Jobs to be Done 

You’ve probably heard of the jobs to be done framework. It’s an idea made popular by Clayton Christensen, a former professor at Harvard Business School.

Christensen and his team were working with McDonalds to increase the sales of their milkshakes. They had been interviewing customers, asking them what they should do to improve their shakes. The customers would tell them, usually they had good ideas, and McDonald’s would implement the changes and nothing would happen. Shake sales stayed the same.

So Christensen and his team applied the jobs to be done framework to the problem. That’s the idea that customers have a job that they need to get done. And they hire a product to do the job.

In this case, McDonald’s customers were hiring milkshakes to do a particular job. And Christensen wanted to understand, what is that job?

So they send researchers to McDonald’s to see who was buying shakes and when? Were they alone? Did they buy other food with the shake? Did they eat the shake at the restaurant or take it away?

And it turned out that more than half of the shakes sold at McDonald’s were sold before 8:30 in the morning. And for those customers, it was the only thing they bought. They were always alone, and they always took it away with them. And that struck the research team as a little odd.

So they went back and interviewed these customers, asking, “what job are you trying to get done that causes you to come to McDonald’s at 6:30 in the morning to hire a milkshake?

It turned out they all had the same job to do. The had a long, borning drive to work and they needed something to keep them engaged and awake as they drove. One hand had to be on the wheel, but there are two hands and nothing to do with that other hand.

They’re not hungry yet, but they will be hungry in a couple of hours, So they needed something to tie them over. Other things they hired for the same job included bananas and donuts, but those were gone in a minute and they were hungry less than an hour later.

But the milkshakes were so thick they were hard to consume quickly. Most of them lasted close to a half an hour—unlike the replacements. And the milkshakes kept them full longer.

The researchers also found that the other half of milk shake consumers were completely different. These were purchased primarily in the afternoon, usually by a parent for their child. They were using the milkshake to create an opportunity to spend time together and in the little time they have together to let them know they cared for them.

McDonald’s thought people were buying milkshakes, but what they were really buying was not being bored during drive time or time with their kids. 

There’s an important research lesson here. As you talk to customers, non-buyers and other prospects, keep in mind that what they are buying may not be what you or your clients are selling.

When you sit down to write, your copy needs to be focused on what they are buying, not what you are selling. And that’s what the next module will help you discover.