🏋️ The 3 Forces Behind Real Customer Demand

You might not have heard of Bob Moesta, but you’ve almost certainly felt the impact of his work.

He co-created the Jobs to be Done framework with Harvard professor Clayton Christensen, best known for the theory of disruptive innovation, widely regarded as one of the most influential business ideas of the 21st century. 

Clay was Bob’s mentor, and together they reshaped how I think about customers and why they buy (or don’t).

Bob and Clay’s core idea is one I come back to all the time: people don’t buy products; they hire them to do a job. It’s a simple concept, but it completely changes how you build, market, and position a product or service.

Bob’s Three Building Blocks of Demand

Bob says if you want to build something people actually ‘hire’, you need to focus on three core things:

1. Struggling moments; those points of friction or frustration that push people to seek change.

2. Progress they’re trying to make; what a better version of their world looks like.

3. Trade-offs they’re willing to accept; because no product solves every problem, and that’s okay.

These three elements form the basis for demand.

Mapping to the Value Proposition Canvas

Here’s how I like to map Bob’s thinking to the Customer Profile in the Value Proposition Canvas

😩 Struggling moments = Pains. These are the emotional and functional friction points. What’s hard, broken, or annoying?

🚀 Desired progress = Gains. What does ‘better’ look like? What outcomes would truly move the needle for them?

⚖️ Trade-offs = Focus on the highest-value Jobs. You can’t do everything; so which jobs are you choosing to solve? What are you deliberately leaving out?

How Float Zoned In on the Highest Value Job

One of our clients, Float, made this exact trade-off.

They’re a cash flow forecasting software product, but unlike other platforms that try to cover all aspects of financial reporting, Float deliberately focused on short-term cash flow; their customers’ highest-value job.

Float helps customers make progress with weekly visibility, immediate insights, and real-time decision-making.

They’re not trying to solve every finance job; they’re solving one job exceptionally well. And that’s exactly what their customers value.

So here’s something you can do this week: look at your own value proposition and ask yourself: what’s the biggest struggling moment for our customer? What does progress look like for them? And what trade-offs do you think they are willing to make to solve their most important job?

P.S.  If you’d like to go deeper into Bob’s thinking, his book Demand-Side Sales 101 is a great place to start. Here’s the link: Demand-Side Sales on Amazon 

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