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Mastering JTBD – Understand your customers. Prove your impact.

At a glance

You know JTBD from books and podcasts. You apply it for clients. But for your own work, the tools are missing.

Jammed rope on a winch on deck

“Everyone knows we need to interview customers – but in the end, nobody has a tool for actually running an interview.”

“Until now, it always sounded perfectly sensible for clients – just not for me.”

“Of course, we have already thrown plenty of money out of the window on agencies and campaigns.”

Quotes translated from German.

If that sounds familiar, you are in the same position as many experienced consultants, trainers and innovation managers. Mastering JTBD starts exactly here.

What Mastering JTBD is

Mastering JTBD is a workshop in which you learn to understand customer decisions systematically and turn that understanding into better product, marketing and sales decisions. AI is used deliberately as an assistant – within a clearly documented, legally sound process. Developed by Peter Rochel on the basis of more than 700 innovation and strategy projects since 2006.

What you achieve with it

  • You reduce the share of decisions that are essentially based on gut feeling
  • You gain clarity faster about which initiatives are worth pursuing – and which are not
  • You can give your management board, advisory board or investors stronger grounds for backing particular initiatives

Why learn it from Peter Rochel – and nowhere else

Completed Wheel of Progress with coloured notes on expectations, experiences, forces and trade-offs
The Wheel of Progress – a completed example from an interview, name changed
Progress Design Map: working template with the demand side at the top and the supply side at the bottom, meeting in the middle
Progress Design Map
Progress Management Map: working template with five customer phases from Passive Looking to Little Hire
Progress Management Map

700+

innovation and strategy projects since 2006

His own framework

Mastering JTBD is built on the JTBD Innovation Framework – developed by Peter Rochel. Other workshops teach JTBD second-hand. Here you learn the method from the person who built it.

His own tools

You work with tools you will not get in any other workshop:

  • The Wheel of Progress (co-created with Eckhart Böhme) – a visual structure for every customer interview
  • Progress Design Map – translates customer insights into product and marketing decisions
  • Progress Management Map – anchors customer progress in day-to-day operations

Practice & international connections

More than 700 innovation and strategy projects since 2006. Peter is in ongoing professional exchange with Bob Moesta, co-architect of international JTBD theory. The method is globally connected – the tools were developed independently in the DACH region.

What happens if you carry on as before

01

You keep investing in campaigns and agencies that never speak the language your target audiences use to describe their problems

02

You keep working with JTBD theory from books and podcasts – but without a tool you can apply in your day-to-day work

03

You keep building marketing and sales on hypotheses instead of evidence-based decision paths – and only notice when the next launch falls flat

What you can do after Mastering JTBD

After Mastering JTBD you can – together with your team:

  1. Run real in-depth JTBD interviews in a structured way – from the opening through events and forces to analysing the results as a team
  2. Ask customers not just about “needs”, but specifically about situations and triggers
  3. Structure the answers so that clear patterns emerge instead of loose quotes
  4. Use AI sensibly as an assistant – for research, analysis and pattern recognition, without putting data protection or compliance at risk
  5. Prioritise product, marketing and sales decisions and give clear reasons for the next experiments
  6. Document your process so that it can be audited and defended internally
Hand signing a decision paper at a desk

For managing directors and boards, this means:

Decisions become easier to explain, easier to measure and rest on a documented customer view instead of whoever shouts loudest.

Five typical areas of application

What you can use Mastering JTBD for in practice – from customer research to justifying decisions under risk.

Customer research

Reach clear insights faster

How exactly
  • You learn to run conversations and collect data in a way that makes real decision paths visible.
  • You build a process you can later repeat with your team.

Product development & innovation

Prioritise without endless debates

How exactly
  • You see which problems really matter to your customers.
  • You can justify and prioritise feature and product decisions with more confidence.

Marketing & sales

Messages that land where it counts

How exactly
  • You understand in which situations people are open to change.
  • You craft offers and messages that hit those situations.

