In another snippet from the interview with Matt from Bonjoro we discuss why “Jobs to be done” (JTBD) is so important to them.
Bonjoro have a large inbound funnel of different triallers types – because their platform is horizontally applicable. However, they are optimizing for SaaS customers in Sales and Customer Service use-cases – they are high value and high conversion probability. He discusses the conundrum here.
It seems brutal but if Bonjoro try to craft onboarding for all users they will lose their valuable SaaS customers by diluting the flow.
JTBD works, Personas don’t
Conversely Bonjoro don’t find “personas” as terribly useful. A persona is great in marketing because you can speak to their needs – higher up the funnel.
When it comes to Onboarding and Activation however, the user’s goals or “Jobs to be done” need to be displayed and aligned with the product goals.
The perfect example of this is Bonjoro have a playbook of “recipes” for customers – this is effectively a cookbook of “Jobs to be done” for different customers. Just like Monday, these recipes are then baked into the product – they allow a user to get a Job Done quickly because they already learned about it in the marketing. “Show me, don’t tell me”.
Product-led or Brand-led?
I quizzed Matt on Product-led and his response was surprisingly insightful – for him its more about “Brand”.
“Brand-led” is more his focus rather than Product-led because Bonjoro’s strong Design and UX DNA means they do “Product-led” things by default.
I was shocked to hear him assert that the Bonjoro brand is of equivalent value to the actual functionality of the product. Matt says that “Brand” is more important than startups realize.
His view seems to be working, they hold a leadership positon in the “Personalization at scale” space? Their NPS is a fabulous 71.
They are well respected, this is a very Product-led outcome but also their Brand is very, very fun, caring and recognizable.
Stop “growth-hacking”
Another cracker quote from the conversation was Matt’s plea to Stop “growth hacking”.
He thinks most people arn’t skilled enough to do it, so ultimately get distracted by it.
Bonjoro instead have a clear mission of personalizing and caring for customer. Matt says: “This has been lost, and it always used to be a way to compete and it’s got harder to compete “
Take a listen to this and other posts with Matt, its informative and enjoyable.
https://vimeo.com/396867240
Conversation Transcript
Matthew from Bonjoro 0:02
longer form content. And so like, kind of white papers, but ones that you can take and “implant”.
Matthew from Bonjoro 0:09
So we’ve done this whole piece on our “Video files playbook” where we say: “use video, if you’re e-commerce or fashion, do this”, you know, “if you’re if you’re this, do this”. Yeah.
Matthew from Bonjoro 0:20
That has worked extremely well for us. And this goes back to a bit of the part around educating the market as well as trying to sell to it. Education has really worked well for us, and it has to be how we play out…..It’s still early days.
David Jones 0:36
Does that does that really worked because it’s a recipe based approach for those different sectors? Did you give them recipes?
Matthew from Bonjoro 0:43
Yeah, recipes are awesome.
David Jones 0:45
And the recipes are reflected in the product as well, too.
Matthew from Bonjoro 0:48
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
David Jones 0:54
Has “Jobs to be done” been a recurring thing for you. It’s something that we refer to all the time internally. So, you know, is that a mainstay of how you view things?
Matthew from Bonjoro 1:07
Yeah, I think one of the hardest things is trying to get the whole team across (JTBD), the deep understanding of what “jobs to be done” is. It’s obviously way, way easier. It’s a way easier to categorize customers, by channel by industry by job title.
David Jones 1:21
Persona. The HubSpot kind of way: “this is, this is Mary, she’s 28. She’s a grad, she’s got a mortgage”. And, she wants to she wants to get somebody over the line because her KPIs are based around signups or “conversion to pay”. Do you still use that already? Or do you focus more on the job rather than the persona?
Matthew from Bonjoro 1:47
So the answer is we have to focus on “jobs to be done”, because the persona doesn’t work for us. So I think again, given the broad range where we operate, you know, and SaaS are one of our best customer bases but it’s still 20% of 100%. We have kind of like a lot of users who are not in that area. So but interestingly, you see more and more SMEs, poaching things from the SaaS mindset.
Matthew from Bonjoro 2:17
You see more e-commerce approach things from a SaaS mindset. So the mindset is more important than the company and the industry and potentially their business model. Everyone’s got leads coming in, are they approaching and going, what how many do we convert? What’s the lifetime value? What’s ARPU? What’s the CAC? This attitude is what works for us. So “what are the jobs that fulfill those points”?
Matthew from Bonjoro 2:39
Personas, we struggle with, and, you know, I just don’t do them anymore.
David Jones 2:48
Right, so you really are pinning it to the JTBD.
David Jones 2:53
What about product-led? In the last couple of posts I’ve talked about product-led type stuff. Have you glommed on to that particular bandwagon or do you see it as too high-level or common sense? What’s your thoughts?
Matthew from Bonjoro 3:09
Yeah, so I’d say it’s probably more common sense. Again: design first product first. It’s bit how we think anyway.
Matthew from Bonjoro 3:22
However, I think we’re building two things here. We’re building a product and we’re building a brand. And if you were to take the dollar value of those two things, I would say they’re probably about equal.
David Jones 3:37
right.
Matthew from Bonjoro 3:39
What I mean is given the stage of the company, our brand has a very good position in the marketplace and where we operate is very well known. We have like NPS rating is I think is 72. We’re really well respected and we’re building more of a name for ourselves as one of the leaders in this area of “personalization at scale”. And that gives you a lot of power to start to educate and to be a front runner.
Matthew from Bonjoro 4:07
It’s really important and I think brand…..we are quite “brand-led” and the fact that you’re doing a good thing here, we’re like, “Look, spend more time with customers”. It’s a good thing.
Matthew from Bonjoro 4:20
“Stop trying growth hack”, this kind of stuff works. It’s really nice positioning as well: people are kind of bouncing back to this (personalization), but more so it’s quite good timing. I think your product-led for sure. I think “brand” is a lot more important than maybe a lot of startups think what brand is.
David Jones 4:36
Thats funny, which was “stop trying to growth-hack”. And it goes back to that statement earlier that you had about: “automate processes, not people or not customers”, and that seemed to be tied into this kind of Northstar of making customer relationships personal but not getting bogged down in the weeds or crippling your scale. When you do that.
Matthew from Bonjoro 4:59
This is probably where a lot of people get crippled by the “growth hack” thing. Where everyone’s trying to hack their way and do these things. And a lot of people (to be honest) don’t have the experience to kind of do them or pull them off or what works for one company will not work for you.
Matthew from Bonjoro 5:15
So I think this idea of also having the recipes…the stuff you use in your business, the “plug and play” and they work.
Matthew from Bonjoro 5:22
You look back was always like “build a marketing list”, you know, and it wasn’t that hard to do. And so if you can find out what these pieces are, people can essentially step in, “plug and play”. And when you when you rely on the team, the culture of relationships, nothing greater than that way. Like everyone could do that. Well, every (company/team) culture around that base can do that. You know, you will still get stars, you know. “Everyone can do Twitter, not everyone’s good on Twitter” and “not everyone should be allowed to Twitter”.
Matthew from Bonjoro 5:51
I think we’ll see a same thing here – even if everyone started using this (personalisation at scale), you still have people who “stand above” and they “stand above” because the team, relationship show that “they do care”.
Matthew from Bonjoro 6:00
So how do you give them easy ways to show that online?
Matthew from Bonjoro 6:04
This has been lost, and it always used to be a way to compete and it’s got harder to compete – face to face. So how do you bring that back and how do you tell you when do and how you again, make it simple, I think I think that’s kind of the key.
