Bob Moesta

People don't buy products, they hire them to make progress in their life.

People said they didn't want a dining room table in their new condo. I built one anyway — too small to actually eat at. Sales went up 22%. The table was the emotional bank account of their entire life.

There are no new jobs. The context and outcome have existed for decades. What improves is just the technology's ability to deliver on them. Most jobs you can trace back 10 years and forward 20.

Southern New Hampshire University found 50-60 students attending fully online and paying full price when that wasn't even an option they built. They studied that anomaly and now have 200,000+ students.

Snickers competes with protein shakes and sandwiches. Milky Way competes with wine, brownies, and a run. Your real competitive set comes from the customer's context — not your product category.

I raised the price of a condo, added two years of storage and moving services, and increased sales by 30%. The product wasn't the problem — friction in leaving the old situation was.

The biggest mistake with Jobs to Be Done: people sit in a conference room and hypothesize what the jobs are. I guarantee you're 100% wrong. You have to go talk to real people.

Most products fail because they made a trade-off the customer didn't agree with. It's not about features. It's about whether your trade-offs match your customer's trade-offs.

Four forces drive every purchase decision: push (context forcing change) and pull (new outcome desired) must outweigh anxiety (fear of new) and habit (attachment to old). More features often increase anxiety, not pull.

The buying journey has 6 phases: first thought, passive looking, active looking, deciding, first use, ongoing use. Most sales processes are designed around how you want to sell — not where the buyer actually is.