Beyond the Funnel: Using JTBD to Find Untapped Growth in Your Purchase Journey
Uncover why customers really buy (and why they don't) by focusing on their true "Job" within the purchase process.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Beyond the Funnel – Why Your Current Purchase Journey Insights Are Falling Short
Deconstructing the "Purchase Journey": What Job Are Customers Really Trying to Get Done?
A New Strategy: Evaluating the Purchase Journey with Jobs-to-be-Done
Elevating the Abstraction: Innovating the Purchase Journey Itself
Benefits of a JTBD-Driven Purchase Journey Evaluation Strategy
Conclusion: Stop Optimizing a Broken Journey, Start Innovating It.
Introduction: Beyond the Funnel – Why Your Current Purchase Journey Insights Are Falling Short
For decades, businesses have relied on the sales funnel as the primary model for understanding how customers buy. We meticulously track conversion rates from awareness to purchase, optimizing each stage. But if you're still seeing customers drop off, choose competitors despite your best efforts, or express frustration with the buying process, it’s a clear sign that the traditional funnel isn't telling you the whole story.
The Evolving Customer: Increased expectations, information overload.
Today’s customers are more informed, have access to more choices, and consequently, have higher expectations than ever before. They navigate a complex web of information, reviews, and social proof. A linear, company-defined funnel often fails to capture the messy reality of their decision-making process. They don't just move through your stages; they are trying to achieve their own outcomes successfully.
Limitations of Traditional Purchase Journey Metrics
Metrics like click-through rates, time on page, or stage-gate conversion rates tell you what is happening, but they rarely explain why. They show symptoms – like a high cart abandonment rate – but don't diagnose the root cause of the customer's struggle. Are they confused? Is information missing? Do they lack confidence? Traditional metrics often leave these critical questions unanswered.
Introducing the Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) Lens
This is where Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) theory offers a transformative lens. JTBD proposes that customers "hire" products or services to get a specific "job" done. When we apply this to the purchase journey, we shift our focus from our internal process to the customer's desired progress. The purchase itself is a means to an end, a part of a larger job they are trying to accomplish.
Thesis
A JTBD-driven strategy for evaluating the purchase journey moves beyond surface-level analytics to uncover deep, actionable insights into customer motivations and pain points. By understanding the "job" customers are trying to get done through the purchase process, businesses can identify unique innovation opportunities, leading to more effective journey design, higher satisfaction, and ultimately, sustainable growth.
Deconstructing the "Purchase Journey": What Job Are Customers Really Trying to Get Done?
Before we can re-engineer how we evaluate the purchase journey, we must first redefine what it truly represents from the customer's perspective. It's not just a series of steps they take; it’s a significant undertaking to achieve a new level of success in their life or work.
The Purchase Journey as a Job
Think of the entire act of "making a purchase" (especially for considered purchases) as a primary job in itself, or a crucial collection of smaller jobs. Customers aren't just "buying a CRM"; they are trying to Achieve better management of customer relationships to grow their business. The purchase journey is the process they endure to hire the best solution for that core job.
Examples of overarching jobs that might necessitate a purchase journey:
Acquiring a new capability to overcome a current limitation.
Resolving a persistent problem that is hindering progress.
Transitioning to an improved state or a more desirable situation.
Identifying Core Functional and Emotional Jobs
Within any significant purchase, customers are trying to get multiple jobs done. These include:
Functional Jobs: The practical, objective tasks the customer is trying to accomplish. For example, when buying a car, a functional job is to Obtain reliable transportation. During the purchase journey itself, a functional job is to Evaluate different vehicle options efficiently.
Emotional Jobs: How the customer wants to feel (or avoid feeling) as a result of executing the job. For the car purchase, an emotional job might be to Feel confident in the investment or Feel proud of the vehicle they choose. During the purchase journey, they might want to Feel respected by the salesperson or Avoid feeling overwhelmed by choices.
Understanding both functional and emotional components provides a much richer picture of customer needs.
The role of context
The specific circumstances surrounding a purchase dramatically influence the customer's job and how they approach the journey. A first-time homebuyer has a very different "purchase job" and will navigate the journey differently than an experienced property investor. Someone buying software under a tight deadline will prioritize different aspects of the journey than someone casually exploring options. Context is everything because it dictates the desired outcomes and the urgency of achieving them.
The Shortcomings of Traditional Purchase Journey Evaluation
If traditional purchase journey evaluations were sufficient, there would be little need for a new approach. However, their limitations are becoming increasingly apparent:
Over-reliance on company-defined stages and touchpoints: Most journey maps are built from an internal, company-centric perspective. They define stages like "Awareness," "Consideration," "Decision," which might not accurately reflect how customers actually think or behave. Customers often loop back, skip stages, or engage in activities outside the company's defined touchpoints.
Impact: This leads to a skewed understanding of the real experience and missed opportunities to support customers where they actually are.
Focus on symptoms rather than root causes: As mentioned earlier, metrics like drop-off rates at a particular webpage tell you where a problem might be, but not why it's a problem for the customer in achieving their outcomes. Is the information unclear? Is the process too complex? Is there a lack of trust?
