology?
The way that you get money fromcustomers, does it make it
easier or more difficult forthem to make progress?
Operations are you deliveringon that progress?
Jeez, admin, customer serviceare you helping or are you
(42:01):
hurting?
And it gives everybody sort ofthis Rosetta Stone that allows
them to communicate in a reallyvaluable way.
So it helps break down thesesilos just by training the
organization.
So there are a lot of differentways that you can implement it.
(42:22):
It depends on your organization, depends on how you want to do
it.
You could do have arepresentative from each member
of the team, each member, onemember of each department, be
involved in the research, right,so you could do it that way.
You could do it that once theresearch is done, you have one
team that does it.
Once that research is done,it's their responsibility to go
(42:44):
out to every department andtrain them on their findings.
You can do that.
It's like each department isindependently doing their
research to understand this.
So they're all doing thisresearch.
One thing that Intercom doesthat I think is actually really
effective for them is that theyrequire that employees engage in
(43:09):
four I think it's four jobresearch interviews every.
It's either every quarter orevery year, so it's either once
a quarter or four per year orfour per quarter and I can't
remember which.
But basically it requires thatthey stay on top of the
methodology and that they'retalking to their customers so
(43:31):
that they're understanding thejob and keeping that front and
center in their mind.
So there's a lot of ways thatyou can do it.
The key thing is that you justget started.
They can also hire me and I canhelp them do it.
Katherine Ong (43:45):
Right.
Well, it sounds like there's alot of you're restructuring
internal KPIs and there's a bitof organizational change that
you might have to help with aswell, right?
Zac Stucki (43:58):
Yeah, and that is just the nature of the beast,
because a lot of times when webuild these organizations, we
build them with internal focus.
So this is the supply, it's gotthese features and these
benefits.
Do you want some?
But customers don't buy thatway.
They don't think that way.
When you were buying your house,you weren't thinking about
(44:22):
necessarily all of the featuresand benefits per se.
You were thinking about does ithave this and that and the
other?
And when I walk in, am I gonnabe able to feel like I'm at home
?
Do I like the neighborhood?
There was a lot more than justit's got a gas stove and it's
got a 500 gallon gas tank outback.
(44:43):
Like you weren't thinking aboutthat.
You were thinking maybe does ithave a gas stove, but you
weren't necessarily thinkingabout the specifications, the
product specifications of therefrigerator, or does it have a
jetted tub with exactly six jets?
So you were thinking about allof these other different
(45:06):
progresses that you were tryingto make.
So that's where I come back to.
Is that making this shift froman internally focused
organization into an externallyfocused organization that is
focused on the customer?
Progress does take time.
It does take deliberatelymanaging the change, but when
(45:30):
done properly, it's extremelyeffective and creates massive
growth for organizations.
Katherine Ong (45:38):
But two sort of last questions like one, what do
you do if there's a lot ofresistance?
Because I can envision this isa bit like digital marketing you
show up with somethingdisruptive.
And two, how do you make surethat they sustain this?
I mean, I guess you sort ofanswer that because some of
these organizations have aregular keep meeting with your
(45:59):
customer process but I'm justkind of curious if there's any
other best practices for makingsure this is not one and done,
but this is like an evergreenthing.
Zac Stucki (46:08):
Yeah, great question .
So you know you will likelyfind resistance to the ideas of
the progress that your customeris trying to make, and what
you'll find is that the peoplewho are hiding in your
organization aren't really gonnabe able to hide as well anymore
, because jobs theory requiresactive implementation.
(46:31):
It's not very passive, and whatI mean by that is that, when
done properly, all members ofthe team have to be clear on
what that progress is and theyhave to be actively working
toward that progress.
If you're not, then you're out.
Second way that I will sayconflict comes into an
(46:51):
organization during thisimplementation is that they get
a lot of people who disagreeabout what the job is not
necessarily about the need toorient around the customer,
because capitalism is all aroundserving the customer.
So they agree yes, we need toserve the customer.
They may not agree on what thatis.
(47:13):
So when that happens, there'ssomething called the four phases
of team development that youcan guide your team through.
That will really help with that.
When you pair that with edgemethod leadership edge like edge
of a cliff, edge methodleadership it can be very
effective change management.
And then what was the secondpart of that question?
Katherine Ong (47:35):
We can make sure that they keep this up.
Zac Stucki (47:39):
Okay.
So intercom, like you mentioned, they do a really good job of
requiring people do regularresearch interviews, which I
think is a really good one.
Another one is and this is whatI urge my clients to do and
actually they'll pay me to helpthem implement it is turning
innovation in the organizationover to your team.
(48:00):
So what I mean by that is thatClayton Christensen talks about
three types of innovation.
First one is disruptiveinnovation, which is how you
build new markets by servingunderserved target audiences.
It's really difficult to do andwhen done properly, it can be a
game changer.
Most businesses do not have thecore competencies, they don't
(48:23):
have the resources to do that.
Number two is sustaininginnovation.
Sustaining innovation is allabout growing your market share
by doing what you do for yourcustomer better than anyone else
.
That is something that thepeople on the front line are way
more intimate with than thepeople in the C-suite.
So the people on the front lineare the people who should be
(48:46):
leading innovation, which meansthat they need to be keyed in to
that job to be done.
So it means that they need tobe having regular refresher
courses, regular conversationswith the rest of the team,
testing these ideas out,implementing Kaizen methodology
to find these solutions toproblems and really test them
and implement them.
And then the last part of thisis consistency.
(49:15):
In an organization starts at thetop and works its way down.
If the C-suite isn't on boardwith this and isn't consistently
driving this and isn't showingthrough their actions that they
are on board with this and thatthey are adopting things and
doing the same things that theyexpect the rest of the team to
do, then it's not gonna last,it's not gonna get implemented.
(49:38):
And that, I think, is where alot of people miss, because
they'll say hey, here's this newproduct, excuse me, here's this
new methodology, this newproject that we wanna implement.
Because people at the top aregenerally, if it's an owner
operated business, they'regenerally idea guys, they get
(49:59):
carried away with ideas.
So they say this is the newthing, this is the shiny new toy
.
It's important that the leader,right, the owner that's
operating this business, thatthey have that space to do that.
But with jobs theory, youcannot abandon it for another
shiny new toy.
(50:19):
And so it's very important thatthe other members of the team
hold them accountable, that theyare all doing these interviews
just like they're expectingeverybody else to do that.
They're all taking time on thefront lines.
This is actually one of theways that Walmart is really
exemplary is that doesn't matterwhat job they do at corporate
in Bentonville, they are stillspending time on the store floor
(50:41):
in the vest doing the work forthe average person who's coming
in, so that they can get thattime on the ground talking,
interacting with the customer aswell, to keep the customer
front and center in their mind.
Katherine Ong (50:57):
Yeah, so that's what I was thinking that this is
very disruptive and if youdon't have seen your buy-in,
because you're basicallychanging organizational culture.
So it could be very powerfulbut only if you have C-suite
buy-in to do that muchdisruption.
Because it doesn't sound likeit's a minor thing, it sounds
like it's kind of a majordisruption.
