“I’ve got a big day tomorrow,” is a resistance free approach to drink less the night before. “My financial advisor says that’s a bad idea,” is a resistance free approach to answer financial questions.
Let’s add another. This one from the Chriss Voss (we’re fans!) book Full Fee Agent.
In this quote, Voss’ client explains her new pitch:
“First and foremost, I’m a full-service, full fee agent. I charge 6 percent, keep 3.5 percent, and give 2.5 percent to the buyer’s agent. I’m going to encourage you to price the property so that it will sell quickly, and that might very well be a price that’s less than what you’d like to see. I’m going to encourage you to invest in preparing it for sale, and you’re going to need to stage it. The last thing is that I don’t work 24/7. You’ll never need me and not get me, but you won’t need me at 10 p.m.“
Wow, that’s a lot of conditions, Voss’ client counterparty said, to which she replies, “I actually prefer to think of them as standards”.
Conditions are negotiable, fungible, and flexible.
But standards? That’s something else entirely.
Voss resonates so much because his approach is similar to JTBD.
JTBD and Voss emphasize finding what’s important not (necessarily) what is legible. Price, cost, dollars, numbers(!) are legible and value / jobs-to-be-done are less so. But the reverse is what’s important. It’s the outcome we want, and the price which could be nice.
Jobs theory isn’t a condition for business, it’s a standard.
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