Growth & revenue

Unlock potential where it pays off

How exactly
  • You see in which situations marketing and sales effort is particularly worthwhile.
  • You can explain why certain customers or segments matter more than others.

Risk & resources

Stronger arguments for your decisions

How exactly
  • You have a traceable basis for conversations with your management board, advisory board or investors.
  • You can show what you have tried, what you have learnt – and what comes next.

What you are booking – at a glance

By booking Mastering JTBD for your team you get:

Working template with boxes and arrows on grid paper, two pens beside it
  • Workshop, 8 modules for your teamCore service
  • Interactive sessions with exercises, examples and direct feedbackincluded
  • Working templates, checklists and digital boardsincluded
  • Examples of good questions and analysis logicincluded
  • Prompt templates for your own AI assistantsincluded
  • Recordings of the modules (by arrangement)included
  • Confirmation of participation / certificate on completionincluded

The eight modules

Eight live modules, on dates agreed with your team. You work through the method on your own real question, not on a made-up example.

Compass on the deck of a sailing yacht

Modules 1–2 Foundations

M1

Foundations & a shared language

Customers never choose the best product – they choose the least-bad compromise in a specific situation. Under what conditions do they switch at all?

What you do in M1
  • What a job is: functional, emotional, social – three dimensions shown on the same example
  • The system of progress elements: events, forces and limiting context as a shared language
  • First hands-on work on the Mural board: finding problems, not solutions

M2

Finding focus & sharpening questions

Most of what you think you know about your customers is an assumption – how do you check what is actually real?

What you do in M2
  • Who to talk to: existing customers, new customers, switchers or non-consumers? Selection based on your research goal
  • Separating the three roles in B2B: user, influencer, consumer
  • Looking at competitors from outside your category
Two people talking at a table, one pointing at a sheet of paper

Modules 3–4 Interview

M3

The JTBD interview: structure, set-up, dry run

How do you get people to tell their switching story so that you actually recognise events, forces and context – instead of collecting opinions?

What you do in M3
  • Structured interview phases: opening, letting the story unfold, listening for the five phases of progress
  • Distinguishing the four forces: push, pull, habit, anxiety
  • Eight rules + team roles + a dry run on a real sample interview

M4

A real live interview + joint debrief

Which hypotheses leap out at you from a real interview that you never saw in the script?

What you do in M4
  • Team roles: lead + observers with clear tasks (events, problems, gains, context)
  • Instant debrief: what story emerged, which forces were visible, which hypotheses hold?
  • From first insight to experiment: how a real event becomes a testable marketing experiment
Hand sorting sticky notes into groups on a glass wall

Modules 5–6 Analysis

M5

Sorting data without getting lost in it

How do you turn ten interviews into robust patterns without drowning in the data?

What you do in M5
  • Team clustering with timeboxing to beat analysis paralysis
  • Lifting jobs to a higher level of abstraction – not staying too specific
  • AI as a helper – but never skip the manual sorting, because empathy only comes from handling the data yourself

M6

Building a basis for decisions

How do you turn your interview patterns into a basis for decisions your team can commit to?

What you do in M6
  • Job prioritisation with two methods: 1-2-4-All (Liberating Structures) for team consensus, utility analysis for strategic assessment
  • Building the Wheel of Progress: one job, cross-category competitors, events and forces as one overall picture
  • What this implies for product, marketing and service
Planning board with cards in columns on a wall

Modules 7–8 Implementation

M7

From insights to concrete action

How do you translate interviews into messages, experiments and a business model that sells?

What you do in M7
  • Connecting the four framework levels: project, data/research, design, strategy
  • Progress Design Map and Progress Management Map: crafting and managing messages for each customer phase
  • Business Model Canvas as the strategy level + testing hypotheses with sales metrics

M8

Transfer, scaling & open questions

Why do most JTBD initiatives fail – not because of the method, but because of the day after?