Zac Stucki (51:14):
So Well, yeah, you're absolutely right.
It's not a minor thing, but Imean it could be the difference
between staying at seven figuresor growing to nine.
Katherine Ong (51:28):
Right, yeah, no, it's powerful, but still a big
change.
Yeah, so I've got sort of threefinal questions.
Thank you for being on the show, by the way.
So the last three and you'veshared a lot of resources but.
If there's any other resourcesthat you have and if you have
any sort of aha moments thatyou've had recently with your
customer interviews, where sometarget audience had a completely
(51:52):
different behavior than you hadexpected.
Zac Stucki (51:55):
Okay, yeah, so resources, Competing Against
Luck by Clayton Christensenthat's the book that he he so he
introduces it, the concept inhow will you measure your life,
but but competing against luckis really where he dives in and
fleshes it out, and so that'swhere I recommend people start.
(52:18):
Demand Side Sales 101 is by BobMesta, who helped implement
this with Clay, and he takes itand he says how do we apply jobs
, Dary in a marketing and salescontext?
So that's another good place tostart.
I kind of recommend competingagainst luck then into Demand
(52:41):
Side Sales.
And then Clay did a really greattalk before he passed away in
2020, called when Does GrowthCome From, and he delivered that
at Google, and I think it's in2017 that he delivered that.
But just just type in wheredoes growth come from and it
pops right up.
He outlines this theory ofdisruptive innovation, which is
(53:04):
the three types of innovationthat I talk about.
He also talks about jobs theoryand then he applies it to
businesses and says so this iswhat it means Highly, highly.
Oh, it's a dense, dense lecture, but incredibly beneficial and
valuable.
Okay, so that's question one.
What was question two?
Katherine Ong (53:25):
Have you had any aha moments about your client's
target audience or your targetaudience, something that
surprised you once you startedlearning more about them?
Zac Stucki (53:33):
Yeah.
So I was talking with a guy acouple of weeks ago and one of
the things that I had beenoperating under the assumption
of was that people were hiringme to help them get free of
their business, and that wasonly a part of it.
(53:54):
But the thing that really hit mewas just how much these
business owners that are in thisposition where they're at seven
figures and they want tocontinue to grow, just how much
confidence was really at playand how heavily that weighed in,
as well as how heavily having,in that size of business, a
(54:21):
personal relationship with theirconsultant mattered.
I think I talked with threepeople in a row who all said,
yeah, I hired a coach and thereason why I hired them was
because we were a friend.
They were a friend of minebefore and I just hired them.
It was funny because theyalways said it didn't work out.
(54:43):
It didn't work out but I hiredthem and so that personal
relationship.
It was always reallyinteresting to me to see just
how deeply that was involved,because one guy even said I
don't know that I would havegone out looking for a coach or
consultant if I didn't have oneof them already in my personal
(55:07):
network.
Katherine Ong (55:08):
That's interesting.
Yeah, yeah, a lot of trustthere really.
So how can people learn moreabout you?
Zac Stucki (55:16):
They can go to businesslegendconsultingcom, or
they can email me at Zach athollaricconsultingcom, homeric
is spelled like Homer Simpsonwith an IC at the end.
Or they can go to Facebook,twitter, youtube, linkedin.
I'm on all of them HomericConsulting.
(55:38):
Or search Zach or ZacharyStuckey and I'll come up.
Katherine Ong (55:42):
Great, this has been fabulous.
Thank you very much.
Lots of great tips.
Yeah, I now know a ton aboutjob theory.
It's awesome.
Zac Stucki (55:50):
My pleasure.
Can I add just one tiny bug inhere real quick?
Totally so.
I have just put out a new quizthat helps business owners
determine how able their helpsthem determine the scalability
of their business.
It's 10 yes or no questions,very simple.
(56:14):
But if they go toHomericconsultingcom, slash
scalability underscore quiz andI'll make sure that it's on the
homepage so it should be easyfor them to find just in the top
search bar.
It's 10 questions, super easy.
It will help them determine howable they really are in their
(56:36):
present state to scale or ifthey've got work to do.
Katherine Ong (56:39):
Great, that's an awesome resource.
I'll make sure I'll be added tothe show now, thank you.
Thank you for your time today.
Zac Stucki (56:46):
Yeah, thank you, Katherine, it's been a pleasure.
Katherine Ong (56:51):
Thanks so much for listening.
To find out more about thepodcast and what we're up to, go
to digitalmarketingvictories.
com and, if you like what youheard, subscribe to us on iTunes
or wherever you get yourpodcasts.
Rate us, comment and share thepodcast, please.
I'm always looking for newideas, topics and guests.
Email us atdigitalmarketingvictories.
com or DM us on Twitter atDMVictories.
(57:13):
Thanks for listening.
Welcome to the Digital Marketing Victories
podcast, a monthly show where wecelebrate and learn from the
change makers in digitalmarketing.
Great digital marketersunderstand that people are the
most challenging part of doingtheir jobs, and this show
focuses on the people part ofdigital marketing wins what
tactics or skills the guests useto align people with their
marketing strategy.
(00:21):
I'm your host, Katherine WatierOng, the owner of WO Strategies
LLC.
We focus on increasing organicdiscovery for enterprise-sized,
science-focused clients.
Thank you for joining me.
Let's get into it and celebrateour victories.
Today we're joined by Zach.
Zach is an operationsconsultant with over seven years
(00:41):
of experience.
He has a master's degree inbusiness administration from a
top-tier university and he'sworked with businesses
throughout the US.
His work has helped scalecompanies from seven to eight
figures by finding and fixingtheir operational limitations,
reducing project timelines andimproving quality.
Now this show is going to beperfect for you if you're
curious about how to utilize thejobs to be done theory to
(01:04):
improve the messaging to yourcurrent and potential customers,
how to standardize processes tomake management more efficient
and effective, improvingtraining, cutting waste,
reducing project timelines,improving quality, and then how
you can conduct compellingcustomer interviews and build
effective customer journeys.
Zach, welcome to the show.
Zac Stucki (01:25):
Thanks so much for having me, Katherine.
It's a pleasure to be here.
Katherine Ong (01:28):
It's great to have you on, so can you tell me
a little bit more, or tell theguests a little bit more, about
yourself, your background andhow you got into this work that
you're doing now?
That's ancillary to digitalmarketing.
Zac Stucki (01:42):
Yeah.
So I got hired on by aseven-figure business that was
stalled out.
They were just having a lot ofproblems with customer turnover,
employee turnover, cash flow,profitability, you name it and
so they hired me to come on andwe wanted to figure out what was
(02:06):
really stalling this businessout.
So what we did was we startedjust researching everywhere that
we could and we came acrossthis jobs theory and we said
that's it, that's our ticket.
So jobs theory, pretty simply,is just your customer doesn't
hire your product or service or,excuse me, your customer
(02:27):
doesn't buy your product orservice.
They hire it to help them makeprogress in their life.
So we set out very quickly tofigure out what is the progress
our customer is hiring us tomake.
And we actually discovered thatwe had a customer and a user
and they both had very differentjobs.
