Alexander Osterwalder’s aim is to aid in the understanding of what it means to have a good product/market fit. In simple terms, a good product/market fit means being in a good market, with a product that satisfies that market. In the best case scenario, the demand for your product in that market will exceed supply and help you find huge profits. Understanding your customer is one of the best ways to achieve this good product/market fit
Step #1: Customer Jobs
Customer Jobs describe what it is the customers are trying to get done in both their work and in their lives. Customer jobs can be functional, such as eating healthy, building a deck, or working on a novel. It can also be the pursuit of status. Or, it could be some sort of personal or emotional investment. Finding job security or making investments in their retirement are some examples of this. The most important thing to remember is to keep in mind how the customer communicates the customer job. Knowing how they describe it is essential in later communicating to them you can solve their problem
Step #2 Customer Pains
Customer Pains are the things that annoy or inhibit your customers before, during , and after they try to get their customer job done. Like with customer jobs, you want to be able to communicate pains in the same language that the customer does. Customer pains come in the form of undesired outcomes, risks, and obstacles. Once you understand the customer pains, it’s important to understand their severity. The more severe the problem the customer is having, the more likely the customer is to switch to a new product or service to fix their pain.
Step #3 Customer Gains
Customer gains are what the customer desires to get out of the job they want done. There are four different types of gains to be identified and understood.
- Required Gains: Required gains are things that are required for the customer’s solution to work. For example, when a customer is buying a new car, it needs to be able to get them from point A to point B
- Expected Gains: Expected gains are the features the customer expects to work well, even though the solution could work without it. For example, in that new car you bought, you would expect the air conditioning to work well
- Desired Gains: Desired gains are the things that may go beyond what we would initially expect from a given solution, but we would still really like to have them. An example of a desired gain would be your smartphone working perfectly with your new car’s radio.
- Unexpected Gains: Unexpected gains are the things that go beyond what even the customer could name as things they would expect. An example of this could be your brand new car being electric and every time it ran out of charge someone shows up and give you a brand new battery, forgoing the need to even charge your car
Conclusion
These things leave you with three lists. A list of jobs the customer needs accomplished, a list of the pains that come with accomplishing those jobs, and a list of the gains the customer seeks from their eventual solution. Taking the time to understand these things is a key to unlocking a good product/market fit and better understanding your customers.