For decades, marketers have been told some version of the same thing: focus less on the product you’re selling and more on the problem your customer is trying to solve. Clayton Christensen famously developed this into the “Jobs to Be Done” theory: customers don’t simply buy products. They “hire” them to make progress on a particular problem.
There’s a wrinkle that gets less attention:
“Jobs to be done” don’t stand still.
A company enters the market solving one buyer problem. Then, it adds capabilities. Customers find new use cases. The competitive landscape shifts. A new technology arrives. Buyers priorities evolve. Meanwhile, the entrenched messaging gradually loses touch with the target audience:
- The cybersecurity company keeps talking about detecting threats…but the CISO is increasingly worried about business interruption and board-level risk.
- The software company keeps promising workflow efficiency…but its customers are desperately trying to grow without adding headcount.
- The transportation company keeps talking about ride…but healthcare executives are thinking about missed appointments, discharge delays, staff capacity, and the cost of keeping care moving.
None of the original problems are necessarily wrong. They’re just no longer the most important problem in the room.
This is commonly experienced as a messaging gap between sales and marketing. The website says one thing. But the prospect on the other end of the phone line is saying something different. The marketing team wonders why conversions are stagnating, and the sales team complains that the collateral isn’t landing.
When messaging stops performing, it’s easy to assume the answer lies downstream: better copy, better campaigns, better content. The more important question may be upstream: are we still solving the most important problem?
Your problem statement is your point of view
Why does this matter? Because getting aligned on the problem your business solves gets everyone on the same page before you even approach the market.
Marketing knows what story to tell. Sales knows what conversation to start. Product knows which capabilities matter most to the customer. Leadership has a clearer way to judge what belongs in the story—and what doesn’t.
Without that shared understanding, those decisions get made over and over again, one asset, campaign, or sales conversation at a time. What looks like a messaging problem is often an alignment problem underneath.
That’s why defining the problem isn’t just the first step toward a better headline. Done well, it gives the organization a shared point of view.
How a SPARK session helps refresh the problem
We recently conducted a SPARK Session with a fast-growing technology lifecycle company.
SPARK Sessions are intentionally different from traditional messaging exercises. We’re not trying to get everyone to agree on three brand attributes or workshop the perfect value proposition in real time.
In fact, we discourage polished answers. We bring together people who see the business from different angles (sales, marketing, leadership, customer success, product) and get them talking. We ask questions. Then we follow the conversation wherever it goes.
Disagreement is useful. Tangents can be useful. The sentence somebody almost apologizes for saying can be more useful than the answer they prepared in advance. The goal is to surface what the organization actually knows: especially the things it knows but hasn’t quite put into words yet.
That’s what happened in this particular session.
The company helps large enterprises manage technology throughout its lifecycle. One important part of its story involved what happens to expensive technology assets later in that lifecycle: extending their useful life, recovering value, remarketing equipment, and ultimately recycling it responsibly.
There was a strong financial case to make.
As our strategist followed that thread, the conversation naturally turned toward value recovery. How much money could be recovered? How could the financial opportunity be made more visible? Could this become a stronger story for the CFO?
Then someone close to the business pushed back. The CFO mattered, she explained. But that wasn’t where the real urgency was. Their technology buyers were in a race to build.
They needed infrastructure, capacity, and talent. They needed to keep existing equipment working longer. They needed to deploy the next generation of technology faster. Getting more money for equipment at the end of its life was valuable. But to the executive they most wanted to reach, it wasn’t necessarily valuable enough to change behavior.
That was the moment the problem changed.
From recovering more to building faster
The original story essentially asked: How can we help customers recover more value from their technology assets?
But the conversation revealed the possibility of a much larger question: How can we help technology leaders build faster?
Suddenly, the capabilities hadn’t changed, but their meaning had. Extending the life of existing equipment could help companies build faster. Providing specialized services could help them build faster. Taking lifecycle work off internal teams’ plates could help them build faster. Recovering capital from equipment could give them more resources to build faster.
The old story hadn’t become untrue. It had found a larger story to belong to.
And that larger story could change who the company speaks to, what matters most in the message, which capabilities lead, what kinds of content marketing produces, and how sales opens a conversation.
No one entered the room with “build faster” written on a whiteboard. It emerged because people were allowed to talk long enough—and candidly enough—to reveal what they already knew.
Is your problem statement past its expiration date?
The closer marketing gets to the problem as the customer experiences it, the more possibilities open up. That doesn’t mean chasing whatever pain point happens to be fashionable. Nor does it mean continually repositioning the business around a new headline.
It means recognizing that defining the problem is a form of taking aim. The problem determines the stakes. The stakes determine the story. And the story gives everyone a shared trajectory from where a customer is to where they want to be (and how you can help them get there).
If it’s time to refresh the problem you solve, book your SPARK session today.