So we designed the operationsaround the user and the
marketing around the customerand we started hitting 40%
(02:50):
year-over-year growth rates forlike three years.
It was nuts.
Katherine Ong (02:55):
Wow, it was nuts.
Zac Stucki (02:57):
And so I said, huh, there's something to this jobs
theory thing, and so I starteddoing a deep dive and I've just
kind of dedicated my life to itever since.
Katherine Ong (03:09):
So, based on your experience, thanks for the
excellent jobs to be done there,so I wanted to make sure we
were covering that on the show.
But how can organizationsidentify those jobs that their
customers are trying to get done, either their target audience
or their users?
How do you get into that?
Zac Stucki (03:27):
So there's a process that they've got to go through.
The first step is getting clearon who they want to talk to.
So you know, when I coach myclients, what I do is I start
out by doing a clientprofitability analysis where we
determine who are your mostprofitable clients, because I
don't want you wasting your timetalking to clients that you
(03:48):
can't serve profitably.
So once you know who that is,then you have to get very clear
on the fact that we're gettingout of the office.
We don't know why our customeris hiring us.
We have some good guesses, somehypotheses that we probably
should test, but we don'tactually know.
So you got to get out of theoffice.
(04:09):
Once you get out of the office,you got to actually talk to
these people, and theseconversations can't be
prescripted, because yourcustomer can sense that from a
mile away and they will shutdown.
You have to have theseopen-ended conversations where
you're saying you know, one dayyou had you have this problem
(04:30):
and one day you had a reallydifficult time solving this
problem and you decided thatsomething had to change.
So tell me about that day.
This isn't the day that youdecided to hire me.
That comes later.
I just want to know when wasthe pain from this problem so
severe that you decided that youneeded to change?
And you just start having aconversation there.
(04:51):
Or the other alternative thatsome jobs theory practitioners
talk about is working backwardin the timeline.
So you say you know you hiredus, but before that what
happened, and before that whathappened, and you just kind of
work back on this timeline untilyou can get to a place where
it's causal.
Generally you can go about five, five Y's deep to identify
(05:18):
causal relationships there.
Katherine Ong (05:21):
Would it be okay during that process to ask if
they went to Google search toresearch what keywords they used
to kind of get?
Double value out of thiscustomer interview.
Zac Stucki (05:32):
Yeah, absolutely, you should, Absolutely.
So here's the thing.
This is the value of jobs theoryIs jobs theory is all about
getting into the mind of yourcustomer to understand what
actually caused the purpose thepurchase decision Pardon me the
purchase decision.
So the whole point here is thatyou're asking you know what did
(05:52):
you search for as you weretrying to solve this problem?
You know what I regularly ask,so you know, before you were
working with me, before you wereworking with my competition
because I'll talk with peoplewho hired my competition instead
you know, before you wereworking with my competition,
what are some alternatives thatyou were weighing, what were
some other things that you hiredto try and solve this problem
(06:14):
that just didn't get the jobdone and why.
And you can start to understandwhat were they weighing, what
were the tradeoffs, what werethe alternatives that they were
looking at, and you can buildthis picture of a decision that
they were trying to make and ithelps you design your strategy
and your operations around thatso that you can solve that
(06:34):
problem better than anyone elseon the market and do it more
profitably.
Katherine Ong (06:39):
Does this work better for particular industries
, or B2B over B2C, or can youkind of use the stereo across
the board?
Zac Stucki (06:48):
So you know, I think that a lot of people get very
anxious when you say this is auniversal theory, but this is
one that actually is a universaltheory because it's kind of
rooted in biology as well as,like sociology and a million
different things.
But you know, at the end of thebook that introduces Jobs
Theory, the author, claytonChristiansen, he says you can
(07:10):
apply Jobs Theory to religion,you can apply it to politics.
He asks one of the mostbrilliant questions I think
anyone has asked as it regardspolitics.
He says are we hiring ourleaders to lead us or to give
voice to our fears?
You know, so you can apply thispolitically, religiously, b2b,
(07:34):
b2c, sas, medical, it doesn'tmatter, because everybody our
lives, fundamentally, are madeup of.
We have these problems thatwe're trying to solve.
We have this progress thatwe're trying to make and it
doesn't matter if it's with mycomputer screen, with my lunch
at home, parenting my kids,being a good leader to my team.
(07:58):
There are jobs there that needto get solved and any business
can apply this framework andsolve it.
Now I've found specificallypersonally in my own experience
that there are certain types ofbusinesses that have more need
of this because it doesn'tintuitively fit, and that
(08:21):
generally is marketing agencieslike Basically marketing,
accounting law services,financial services, all of these
sort of businesses that arelike oriented around an expert,
Because the expert they say,well, they're just buying me.
Well, they're not actuallybuying you, they're buying
(08:43):
something that you do for them,and so the expert will build a
business that relies on them andit's unscalable.
Katherine Ong (08:51):
Interesting.
So, based on your experienceseeing organizations sort of
working through this process,are there common mistakes that
they have when they startimplementing or aligning with
this jobs to be done?
Theory process.
Zac Stucki (09:05):
Absolutely, absolutely.
You know.
The first one is targeting thewrong customer.
You know, if you target thewrong customer and you target an
unprofitable client and youstart understanding the job that
they're hiring you to do beforeyou are profitable or you know
(09:25):
before you're ready, generallywhat you'll do is you'll
reorient your business around anunprofitable service and you'll
build an unprofitable businessright from the beginning.
So that's, that's one majorproblem I see.
Another major problem that I seeis hubris, I guess, where it's
like these business owners theythink, they think that they know
(09:47):
the job that the customer ishiring them to do, or these CEOs
or these managers, but theydon't.
They don't.
They're not God's gift tobusiness, they don't know
everything.
So you know, humble yourself,get out of the office, start
talking to your customers,because you're going to get
humbled real quick and soinnovating in a vacuum is very
expensive, and then you know.
(10:10):
A third problem that I reallycommonly see is basically
siloing that knowledge.
So it's like you do thatresearch, you are a marketing
agency, a digital marketingagency, you do this research.
Then it just is siloed in theor the part of the organization
that did the research.
(10:31):
It's not trained throughout theorganization, it's not spread
around so it can't lifteverybody in the organization.
It causes a lot of problems ifyou do it that way, because then
you have this fighting thatgoes on, because operations
thinks you need to do it thisway because of the rules of
(10:52):
operations and finance says yougot to do it this way because of
the rules of finance.
And you have to take a look atit from a holistic perspective
and make sure that everyone inthe company is on board,
understands the job yourcustomer is hiring you to do and
is speaking that language.
Katherine Ong (11:11):
Does that mean when you implement jobs to be
done theory, you actually pivotthe process of multiple
departments across the board?
So it's not just marketing andsales, but you might actually be
working on operations andpivoting what they're doing,
based on what you've learnedabout the job that needs to be
done?
Zac Stucki (11:26):
Absolutely, absolutely.
I'll give you an example.
So there is an Irish SAScompany that does customer
service like chat support stuff,intercom I don't know if you've
heard of them, they're.
They're.
They're like 10 and a halfbillion market cap, maybe more.
