Uncover the Jobs to be Done - FA3
People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!”
—Theodore Levitt, Harvard Business School professor of Marketing
Are you struggling to communicate your value to potential clients as a financial advisor? You're not alone. With so many different ways to articulate the benefits of working with you, it can be challenging to know what will resonate with each individual client.
But what if there was a way to get to the heart of what your clients really want from your services? That's where the Jobs To Be Done framework comes in. By identifying the specific outcome that your clients want to achieve by working with you, you can create a compelling value proposition that speaks directly to their needs.
For example, imagine you have two potential clients who are both seeking investment management services. One is a busy executive who wants to free up more time to focus on their career and family, while the other is a nervous retiree who is looking for peace of mind and assurance that they won't make any costly mistakes.
Both clients may be looking for investment management services, but their motivations and desired outcomes are vastly different. By understanding the Jobs To Be Done that each client is seeking, you can tailor your approach and messaging to speak directly to their needs. You can focus on the time-saving benefits for the executive while emphasizing your expertise and trustworthiness to ease the retiree's fears.
To uncover these Jobs To Be Done, you can use a job-mapping approach to identify where in the financial planning process your clients are getting stuck and what triggered their search for help. For example, if a client is struggling to define their big-picture goals, you can focus on the functional benefits of your knowledge and technical skills to help them gain clarity. Or, if a client is feeling overwhelmed by the execution stage of the planning process, you can emphasize the emotional benefits of providing peace of mind and reassurance.
Ultimately, by understanding the Jobs To Be Done that your clients are seeking, you can create a more compelling and personalized value proposition that speaks directly to their needs. Whether they are seeking functional, emotional, social, or aspirational benefits, you can position yourself as the solution to their unique challenges and motivations. So, take the time to understand your clients' Jobs To Be Done, and you'll be well on your way to building stronger relationships and achieving greater success as a financial advisor.
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Jobs To Be Done can fall into four categories:
1.???Functional: Represents a goal or task the client is trying to achieve, such as having their investments managed or their income taxes filed.
2.???Emotional: Represents the emotions or feelings the client wants to experience, such as reduced stress from watching investments, greater confidence in knowing what to do, etc.
3.???Social: Represents how clients want to be viewed or relate to others, such as organizing retirement goals or travel plans to spend more time with friends and family members.
4.???Aspirational: Represents how clients can fulfill certain ambitions, such as having the means to live their lives to the fullest or being financially secure and successful.
The important consideration here is that a financial planning engagement could take the form of many different jobs depending on the client’s perspective. A client could hire an advisor to create a financial plan for any of the job types:
Functional: the client doesn’t have the time or technical expertise to do it themselves;
Emotional: the client wants the peace of mind that their plan will be done correctly (by an experienced professional);
Social: the client might want to retire because they want to spend more time traveling with their friends who have also just retired; or
Aspirational: the client wants to achieve better financial outcomes to be more financially secure in retirement or achieve a certain lifestyle.
In all of these cases, the service of creating a financial plan is the same, and the time and expertise it takes may be the same, but the job that the client needs help with is actually motivated by very different reasons.
It’s important to note that while some prospects may approach an advisor to perform a seemingly functional job, such as “reduce the risk in the portfolio” or “make money”, what the prospect is?actually?seeking may not be considered functional at all. For example, the client may frame their request in terms of a functional job (e.g., finding a way to reduce the risk in their portfolio), but what they are really looking for is help with an?emotional?job (e.g., reducing their anxiety). As another example, a client may ask if their portfolio could sustain an early retirement (analysis for a functional job), but what they really want to know is more of a life-changing analysis to see if they have what it takes to thrive as a financially independent person.
The key point is that prospects are not necessarily hiring advisors because of the holistic financial plan they create; instead, they are really hiring the advisor to help with a particularly functional, emotional, social, or aspirational job that will be unique to the prospect’s needs. And by considering the particular job that clients need help with, advisors can choose the right messages that will most likely resonate with prospects looking to hire them to do a job.
A little write-up on JTBD
Jobs to be done: We all have many jobs to be done in our lives. Some are little (pass the time while waiting in line); some are big (find a more fulfilling career). Some surface unpredictably (dressing for an out-of-town business meeting after the airline lost my suitcase); some regularly (packing a healthful lunch for my daughter to take to school). When we buy a product, we essentially “hire” it to help us do a job. If it does the job well, the next time we’re confronted with the same job, we tend to hire that product again. And if it does a crummy job, we “fire” it and look for an alternative. (We’re using the word “product” here as shorthand for any solution that companies can sell; of course, the full set of “candidates” we consider hiring can often go well beyond just offerings from companies.)
Executive Vice President & Head - Products at UTI MF
1 年Thanks Gaurav for sharing, this framework addresses the challenge of assigning value to a lot of activities/ products that we undertake as individuals during the day.