Don’t Build Your CRM Without Thinking About JTBD

At Inovus, we deliver custom-designed and configured business management solutions. It’s complex work, so we use the Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) framework to help our clients gain a deeper understanding of their customers. This framework helps us understand the progress people are trying to make in their lives, along with the push and pull forces that either move them forward or hold them back.

“Jobs” can be organized into three different categories:

• Functional: Accomplishing a goal
• Emotional: Bolstering a belief or feeling
• Social: Increasing human connection or social standing

When we’re articulating the “jobs” we’ve identified, we often use this framework:

Help me/free me/give me [NEED] so I can [GOAL].

Whenever one makes a major purchase — like say, buying a house — it’s easy to see the entire spectrum of jobs at work.

• The functional job of home-buying might be related to financial gains: a home is a wonderful investment in the future.
• The emotional job of home-buying might be about providing a safe place for one’s family and being a good provider.
• The social job might relate to feeling rooted in a community and connecting with like-minded people.

At Inovus, we regularly start our client discovery sessions with this question:

“What problem are we trying to solve?”

Another way of asking that question might be:

“What ‘jobs’ does your CRM need to accomplish?”

This clarifying question helps everyone focus on what’s most important. Narrowing our focus to the jobs we’re trying to accomplish can mute the background noise and bring team members together around a clear purpose.

Most business software (including CRM’s) is designed to make our lives easier by accomplishing all kinds of jobs, including things like:

• Help me build a reliable pipeline report as a single source of truth so I can better predict future sales.
• Help me organize my prospects so I can be sure to follow up with them in a timely manner.
• Help me track service tickets so I can mine product insights.
• Help me measure my sales teams’ productivity and efficiency so I can better support them with training and collateral.

One of the basic functional jobs of a CRM is to help you track your sales funnel.

It would be easy to assume that all of the jobs a CRM addresses fall into the “functional” bucket, but that would be an oversimplification. It’s just as important to consider the social and emotional jobs a CRM is responsible for. This kind of holistic thinking can help us avoid pitfalls and confusion in the implementation process, and help speed up adoption once the CRM is launched.

Accomplishing Social & Emotional Jobs with a CRM

Given that CRMs ultimately help build and maintain relationships, the social and emotional jobs of a CRM are incredibly important. Here are a few examples of some social and emotional jobs that a CRM can help accomplish.

Help me connect with my clients and prospects as people so I can foster long-term relationships.

The data stored in your CRM may include details like birthdays, anniversaries, and the names of children or significant others. Mentioning these high-priority relationships in your clients’ lives will emphasize the basic human connections we all share, and can help you solidify stronger relationships.

Help me increase my confidence when interacting with a prospect so I can close more deals.

This can be accomplished when the prospect’s details are immediately available on our smartphones and tablets, instead of haphazardly jotted on sticky notes. Thanks to CRM mobile apps, this information can be instantly available to your team when you’ve got the right CRM in place.

Help me centralize and standardize data in one place so I can feel confident in our ability to hit our sales goals.

The transparency that a CRM provides can address the worry Sales Managers may feel when they cannot see a complete sales pipeline picture in one location. Tracking Open and Closed Deals by region, product, and/or sales rep will answer the daily questions that Sales Execs have for their teams.

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So the next time you find yourself sitting in a meeting discussing your CRM platform,, take a moment to ask yourself and your colleagues:

What problem are we trying to solve?

What jobs need to be done?

Are they functional, social, or emotional?

What solutions might we propose to do those jobs and solve those problems?

Taking time to think beyond the functional jobs of a CRM can help you design and configure better solutions for your team and customers.

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Image Credit: Photo by Desola Lanre-Ologun on Unsplash