Now they started implementingjobs theory when they were about
5 million market cap and whatthey did is they started doing
(11:51):
their research and they had ahigh amount of churn, customer
churn, and it was just, it wasgoing to sink the company.
So they say we're going to usejobs three, we're going to
figure this out.
Once they understood thecustomer had four jobs, they
were going to orient aroundthose four jobs.
Once they understood what thosefour jobs were, then they
started changing theironboarding processes.
(12:13):
They started changing theirmessaging, so their marketing.
They started changing theirtraining and they started
changing the actual product sothat they had four products that
aligned with these jobs.
They had, you know, a trainingthat said, if this is the job
that you're hiring us to do, ifthis is the result you want to
(12:34):
get, then follow this course.
That is the other course, basedoff of the results that you
want.
So it really impacts your wholebusiness for the better, for
the better.
You know, just very briefly, alot of people like to silo their
organization and they say, well, marketing has nothing to do
(12:54):
with operations.
And I get a lot of marketerswho hate it when I say this, but
I'm going to say it anyway.
Marketing is fundamentally howyou communicate your unique
value proposition to yourcustomer, how you're helping
them make progress.
If you say one thing well, okay, let me add this so operations
is how you deliver that uniquevalue proposition.
(13:15):
So if you say one thing and youdeliver another thing, then
what are you doing?
You're communicating that allof that marketing was a lie.
You're communicating somethingin your operations.
So there's overlap in yourorganization and you have to
make sure that it's a holisticapplication of jobs theory, not
(13:35):
siloed.
Katherine Ong (13:38):
That makes a ton of sense.
So, talking about implementingsome of this and coming back to
marketing, how haveorganizations use the jobs to be
done, research that you'vegotten to change their marketing
efforts and now if there areany best practices around taking
that data integrating into whatyou're doing in marketing.
Zac Stucki (13:54):
Oh yeah, absolutely so.
Intercom is a great example ofthis.
Once they understood the jobthat the customers were hiring
them to do, they changed theirmarketing messaging and within
10 years, they hit unicornstatus, which is it's nuts.
That's a meteoric rise.
Katherine Ong (14:13):
So sounds like to me you've got this data about
messaging.
I heard that, but it also seemslike what you would do is ditch
your personas, update them,start using customer segments
and then does any of thisinformation it sounds like it
would give you information aboutyour customer journey, so you
might be a creating one orupdating that as well for the
(14:35):
marketing end.
Zac Stucki (14:36):
It's absolutely updating the marketing journey,
the customer journey, absolutelyjobs theory.
We look at the customer journeythrough six segments.
The first one is the firstthought.
So Clayton Christiansen saysthat a question is an answer, is
a hole in the brain for ananswer to slot in.
If you don't have that whole,then you're not going to be
(14:57):
looking.
So you've got to create thatfirst thought.
Jobs theory allows you tounderstand because if you're
doing your interviewing right,you're asking this question what
caused that first thought inthe first place?
I'll give you an example Verybriefly.
Some of the people that Iinterviewed, the thing that
caused their first thought wasoriented around their vacation.
(15:18):
One woman was on a cruise andshe was still working part time
while she was on this extendedcruise with her family and she
was at the very, very front ofthe cruise ship because that's
where the Wi-Fi reception wasbest and she was still doing
this digital marketing work forher clients.
And this couple walks up, or upto her, this old couple, and
(15:40):
they say you know, you work alot and she just sits there and
it hits her like a ton of bricksI absolutely do work a lot.
The next part is this passivelooking phase where people are
just kind of looking.
They're not actively dedicatingtime, money or emotive energy
to solving this problem.
(16:00):
They're kind of looking aroundseeing what other people are
doing, they're weighing theiroptions and they're looking at
how effective their currentsolution is versus other
solutions out there.
So step three is this activelooking, where they're
dedicating time, money andemotive energy.
They are actively weighingoptions.
(16:21):
You know, and you need to know,what those options are, because
those options are who yourcompetition really is.
And the next step is thedeciding phase, where they're
actually making a decision andthey're looking at trade offs.
So you've got these differentpeople.
They've made a decision on whoin that active looking, who
(16:41):
they're actually going to sortit down to probably three to
five options at the most.
And you're making these tradeoffs and you need to know what
those trade offs are, becausethat's how they're determining
what the value is.
After that, you've got the firstuse.
This is where rubber meets theroad and when they're actually
starting to use your product orservice.
(17:02):
And then, after that, you'vegot ongoing use, which is every
time that job comes up in theirlife.
Do they look to you or do theylook to another option.
Do you constantly have tore-win this customer because
they're not so certain thatyou're helping them make
progress?
So that's the customer timeline.
And then in terms of personas, Idon't look at things in terms
(17:24):
of personas per se.
I don't think personas arenon-compatible.
Which jobs theory?
It's just that the personashifts.
Because the persona doesn'tlook as much at demographics or
correlations, becausecorrelation isn't causation.
Correlation is more like it'shot outside, people eat more ice
(17:45):
cream and more murders happen.
When it's hot outside,correlation would say okay,
there's a relationship betweenice cream consumption going up
and murders going up.
We don't want people believingthat ice cream causes murder,
especially because I lovegrasshopper ice cream.
But the other part of this isthat causation is the underlying
(18:09):
thing that actually creates thecircumstances that lead to a
change.
So we wanna understand thatcausation.
So persona is not necessarilydemographics, although
demographics can cause a job,right, like menopausal women
have certain jobs that arepretty universal, based off of
(18:30):
the circumstances of their bodyor their life.
But by and large we're lookingat the progress, because just
because a certain demographichas that progress does not mean
that another demographic willnot have that same job to be
done.
Katherine Ong (18:47):
Hmm, okay, yeah, now this is very interesting.
I'm thinking through some ofthe personas that I've worked
with that I thought were sort ofoff base for bigger brands and
it clearly would make more senseto orient toward the jobs to be
done.
Zac Stucki (19:01):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, if I may just really really
briefly, the whole thing thatgot this started was Clay
Christensen talked with TonyOlwick.
Tony Olwick kind of put a bugin his ear and then Clay
Christensen got hired byMcDonald's to do a research
project and he found that mostpeople were buying milkshakes at
(19:23):
two different times in the day.
The first time was 6 am to 9 amand the second time was 6 pm to
9 pm and he said this is reallyconfusing, why are they selling
so many danged milkshakes atsix in the morning?
And so he and his team, theyactually went out and they
confronted people as they werewalking out of McDonald's at 6am
(19:45):
.
Katherine Ong (19:48):
Tell them you're weird, but it looks like yeah.
Zac Stucki (19:50):
Yeah, no, exactly.
It was like I'm really confusedhere.
Why are?
What is the job that you werehiring this milkshake to do and
the early morning crowd?
It was basically.
I have a long commute about 20minutes.
I need something that's gonnajust stay in my stomach until
about 11 am.
I only need to use one hand todrive, so I want something to
(20:17):
keep this other hand occupiedand that's it.
And the competition on that wasstuff like bagels, bananas,
snickers, bars, donuts, and theyall had their trade-offs right
that were involved with thesedifferent competitors.
