✅ JTBD Inertia Checklist

Before you cut your price, check if you have any of these 12 non-financial blockers first.

“Price really isn’t the issue, the hard part is getting on their engineering roadmap.” (I’d just joined PayPal, was interrogating a salesperson.) 

“Tell me more?”

“You know how hard it is to get engineering resources here? Well, it’s the same for our customers – they need to integrate us into their checkout, but they already have jam-packed roadmaps. The money is the easy part!”

Why this matters to you

There is a reason people aren't buying your product, and it probably is not the price. Before you cut the price, check the non-financial barriers, AKA "Inertia," first.

For example:

• Noom isn’t just selling an app, they’re asking someone to admit they no longer have their 24-year-old body.

• Cybersecurity - A prospect needs to admit, to their boss, that they might get hacked.

• AI Chatbots - Buying the software is easy, but someone needs to fire half the support team.

• Superhuman asks people to change their email workflow and abandon 20 years of muscle memory.

• Your Startup – Your champion has to stake their reputation on an unknown startup. (Nobody ever got fired for buying Salesforce.)

See the pattern? The real blockers aren’t financial, they're what Jobs to be Done calls "Inertia." Here's how to find them:

Find your real blockers with a Friction Audit:

1. Get a team together – Invite sales (pick the good listener), marketing, product, engineering, onboarding, customer success.

2. Draw your prospect on the left side of a whiteboard, and your product as a star on the right. Connect them with a line.

3. Walk through that prospect's journey and list every unpleasant thing they need to do in order to buy and adopt your product.

A JTBD Inertia checklist to get you started:

1. Identity Threats:

• What uncomfortable reality do they need to acknowledge?

• Do they feel out of their depth making this decision?

• Whose respect do they risk losing?

2. Social Friction

• Whose buy-in do they need to get?

• Who might they need to fire?

• What other hard conversation do they need to have?

3. Resource Constraints

• What scarce resource do they need to reallocate?

• What other projects do they need to deprioritise?

• What sunk cost do they need to abandon?

4. Mental Inertia:

• What new skill would they need to master?

• What habits do they need to change?

• What assumptions do they need to rethink?

Want a list of solutions?

Once you've identified your inertia, here's a list of 34 suggestions to overcome them.

This is harder than a price cut. But, unlike price cuts, this actually makes your business, stronger.

Can ChatGPT Replace customer interviews?

Of course not, but these prompts can help you understand customers outcomes at a high level, and let you improve your technique via practice interviews.

(Note: This is one addition of my weekly two-minute newsletter for impatient leaders. Read past issues and subscribe here)