Impact: Solutions often address the symptom (e.g., redesigning the webpage) without fixing the underlying unmet need, leading to wasted effort.
Missed opportunities for differentiation because everyone is looking at the same limited data: When competitors use the same traditional analytics and funnel views, they tend to arrive at similar, incremental improvements. True differentiation comes from seeing the journey through a unique lens that uncovers unmet needs others have overlooked.
Impact: Products and services become commoditized, and competition defaults to price or features wars rather than genuine value innovation in the experience itself.
A New Strategy: Evaluating the Purchase Journey with Jobs-to-be-Done
Adopting a JTBD lens allows us to systematically evaluate and innovate the purchase journey by focusing on the customer's objectives. Here’s a four-step approach:
Step 1: 🚨 Define the "Main Purchase Job" and Key "Journey Jobs." 🚨
What overarching outcome is the customer seeking by engaging in this purchase process? This is the "Main Purchase Job." For example, a company purchasing new accounting software isn't just buying software; they are trying to Ensure accurate and efficient financial management for regulatory compliance and strategic decision-making.
Break down the journey into smaller, discrete jobs (Journey Jobs). These are the critical tasks customers must complete to successfully navigate the purchase process. Examples include:
Determining the complete set of requirements for a solution.
Identifying all potential solution providers.
Evaluating the capabilities of alternative solutions against their requirements.
Assessing the credibility and reliability of potential providers.
Finalizing the terms of the transaction.
Preparing for the implementation and use of the acquired solution. (Some of these align with broader Consumption Chain Journeys like the "Learning Journey" – understanding the offerings – or the "Acquisition Journey" – the mechanics of buying )
Step 2: Uncover Desired Outcomes for Each Journey Job.
For each Journey Job identified, determine what success looks like for the customer. These are their desired outcomes, often expressed as unmet needs or success metrics.
Use a standardized format for outcome statements: Verb + Object of Verb + Contextual Clarifier. This ensures clarity and actionability. Examples related to the Journey Job "Evaluating the capabilities of alternative solutions against their requirements":
Minimize the time it takes to compare the features of different software packages side-by-side.
Increase the ease of understanding how each solution specifically addresses our unique integration needs.
Feel confident in understanding the total cost of ownership, including any hidden fees, before making a commitment.
Reduce the uncertainty associated with assessing the long-term scalability of each option.
Step 3: Map the Actual Customer Journey & Measure Outcome Achievement.
Go beyond assumptions. Use qualitative research techniques like AI prompting (fast, easy, accurate, and cheap), customer interviews, contextual inquiry (observing customers as they go through the process), and observational research to understand the steps customers actually take, the tools they use, the pain points they encounter, and the workarounds they develop.
Identify where customers struggle to achieve their desired outcomes for each Journey Job. Where do they spend too much time? Where are they most frustrated or confused? Where do they feel a lack of control or confidence?
Step 4: Pinpoint Underserved Outcomes – The Seeds of Innovation.
Where are the biggest gaps between the importance of a desired outcome to the customer and their current level of satisfaction with achieving it through existing solutions/journeys? These are your underserved outcomes.
These gaps are not just problems to be fixed; they are prime opportunities for innovation. Addressing these underserved outcomes can lead to significant improvements in the existing purchase journey or even inspire the creation of entirely new, more effective journeys.
Community Resource Plug: To help you get started with journey modeling using JTBD, I offer free prompts and even a pre-baked purchase journey model template (as well as 16 others) in my community. This can accelerate your efforts to map out these steps and identify critical outcomes.
Elevating the Abstraction: Innovating the Purchase Journey Itself
A JTBD-driven evaluation doesn't just help you tweak your existing purchase journey; it empowers you to fundamentally rethink and innovate it. This involves "elevating the level of abstraction" – looking beyond the current way of doing things to imagine entirely new solutions that get the customer's underlying job done far more effectively, often with fewer visible steps or features in the journey itself.
Working Today (That Few Are Doing):
These are approaches that are currently viable and deliver significant value, but are not yet mainstream:
Proactive Journey Support: Instead of waiting for customers to get stuck, use forward-looking data and behavioral insights (backward-looking data) to anticipate their needs within the journey. For example, if a customer is spending an unusually long time on a comparison page for complex products, proactively offer a chat with a specialist or a guide to simplify the "Configuration Journey" or "Integration Journey" aspects as part of their purchase evaluation.
Hyper-Personalized Paths: Move beyond one-size-fits-all funnels. Dynamically tailor the information, tools, and support offered based on the customer's specific Job-to-be-Done, their context (e.g., industry, company size, technical expertise), and their progress through their unique desired outcomes.
Focus on Consumption Job Success: The purchase journey shouldn't just be about closing a sale. It should be about setting the customer up for success with what they've bought. This means integrating elements that help them learn how to use the product, integrate it into their workflow, and start achieving value quickly, even before the transaction is complete. The purchase journey becomes a direct enabler of successful consumption.
Novel Concepts for the Future (Getting the Job Done Better, Differently, Lower Cost, Fewer Visible Features):
These are more forward-looking concepts that represent a significant leap in how purchase journeys are designed, focusing on making the customer's life dramatically easier.