Now in the evening it wasdifferent, because it was a dad
(20:38):
or a mom that had been saying noto their kid all day and just
wanted a way that they could sayyes and feel like a good parent
and adding a milkshake to a BigMac meal that worked great.
And so these two different jobslead to two different personas
(20:59):
that are hiring the same productto get two completely different
jobs done.
Now McDonald's can then say,huh, how could we innovate what
we do in the morning to betterserve that job and how can we
innovate what we do at night tobetter serve that job and design
around that.
Katherine Ong (21:17):
Yeah, yeah, that totally makes sense.
All right.
So we talked a lot about thiscustomer interview part, so I'm
very curious because I thinkyou'd have a lot of tips.
So what kind of tips do youhave around finding the pain
points, the motivations, thestruggles and I know you've got
a formatted customer journeyDoes it ever deviate, Is it ever
(21:37):
different, or is it alwaysthose, whatever?
That was about six steps thatyou have in mind there, so kind
of two questions.
One was like this how do tipsfor interviews?
And the second part was are thejourneys always the same six
steps?
Zac Stucki (21:50):
Yeah, so I'll go with the first, with the second
question first.
So the thing that's importantabout this is that the customer
journey is always gonna gothrough those six steps.
The length of time that acustomer is going to stay in
those six steps varies,depending on a lot.
(22:12):
So there are, when you look atjobs part I should have
explained this sooner, but partof the important thing of jobs
is that jobs isn't just thefunctional aspect of the job, so
there are actually social andemotional motivators or energies
as well.
So it's like you buy a toasterbecause you want toasted bread.
(22:33):
That's largely a functionallydriven purchase, but they're
also social and emotional.
So the social is you buy aBugatti Veyron or whatever the
new versions are.
It's like a $5 million supercar.
And I know a guy who does themarketing research for Bugatti
(22:57):
and he told me somethinginteresting.
He said people don't buyBugatti's because they're
regularly taking them over 250miles an hour.
People buy Bugatti because theywant to connect with their
family and share a passion forracing culture, which was really
fascinating.
It was this social thing whereI wanna feel connected to my
(23:19):
family or I want other people tolook at me and see how cool I
am that I can afford thissupercar.
Katherine Ong (23:27):
So something I would have guessed at.
Zac Stucki (23:30):
Yeah.
Katherine Ong (23:31):
Yeah, that was my rocket science.
Zac Stucki (23:34):
Yeah.
So the next one is emotional,so it's largely an emotional
driven decision.
So, understanding these jobsright, the length of time that
people are spending in thesedifferent segments of the
timeline, the customer journey,is dependent on how weighty
(23:54):
those different things are,because you're not spending a
lot of time buying a toaster.
You are spending a lot of timeweighing whether or not you're
gonna buy a Lambo or a Ferrarior a Bugatti.
Katherine Ong (24:07):
One part of the journey I did here that would be
like an normal no, not normal.
The customer journey that's allover marketing is that there's
this influencer piece at the end.
Like you've bought the thing,you love the thing, you become a
brand advocate and I wasthinking with my work with
National Cancer Institute itseemed similar but like you
advocate on behalf of theresources nationally, like you
(24:29):
become a free marketing personright, that kind of raving user.
Zac Stucki (24:34):
Yeah, raving fan.
Katherine Ong (24:35):
Right raving fan.
So how does that work into this?
Jobs to be done?
Is that a separate thing?
Is that just part of the reuse?
Do you think about that at all?
Zac Stucki (24:42):
Yeah, that's the ongoing use, and we do think
about this, because if you areconsistently hiring that product
or service to do that job,you're gonna tell other people
when that job comes up.
It's a natural part of thatphase.
So thank you for bringing thatup, because that is an important
aspect of it.
If you don't do a good job withthat first use, then they're
(25:05):
largely gonna turn over.
I was talking with someonetoday, actually, who has a big
turnover problem where theyreally don't last.
40% of their customers don'tlast through that first use,
which is massive.
Yeah, that's a lot of saleseffort yeah For new people in.
Oh yeah, so that's where that is.
(25:28):
Now, one thing that the reasonI bring this up is because one
thing that gets really trickytransitioning into that first
question of what are some tipsand tricks as you're identifying
this customer timeline, one ofthe things that I fell into the
trap of was thinking that thething was the first thought that
they say was the first thoughtwas the first thought.
(25:48):
It's not the first thought.
They've been thinking about itfor a while and when they bring
up what that first thought is,most of pardon me, most of the
time, what they're bringing upis this event, this catalyzing
event that took them frompassive looking into active
looking, and so that's somethingto be very, very aware of,
(26:11):
because it can be really trickyto understand what are the
options that they're weighing intheir mind if you're thinking
that they're in the passivelooking phase when they're
actually in the active lookingphase.
For the actual interviews.
A couple of things that Ispecifically look for are body
language cues, vocal cues liketone, tonality, the language
(26:34):
that they're using, the energythat they're saying things with
Like I love Indiana Jones, but Ihate this woke stuff, right,
there's energy there that youcan work with and understand.
Or man, I love motorcycles.
Those are really cool, but letme tell you why I chose a Honda
(26:59):
over a Harley.
There's less energy there, soyou can kind of weigh.
Okay, this isn't as hefty anissue for them as this other
stuff.
Another thing that I like to dois look for contrast, so you
know when they say somethinglike it was I needed a computer
(27:21):
and I needed the computer to runreally, really fast, okay, well
, what does that mean?
I need you to quantify that,because if I'm going to change
my operations in my business, Ineed to have that quantification
there.
I need to be able to measurethat.
Another one is being sure thatyou get clarity when they're
(27:42):
using additional terms orjargony terms, like today I was
in an interview with someone andit was a firm that did some
market research and when we werestarting out, you know people
use words like customer, clientand user interchangeably, but in
this instance those had veryspecific meanings and so I had
(28:05):
to stop the interview and say,okay, I just want to be sure
that I understand.
Client means this, customermeans that, user means this.
So is that true?
Oh, yeah, that's true.
Okay, now we can have a uniformstate through which we can
interact and interpret what theother person is saying, because
(28:27):
when I'm saying customer, I'mmeaning something totally
different than what they'resaying in meeting.
So you know, making sure thatyou have that clarity is really
important, and then you know.
Another thing that I'm lookingat is just like, over the course
(28:48):
of that interview, I play dumba lot.
I play dumb a lot because I canoften get more out of them in
terms of, like, what's causingthis stuff?
When I say what do you mean bythat?
I don't really understand that.
(29:08):
I'm confused.
Can you help me understand thatmore?
So playing dumb is a really,really good thing.
One thing that I'd love to tryhaven't been able to try yet,
but Bob Mesta swears by, andhe's another big jobs
implementer is good cop, bad copIf you can have two people in
the interview and kind of playthis good cop, bad cop.
(29:30):
And he has a whole methodologyto it that you can check out in
a book called demand side sales101.
It basically allows you to getmore out of it and have someone
who's who's positioning as afriend.
And then one last tip that Ihave I had to learn it the hard
(29:50):
way, so please learn.
Please learn from my mistake mymistakes is, before you start
digging, take three to fiveminutes that's all it takes and
just explain the purpose of theinterview.
