The Job to Be Done - What Financial “Job” Is Your Client Trying to Get Done?

Turn Around Your Approach to Clients and Prospects

There is an adage in the innovation space that says, “it is easier to make things people want than it is to make people want things.” However, we as Financial Advisors continue our struggle to move from selling our services to helping our customers discern what precisely they need and then, having them buy those products or services from us.

Unfortunately, for Financial Advisors, start-up Fintech platforms have used that adage to add millions of new customers in the last two years, while most advisors can count on one hand the number of new households they have added. To compete, you need to become far more effective in delivering value people seek to buy.  

The best way to accomplish this is by adopting an innovation process known as “Jobs to Be Done.” [1] To assist you in adopting this process,  I recommend a free book by Anthony Ulwick [2], which you can download here.

What is “Jobs to be Done”?

“The theory of “Jobs to Be Done” (JTBD) is based on the idea that people buy products and services to get “jobs” done.” [2]  Strategyn, the firm owned by Anthony Ulwick, who wrote, Jobs to Be Done, posits the following: “The key to successful innovation is identifying jobs that are poorly performed in customers’ lives and then designing products, experiences, and processes around those jobs.” [2]  

As a Financial Advisor, you need to dramatically change how you approach clients by reimagining how to use your products and services differently. Because of the competitive pressures we are under, you must innovate to survive and prosper. Where do you begin? By crafting a new value promise.

What Exactly Is Your Client Trying to Do?

To appreciate the theory of “Jobs to Be Done” as an innovation path for you, think of any outcome from an activity a client takes to make changes in their personal financial condition as a “job to be done.” Your task is to understand a client’s list of “jobs to be done,” then discern where you can add value, leading to your client buying your solution.

Few of us think to ask clients the question, “what are you trying to do?” Why? Because we are so confident in our assumptions about what our clients want that we don’t ask the question.  That is where Fintech is beating you. But an advisor using the JTBD approach can quickly turn the standard process around and ask your client,  “what are you trying to get done?” and their answer may surprise you!

For example, an advisor team I worked with used this new approach when conducting  “pre-retirement” planning. They had to understand in detail “the job” their pre-retirement clients wanted to be done.  In various ways, all of these clients expressed the job they wanted to be done as “living in retirement with confidence.”

 To accomplish this task, these clients wanted to establish guidelines on spending, investing, gifting, long-term care, and many others, and which events might require changing those guidelines. Monitoring the client’s finances and reminding them if they strayed from the guidelines became a key value add. By changing their value promise from creating a plan to monitoring and adjusting when circumstances changed, their offer is now completely aligned with “the jobs to be done” of these clients. 

Because they flipped their orientation from “what we do, how we do it, and what we charge for it,” to the reverse, “what is the client’s ‘job to be done and how they can create a solution for that job,” their client relationship scores, profitability, and referrals are at all-time highs.

Now is the time to build your capacity to innovate by adopting the JTBD approach to create new solutions and value that people want to buy.

Resources: 

[1] christenseninstitute.org/jobs-to-be-done/

[2] https://strategyn.com/lp-what-is-jtbd/

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Contributing Writer: Subject Matter Expert Charles McCain