Collapsed Journeys: Imagine solutions that seamlessly integrate multiple steps of the traditional purchase journey—and even some post-purchase jobs like setup or initial use—into a single, fluid interaction. The "purchase" itself might become an almost invisible, frictionless event that occurs as a natural consequence of the customer successfully defining their need and solution. The value is in the dramatically reduced effort and time for the customer.
AI-Powered "Purchase Concierges": Envision intelligent systems that deeply understand a customer's core functional job and their desired outcomes. These AI concierges could proactively research, vet, configure, and present the ideal solution, abstracting away the immense complexity of choice, comparison, and technical specifications. Here, "fewer visible features" refers to the purchase process itself becoming radically simplified because the AI handles the heavy lifting, presenting only the necessary information for a confident decision.
Outcome-as-a-Service Models within the Purchase: While often discussed for product usage, this can extend to the purchase. Instead of just selling a product, you offer a guaranteed path to achieving the core job related to the purchase. The "purchase journey" becomes an experience where the customer is guided to make choices that directly contribute to their ultimate desired outcome, with the vendor taking more responsibility for ensuring that outcome is met. The evaluation of such a journey would focus on how effectively and efficiently the customer is moved towards their higher-level goal, with the transaction being a single enabling step.
Benefits of a JTBD-Driven Purchase Journey Evaluation Strategy
Adopting this customer-centric, outcome-driven approach to evaluating and designing purchase journeys yields substantial benefits:
Deeper customer empathy and understanding: You move beyond personas and demographics to understand the fundamental motivations and struggles of your customers.
Identification of unique and defensible innovation opportunities: By focusing on underserved outcomes, you can discover opportunities that competitors, stuck in traditional models, are likely missing.
More effective resource allocation for journey improvements: Instead of randomly trying to improve touchpoints, you can focus your efforts on the parts of the journey that matter most to customers in achieving their jobs.
Increased customer satisfaction, loyalty, and conversion: When the purchase journey actively helps customers achieve their outcomes efficiently and effectively, they are more satisfied, more likely to complete the purchase, and more likely to become loyal advocates.
Ability to design purchase experiences that truly differentiate: You can create journeys that are not just easy to use, but are genuinely valuable in helping customers make progress, setting you apart from the competition.
Conclusion: Stop Optimizing a Broken Journey, Start Innovating It.
The traditional sales funnel has served its purpose, but in an era of empowered customers and rapid technological change, it’s no longer enough. Minor optimizations to a fundamentally flawed or misaligned purchase journey will only yield incremental gains.
By embracing a Jobs-to-be-Done approach, you can shift your perspective from your internal processes to your customers' desired progress. This allows you to uncover their true needs, identify their biggest struggles within the purchase process, and pinpoint the most promising opportunities for innovation. The goal is not just to make your current journey a little better, but to re-imagine how you can help customers achieve their purchase-related jobs in ways that are dramatically more effective, efficient, and satisfying. This is how you move from merely competing to truly leading.
Now it's your turn to think about the purchase journey through a JTBD lens:
What's the most frustrating part of the purchase journey for your customers (or for you as a customer) in your industry?
How could applying the JTBD steps discussed here help you rethink your current evaluation methods and uncover new insights? (Don't forget to check out the free journey model resources mentioned in Section IV.D to get a head start!)
Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments below. Let's discuss how we can all build better purchase journeys that genuinely serve our customers.
If you’d like to take action, I would love to help. Here’s are some steps you can take to make that a reality for us:
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Why Me?
I often turn down projects that don’t align with my expertise to maintain the quality of my work.
I’ve been trained by the best in Outcome-Driven Innovation. Part of that training involved how to understand what the future should look like. As a result, I’ve taken what I’ve learned and begun innovating so I can get you to the outcomes you’re seeking faster, better, and even more predictably. Anyone preaching innovation should be doing the same; regardless of how disruptive it’ll be.
How am I doing this?
I’ve developed a complete toolset that accelerates qualitative research to mere hours instead of the weeks or months it used to take. It’s been fine-tuned over the past 2+ years and it’s second-to-none (including to humans). That means we can have far more certainty that we’ve properly framed your research before you invest in a basket of road apples. They don’t taste good, even with whipped cream on top.
I’m also working on a completely new concept for prioritizing market dynamics that predict customer needs (and success) without requiring time-consuming and costly surveys with low quality participants. This is far more powerful and cost effective than the point-in-time surveys that I know you don’t want to do!
I believe that an innovation consultant should eat their own dog food. Therefore, we must always strive to:
Get more of the job done for our clients
Get the job done better for our clients
Get the job done faster for our clients
Get the job done with with fewer features for our clients
Get the job done in a completely different and novel way for our clients
Get the job done in a less costly manner for our clients
But more importantly, I strive to deliver high quality and high availability. That's why I also have to be choosy.
All the links you need are a few paragraphs up. Or set up some time to talk … that link is down below. 👇🏻
Mike Boysen - www.pjtbd.com
Why fail fast when you can succeed the first time?
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