So you know I'm doing thisinterview.
I'm just trying to understandthis story and explain it like
(30:12):
you were making a documentaryfilm.
So it's like I'm trying tounderstand this story.
You know you, you made adecision to hire this person and
I just want to understand yourjourney.
Help me understand your journey.
To give you context.
What I'm trying to do is I'mgoing to be asking you some
questions that are probablygoing to feel a little
uncomfortable.
You're welcome to say I'm notcomfortable answering that, but
(30:34):
you know, just, the more datathat we have, the better, the
more helpful it is.
But I'm trying to implementthis thing called jobs theory,
and this is what jobs theory is.
So it's customers don't buyproducts, they hire them to make
progress, and progress hassocial, functional and emotional
aspects, and I'm just trying tounderstand what that is over
the course of your personaljourney.
(30:55):
So you know, and then you canstart into it.
But by giving them thatgrounding, what it does is it
gives them the confidence toknow that they can do a good job
and helps them contextualizewhat you're looking for so that
they can actually be morehelpful.
(31:16):
Before, when I was doing theseinterviews and I was just kind
of jumping in and trying to be alittle bit more secretive about
it what I found is that theinterviewee, the person being
interviewed, was trying to help,but they didn't understand the
context of these questions thatI was asking, and so some of
these questions became veryrepetitive because they would
(31:39):
give me an answer and it wasn'tquite what I needed.
So I'd come back and ask itjust like five degrees different
, and so it could be kind offrustrating for them, and you
know I would.
I would often find myselfstopping in the middle of the
interview and saying just so youknow, this is why I'm asking
these questions, and then, likea switch, all of a sudden the
(31:59):
interview went a lot smoother.
Katherine Ong (32:01):
Interesting.
So a few logistics around theseinterviews.
You do not script what you'reasking, necessarily, but it
sounds like you do them face toface or via video and do you?
I'm assuming you don't takenotes, but you do record?
Zac Stucki (32:16):
So I actually do take notes and I do them face to
face or via Zoom and I let themknow I'm going to be taking
notes on what you're telling me.
I also tell them that whatthey're sharing with me is, you
know, deeply confidential unlessthey're willing to share.
And we'll reach back out tothem if we need to get
permission to share.
(32:37):
But that confidentiality canoften bring out a lot of insight
that they wouldn't have sharedotherwise.
And yeah, you can do it overZoom, you can do it over face to
face and I do record thesecalls and they're aware that I'm
recording the calls.
I let them know.
But the purpose is is that Ioften will go back and look at
(33:00):
these and contextualize them inall of the framework.
After the fact, when I'm havingthat interview, I'm not so
worried about necessarilyanswering all the all of the
being able to in that instantput everything in the boxes.
It's more about understandingthat journey and walking that
customer through that journeyagain and then, if I have follow
(33:24):
up questions, I'll send them anemail or schedule a follow up
appointment.
But most of the time a goodrule of thumb is to expect that
these calls are going to take atleast an hour, Because you you
cannot in 30 minutes get thelevel of depth that you need.
Otherwise, I've tried, itdoesn't work.
Katherine Ong (33:43):
And these are.
These are.
It's not group, it's 1 on 1.
Confidentiality is with you asan outside consultant versus the
organization, or could you makeso the confidentiality or?
Zac Stucki (33:55):
Right.
So the confidentiality is likeif you're doing a B2B interview,
right so you're interviewingsomeone who's in a partnership.
So I'll give you an example II'm a B2B business, so I often
interview companies that havepartnerships.
Now if I'm interviewing onepartner and they're saying
(34:16):
things that frustrate them aboutanother partner, it can
severely damage the partnershipif that gets out.
But obviously there was a jobthat was involving that
partnership that they needed tobe able to bring up and feel
confident that whatever solutioncould help solve that problem.
But if that confidentialityisn't in place, then it damages
(34:36):
that.
Katherine Ong (34:37):
Yeah, that makes sense.
Zac Stucki (34:39):
I just I want to go back real quick to this idea of
scripting as well, because thisis another really important
thing.
A lot of marketing researchersout there.
They will script these callsand they'll say I have 10
questions that I want to ask youand then they'll ask these 10
questions.
The problem with that is thatit assumes that in 10 questions
(35:00):
you're going to be able to getthe level of detail that you
need to understand something asextremely complicated as a
causal relationship, and wedon't, with jobs theory, we
don't even do one interview andsay that's the cause.
We're looking at doing as manyinterviews as we can.
You know, depending on the sizeof the company, depending on on
what you're doing for them andfor their customers, what they
(35:23):
do for their customers, you'relooking at hundreds of
interviews.
So it really is important tonot fall into that trap, and
it's one of the things that justdrives me crazy about market
research.
Let me give you an example.
So in a former clients of minehave been these business coaches
and they would hire thesemarket researchers to go out and
(35:46):
they're delightful people, veryinsightful, but they would do
this market research and sayhelp me understand why I'm not
churning why I'm not re signingthem.
And so they would do theseinterviews.
They would have these 10questions and they would say you
know, I'm going to ask youthese 10 questions and then just
answer to the best of yourability, and they wouldn't
really do a lot of digging.
(36:06):
The 10 questions wouldinvariably produce three answers
that were you know, help me bemore accountable, I needed more
structure and I needed bettercommunity or something to that
effect.
So they would ask these threequestions, or ask these 10
questions, get these threeanswers, but they would never
(36:27):
follow up with those questions,with those answers, to
understand what those answersactually meant to that customer.
So then the business would thensay great, I know that my
customers want greater structure, greater accountability,
greater communication.
What does that mean?
I don't know, so I have toguess and put it in place.
So you're still wasting time,money and energy trying to
(36:50):
implement based off of that,instead of just going in
unscripted without any sort ofwhich way you want to lead this
interview and just being open towhere the customer will take
you.
There's there's a lot of costinvolved in the first option
versus the second, so that's whyI wanted to touch on that
difference and why it's soimportant not to go in with
(37:12):
scripting.
Katherine Ong (37:14):
Let's go back to that, the logistics around
people.
So I think we talked prior tothis call that you offer up
payment to the folks who arewilling to talk to you from your
clients organization, the users, but then you know if it's a UX
type research project.
The general rule of thumb is 10folks are enough, and I think I
(37:36):
just heard you say hundreds.
So what's the bare minimum gotonly because I'm thinking about
clients and asking about budget.
Zac Stucki (37:43):
Yeah.
Katherine Ong (37:44):
What's the bare minimum of people you think you
need to talk to, and I'm sure itdepends on how big the
organization is, because Iworked with some organizations
that cover 1000 different topics, so obviously different job
sprawl topics, you know honestly.
But if it's relatively a smallbusiness, maybe they have two
service areas.
We'll just take that as anexample.
Yeah, how many folks would youneed to talk to?
Zac Stucki (38:04):
Great question.
So what you're exposing here isthere is a deeply divided
debate, and statistics which ishere like what who would have
thought?
Statistics is divided betweenBayesian statistic statisticians
and I think it's Haley, andthere's another guy, and this
base wrote this thing called thecentral limit theorem and it's
(38:27):
basically based off of the sizeof your market.
