B2B segmentation: a 4-slot JTBD model in 2024
A classic 12-job JTBD map clutters the head and does not help selling. We folded it into four slots — for safety-systems maker Bezopasnost Plus, proposal conversion rose 31%.
Creastra Digest
- Four slots: Trigger, Internal conflict, Alternatives, «Good-enough» criterion
- Each slot gets a verbatim customer quote, not a marketer's paraphrase
- A segment = the «Alternatives» slot. The others are shades of the same fight
When we joined safety-systems maker Bezopasnost Plus, they had nine personas: «security officer», «buyer», «technical director», «owner», and so on. The marketer spent a month a year refreshing them, and sales ignored the file — because real deals always involve 3–4 people. We folded the lot into a 4-slot JTBD map, and for the first time sales started using it on their own.
What the four slots are
- Trigger — the event that pushed the buyer to search
- Internal conflict — what blocks the old solution from working
- Alternatives — what they evaluate besides you
- «Good-enough» criterion — what makes them stop searching and sign
Where the data comes from
Not from CRM fields or analytics. Only from 30-minute interviews with real customers — ideally those who bought 3–6 months ago and still remember the decision. For Bezopasnost Plus we ran 14 interviews in three weeks and pulled 87 quotes, then built the map.
A segment = the «Alternatives» slot
Counter-intuitive, but «what we are compared with» drives positioning. Bezopasnost Plus showed three clusters: vs physical guards (economics argument); vs a rival vendor (1C-integration argument); vs «do nothing» (loss-case storytelling argument).
How the map landed in materials
- The landing rewritten in three variants — one per alternative. Switcher in the hero
- Sales-call script: four diagnostic questions mapped to the slots
- Proposal assembled from six modules — the manager picks three per buyer slot
- Email nurture forks by alternative as well
- Five interviews and a quote refresh every quarter
The numbers
Ninety days post-relaunch: lead-to-proposal conversion up from 38% to 50%, proposal-to-contract from 24% to 31%, average cycle down from 47 to 33 days. Most striking: the «still thinking» bucket shrank from 41% of the pipeline to 19%.
What not to do
- Do not substitute a survey for an interview — surveys invite invention, interviews invite recall
- Do not stack every alternative on one page — buyers do not recognise themselves
- Do not refresh the map more than quarterly or sales lose rhythm
- Do not hand the map to sales without a script — they will ignore it
- Do not segment by «company size» — that is an attribute, not a job