Essay
A drill is a wonderfully clear product from the manufacturer's side of the table. It has power, weight, battery life and a price. From the customer's side, the picture is less tidy. Someone wants a hole because they want a shelf, because they want a room that works, because they are tired of living among boxes. The purchase sits inside a change they want to make. The drill matters, but it is not the destination.
Even the hole is not necessarily the final answer. A renter might want storage without damaging the wall. A parent might want the satisfaction of making a home feel settled. Someone else might want to complete the work without having to ask for help. Similar products can serve different forms of progress. And different products, services or decisions can compete to deliver the same progress.
That is the useful shift behind Jobs to Be Done: people hire products to move from their current circumstances towards a desired outcome. They are not simply buying an object or expressing a demographic identity. They are trying to get somewhere. For a leader, understanding that movement is more consequential than perfecting another description of what the product contains.
The real competitor may not look like you
A company selling project-management software may assume its competitors are other software vendors. But a team might be choosing between buying the platform, continuing with spreadsheets, hiring a coordinator or tolerating missed deadlines. The desired progress could be keeping client promises without the founder having to chase every task. A longer feature list will not necessarily beat the familiarity of the spreadsheet or the perceived safety of hiring someone.
This changes the sales conversation. Instead of leading with dashboards and integrations, the seller needs to understand when coordination became intolerable, who carries the consequences and what switching would disrupt. The owner may want visibility while employees fear another reporting burden. Procurement may care about security while the person using the tool cares about avoiding duplicate work. There is no single customer benefit until those tensions are understood.
Features still matter. They are evidence that the promised progress is possible. An integration can show that a team will not need to enter the same information twice. Clear permissions can show that sensitive work will remain protected. But naming a capability is not the same as explaining its value. Value emerges when the capability meets a circumstance that someone wants to change.
Progress has practical, emotional and social dimensions
Consider a meal service. It might compete on ingredients, recipes and delivery options. Yet a household could be hiring it to get through a difficult working week without another argument about dinner. The practical outcome is food on the table. The emotional outcome is relief from planning. The social outcome may be feeling like someone who takes care of the family. None of those dimensions makes the food less important; they explain why the food matters.
Context also changes the tradeoffs. On a quiet Sunday, cooking from scratch might be part of the desired experience. On a Tuesday after a late meeting, the same person might prioritise predictability over variety. A business that labels this customer merely as convenience-seeking misses the conditions that make convenience valuable. Circumstances often explain choices that an abstract persona cannot.
Emotional and social progress should not become an excuse for manipulative branding. Promising confidence while delivering an unreliable service simply adds disappointment to the original problem. The responsible commercial question is whether the experience actually reduces the customer's uncertainty, protects their standing or makes a difficult task manageable. An emotion in an advertisement is not proof of an emotion delivered.
Listen for the decision, not the compliment
Useful customer research follows a real decision. What was happening before the search began? What made the existing arrangement no longer acceptable? Which alternatives were considered, and what almost prevented the purchase? Asking someone to reconstruct that sequence gives the business something more useful than a general statement about what they like. It reveals pressure, hesitation and the compromises they were willing to make.
Leaders should include people who delayed, abandoned or never adopted the product, not only satisfied customers. In B2B, they should hear from the buyer and the users whose working day changes. The findings need to influence decisions: a simpler implementation might matter more than another feature; a reliable delivery window might matter more than a wider catalogue. Research that cannot change a priority is often just reassurance with a budget.
The same discipline belongs in measurement. Selling the software is an acquisition outcome; enabling the team to coordinate work reliably is customer progress. Selling a meal subscription is not the same as helping a household sustain an easier routine. Repeat use, time to a useful outcome and reasons for abandonment can test whether the promise survives contact with daily life. Revenue remains essential, but it does not explain the whole mechanism that produces it.
When a business understands progress, it can make sharper choices about product, positioning and delivery. It stops confusing more functionality with more value and starts asking what genuinely helps the customer move. The shelf, the calmer evening, the client promise kept: these are not decorative stories around a product. They are reasons for hiring it. People don't buy products. They buy progress.