If you can have 30 data points,you can get what's called a
normal distribution, which is abell curve.
That that you can, because ofmathematical wizardry, guarantee
that about 90% of thepopulation will be will fit in
that bell curve.
And another group says no,that's that's.
(38:49):
While it may be mathematicallyaccurate, it is not.
It is not factually correctbased off of what the real world
looks like.
So the thing that I say is erron the side of getting more
interviews, not less.
And you know, if you can onlyget 10 interviews, get 10
(39:11):
interviews.
If that's what your budget canafford, and get 200, get 200,
because the more data you have,the more you will increase your
ability to find and track thesepatterns that go on in these
customer experiences that leadthem down to hiring your product
(39:34):
or service.
Now you touched on saying thatthat I do compensate these
individuals when they interview.
My rule of thumb is if I canget them in an interview for
free, I'm doing it for free.
If I, if if I have tocompensate people to get them
into the interview, then I'llcompensate them, and it's
(39:56):
generally compensation isrelated to who the user is and
how much they value your value,their time.
So if I'm a B2B and I want tospeak directly to the, the CEO,
I'm probably going to pay him$300 for that hour.
If I am doing B2C and I want totalk to a mom of young kids,
(40:20):
I'm probably gonna say I'll giveyou a $20 Amazon gift card.
Or some guys even get by withsaying I will enter you for the
chance to win a $20 Amazon giftcard.
So like, the more that you cando it to stay free or low cost,
the better.
Katherine Ong (40:40):
Yeah, that makes sense.
All right, so you've got togive us all these tips around
gathering information about yourcustomers.
You've got new informationabout segments, personas, who
you're gonna target, what themessage might be.
Also, information that needs tobe integrated through the rest
of the organization, and once weknow, a lot of organizations
are siloed.
So how do you engage theseteams in this sort of
(41:03):
cross-functional way to makesure that this all flows through
the organization?
And if they're notcross-functional at all, do you
have any tips around how to makethat successful?
Zac Stucki (41:13):
Yeah.
So Job Series is actually areally, really great tool to use
to make things cross-functional, because what I experience is
that when businesses understandthe actual progress that their
customer is hiring them to doand you orient around, that
you're able to tell your team.
This is the measuring stick bywhich all your decisions should
(41:36):
be looked at Are you helping thecustomer make progress or are
you making it more difficult forthe customer to make progress?
Finance is your billingmethodology?
The way that you get money fromcustomers, does it make it
easier or more difficult forthem to make progress?
Operations are you deliveringon that progress?
Jeez, admin, customer serviceare you helping or are you
(42:01):
hurting?
And it gives everybody sort ofthis Rosetta Stone that allows
them to communicate in a reallyvaluable way.
So it helps break down thesesilos just by training the
organization.
So there are a lot of differentways that you can implement it.
(42:22):
It depends on your organization, depends on how you want to do
it.
You could do have arepresentative from each member
of the team, each member, onemember of each department, be
involved in the research, right,so you could do it that way.
You could do it that once theresearch is done, you have one
team that does it.
Once that research is done,it's their responsibility to go
(42:44):
out to every department andtrain them on their findings.
You can do that.
It's like each department isindependently doing their
research to understand this.
So they're all doing thisresearch.
One thing that Intercom doesthat I think is actually really
effective for them is that theyrequire that employees engage in
(43:09):
four I think it's four jobresearch interviews every.
It's either every quarter orevery year, so it's either once
a quarter or four per year orfour per quarter and I can't
remember which.
But basically it requires thatthey stay on top of the
methodology and that they'retalking to their customers so
(43:31):
that they're understanding thejob and keeping that front and
center in their mind.
So there's a lot of ways thatyou can do it.
The key thing is that you justget started.
They can also hire me and I canhelp them do it.
Katherine Ong (43:45):
Right.
Well, it sounds like there's alot of you're restructuring
internal KPIs and there's a bitof organizational change that
you might have to help with aswell, right?
Zac Stucki (43:58):
Yeah, and that is just the nature of the beast,
because a lot of times when webuild these organizations, we
build them with internal focus.
So this is the supply, it's gotthese features and these
benefits.
Do you want some?
But customers don't buy thatway.
They don't think that way.
When you were buying your house,you weren't thinking about
(44:22):
necessarily all of the featuresand benefits per se.
You were thinking about does ithave this and that and the
other?
And when I walk in, am I gonnabe able to feel like I'm at home
?
Do I like the neighborhood?
There was a lot more than justit's got a gas stove and it's
got a 500 gallon gas tank outback.
(44:43):
Like you weren't thinking aboutthat.
You were thinking maybe does ithave a gas stove, but you
weren't necessarily thinkingabout the specifications, the
product specifications of therefrigerator, or does it have a
jetted tub with exactly six jets?
So you were thinking about allof these other different
(45:06):
progresses that you were tryingto make.
So that's where I come back to.
Is that making this shift froman internally focused
organization into an externallyfocused organization that is
focused on the customer?
Progress does take time.
It does take deliberatelymanaging the change, but when
(45:30):
done properly, it's extremelyeffective and creates massive
growth for organizations.
Katherine Ong (45:38):
But two sort of last questions like one, what do
you do if there's a lot ofresistance?
Because I can envision this isa bit like digital marketing you
show up with somethingdisruptive.
And two, how do you make surethat they sustain this?
I mean, I guess you sort ofanswer that because some of
these organizations have aregular keep meeting with your
(45:59):
customer process but I'm justkind of curious if there's any
other best practices for makingsure this is not one and done,
but this is like an evergreenthing.
Zac Stucki (46:08):
Yeah, great question .
So you know you will likelyfind resistance to the ideas of
the progress that your customeris trying to make, and what
you'll find is that the peoplewho are hiding in your
organization aren't really gonnabe able to hide as well anymore
, because jobs theory requiresactive implementation.
(46:31):
It's not very passive, and whatI mean by that is that, when
done properly, all members ofthe team have to be clear on
what that progress is and theyhave to be actively working
toward that progress.
If you're not, then you're out.
Second way that I will sayconflict comes into an
(46:51):
organization during thisimplementation is that they get
a lot of people who disagreeabout what the job is not
necessarily about the need toorient around the customer,
because capitalism is all aroundserving the customer.
So they agree yes, we need toserve the customer.
They may not agree on what thatis.
(47:13):
So when that happens, there'ssomething called the four phases
of team development that youcan guide your team through.
That will really help with that.
When you pair that with edgemethod leadership edge like edge
of a cliff, edge methodleadership it can be very
effective change management.
And then what was the secondpart of that question?
Katherine Ong (47:35):
We can make sure that they keep this up.
Zac Stucki (47:39):
Okay.
So intercom, like you mentioned, they do a really good job of
requiring people do regularresearch interviews, which I
think is a really good one.
Another one is and this is whatI urge my clients to do and
actually they'll pay me to helpthem implement it is turning
innovation in the organizationover to your team.
(48:00):
So what I mean by that is thatClayton Christensen talks about
three types of innovation.
First one is disruptiveinnovation, which is how you
build new markets by servingunderserved target audiences.
It's really difficult to do andwhen done properly, it can be a
game changer.
Most businesses do not have thecore competencies, they don't
(48:23):
have the resources to do that.
Number two is sustaininginnovation.
Sustaining innovation is allabout growing your market share
by doing what you do for yourcustomer better than anyone else
.
That is something that thepeople on the front line are way
more intimate with than thepeople in the C-suite.
So the people on the front lineare the people who should be
(48:46):
leading innovation, which meansthat they need to be keyed in to
that job to be done.
So it means that they need tobe having regular refresher
courses, regular conversationswith the rest of the team,
testing these ideas out,implementing Kaizen methodology
to find these solutions toproblems and really test them
and implement them.
And then the last part of thisis consistency.
(49:15):
In an organization starts at thetop and works its way down.
If the C-suite isn't on boardwith this and isn't consistently
driving this and isn't showingthrough their actions that they
are on board with this and thatthey are adopting things and
doing the same things that theyexpect the rest of the team to
do, then it's not gonna last,it's not gonna get implemented.
(49:38):
And that, I think, is where alot of people miss, because
they'll say hey, here's this newproduct, excuse me, here's this
new methodology, this newproject that we wanna implement.
Because people at the top aregenerally, if it's an owner
operated business, they'regenerally idea guys, they get
(49:59):
carried away with ideas.
So they say this is the newthing, this is the shiny new toy
.
It's important that the leader,right, the owner that's
operating this business, thatthey have that space to do that.
But with jobs theory, youcannot abandon it for another
shiny new toy.
(50:19):
And so it's very important thatthe other members of the team
hold them accountable, that theyare all doing these interviews
just like they're expectingeverybody else to do that.
They're all taking time on thefront lines.
This is actually one of theways that Walmart is really
exemplary is that doesn't matterwhat job they do at corporate
in Bentonville, they are stillspending time on the store floor
(50:41):
in the vest doing the work forthe average person who's coming
in, so that they can get thattime on the ground talking,
interacting with the customer aswell, to keep the customer
front and center in their mind.
Katherine Ong (50:57):
Yeah, so that's what I was thinking that this is
very disruptive and if youdon't have seen your buy-in,
because you're basicallychanging organizational culture.
So it could be very powerfulbut only if you have C-suite
buy-in to do that muchdisruption.
Because it doesn't sound likeit's a minor thing, it sounds
like it's kind of a majordisruption.
Zac Stucki (51:14):
So Well, yeah, you're absolutely right.
It's not a minor thing, but Imean it could be the difference
between staying at seven figuresor growing to nine.
Katherine Ong (51:28):
Right, yeah, no, it's powerful, but still a big
change.
Yeah, so I've got sort of threefinal questions.
Thank you for being on the show, by the way.
So the last three and you'veshared a lot of resources but.
If there's any other resourcesthat you have and if you have
any sort of aha moments thatyou've had recently with your
customer interviews, where sometarget audience had a completely
(51:52):
different behavior than you hadexpected.
Zac Stucki (51:55):
Okay, yeah, so resources, Competing Against
Luck by Clayton Christensenthat's the book that he he so he
introduces it, the concept inhow will you measure your life,
but but competing against luckis really where he dives in and
fleshes it out, and so that'swhere I recommend people start.
(52:18):
Demand Side Sales 101 is by BobMesta, who helped implement
this with Clay, and he takes itand he says how do we apply jobs
, Dary in a marketing and salescontext?
So that's another good place tostart.
I kind of recommend competingagainst luck then into Demand
(52:41):
Side Sales.
And then Clay did a really greattalk before he passed away in
2020, called when Does GrowthCome From, and he delivered that
at Google, and I think it's in2017 that he delivered that.
But just just type in wheredoes growth come from and it
pops right up.
He outlines this theory ofdisruptive innovation, which is
(53:04):
the three types of innovationthat I talk about.
He also talks about jobs theoryand then he applies it to
businesses and says so this iswhat it means Highly, highly.
Oh, it's a dense, dense lecture, but incredibly beneficial and
valuable.
Okay, so that's question one.
What was question two?
Katherine Ong (53:25):
Have you had any aha moments about your client's
target audience or your targetaudience, something that
surprised you once you startedlearning more about them?
Zac Stucki (53:33):
Yeah.
So I was talking with a guy acouple of weeks ago and one of
the things that I had beenoperating under the assumption
of was that people were hiringme to help them get free of
their business, and that wasonly a part of it.
(53:54):
But the thing that really hit mewas just how much these
business owners that are in thisposition where they're at seven
figures and they want tocontinue to grow, just how much
confidence was really at playand how heavily that weighed in,
as well as how heavily having,in that size of business, a
(54:21):
personal relationship with theirconsultant mattered.
I think I talked with threepeople in a row who all said,
yeah, I hired a coach and thereason why I hired them was
because we were a friend.
They were a friend of minebefore and I just hired them.
It was funny because theyalways said it didn't work out.
(54:43):
It didn't work out but I hiredthem and so that personal
relationship.
It was always reallyinteresting to me to see just
how deeply that was involved,because one guy even said I
don't know that I would havegone out looking for a coach or
consultant if I didn't have oneof them already in my personal
(55:07):
network.
Katherine Ong (55:08):
That's interesting.
Yeah, yeah, a lot of trustthere really.
So how can people learn moreabout you?
Zac Stucki (55:16):
They can go to businesslegendconsultingcom, or
they can email me at Zach athollaricconsultingcom, homeric
is spelled like Homer Simpsonwith an IC at the end.
Or they can go to Facebook,twitter, youtube, linkedin.
I'm on all of them HomericConsulting.
(55:38):
Or search Zach or ZacharyStuckey and I'll come up.
Katherine Ong (55:42):
Great, this has been fabulous.
Thank you very much.
Lots of great tips.
Yeah, I now know a ton aboutjob theory.
It's awesome.
Zac Stucki (55:50):
My pleasure.
Can I add just one tiny bug inhere real quick?
Totally so.
I have just put out a new quizthat helps business owners
determine how able their helpsthem determine the scalability
of their business.
It's 10 yes or no questions,very simple.
(56:14):
But if they go toHomericconsultingcom, slash
scalability underscore quiz andI'll make sure that it's on the
homepage so it should be easyfor them to find just in the top
search bar.
It's 10 questions, super easy.
It will help them determine howable they really are in their
(56:36):
present state to scale or ifthey've got work to do.
Katherine Ong (56:39):
Great, that's an awesome resource.
I'll make sure I'll be added tothe show now, thank you.
Thank you for your time today.
Zac Stucki (56:46):
Yeah, thank you, Katherine, it's been a pleasure.
Katherine Ong (56:51):
Thanks so much for listening.
To find out more about thepodcast and what we're up to, go
to digitalmarketingvictories.
com and, if you like what youheard, subscribe to us on iTunes
or wherever you get yourpodcasts.
Rate us, comment and share thepodcast, please.
I'm always looking for newideas, topics and guests.
Email us atdigitalmarketingvictories.
com or DM us on Twitter atDMVictories.
(57:13):
Thanks for listening.
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