What you do in M8
  • Q&A on your own use case: how do you get insights past stakeholders, middle management and corporate inertia?
  • The 72-hour rule: what you do not start this week, you never will
  • The tool you use to convince your CFO – before every good method dies at the budget stage

M3+/M4+

Optional deep-dive module: synthetic interviews with AI personas

Bookable separately.

For special cases where real interviewees are unavailable or out of reach: how to set up AI-based customer personas so that the results are useful despite every caveat.

Documenting assumptions and limits instead of hiding them – and knowing exactly when this method holds up and when it does not. An easy way into JTBD research, not a substitute for real conversations.

You learn JTBD in real conversations. Synthetic AI interviews are available as an optional deep-dive module – not as the main route.

Workshop table with a timer, cards and sticky notes, a person at the board in the background

Mastering JTBD as in-house training

Your own dates for your team. From €14,500 net, depending on group size.

Delivered in English – online or on-site, by arrangement.

Request in-house training

Who Mastering JTBD is not right for

Mastering JTBD is not the right format for you if:

1

you are encountering JTBD for the first time – for a first introduction, our sprint briefing is the better route

2

you need to make a specific quarterly decision and want help with it – the Customer Insights Sprint is the right format for that

3

you have no time to work continuously on your own question during the workshop – Mastering JTBD is learning by doing, not a lecture course

Explore the Customer Insights Sprint Request the sprint briefing

What participants say about Mastering JTBD

“The principle behind JTBD, developed at Harvard University, completely shifted my perspective on market needs and customer loyalty. But no one there showed you how to actually apply it. Peter Rochel’s JTBD Innovation Framework changed the game in that respect.”

Co-founderB2B cybersecurity provider

“Right from the start it became clear to me how valuable the qualitative research – and especially the Wheel of Progress combined with the channel phase model – is for strategic business decisions. It has revolutionised our corporate communications, customer approach and sales strategy. A real game changer!”

Nils WlokaCPTO, Steadybit

“The clear presentation of the JTBD methodology and the expertise in the interviews gave us valuable insights for optimising our product development and addressing customer needs more effectively.”

Michael von PidollTÜV Rheinland AG

Quotes from Nils Wloka, Michael von Pidoll and previous participants translated from German.

Voices from previous participants

“I already had my own interview techniques, which were similar in some respects … but it gave me a great deal more structure, and I would like to keep using it this way.”

Matthias, participant with his own interview experience · Mastering JTBD 09/2025

“I am about to run online marketing ads and put budget behind them, and I feel better prepared than if I were just fumbling around in the dark. … This way it is simply a bit more valid.”

Sabine, provider with her own offering · Mastering JTBD 09/2025

Sample analyses from real interviews

This is what a fully analysed conversation looks like – exactly what you will learn to produce yourself in the training:

Frequently asked questions

What sets Mastering JTBD apart from other JTBD workshops?

Mastering JTBD was developed by Peter Rochel on the basis of his work on more than 700 innovation and strategy projects since 2006. Other workshops teach JTBD second-hand or replace the customer conversation with AI simulations.

Here you learn JTBD in real conversations with real people – and you learn it from the creator of the framework and its tools: the Wheel of Progress (co-created with Eckhart Böhme), the Progress Design Map and the Progress Management Map. Peter is in ongoing professional exchange with Bob Moesta, co-architect of international JTBD theory.

Do I need prior experience with JTBD?

Mastering JTBD is aimed at people who already know JTBD from books, podcasts or their own practice – and now want to apply it independently in their own work. If you are encountering JTBD for the first time, our sprint briefing or the Customer Insights Sprint is the better starting point.

How much time do I need between the modules?

Between the modules, plan for 1–2 hours applying the method to your own question. Mastering JTBD is learning by doing – you work through the method on your own project, not on a made-up example.

What happens if I cannot attend one of the modules?

Modules can be recorded by arrangement. Where they are, you can catch up on anything you miss, but the live format gives you the direct opportunity to ask questions and practise. We recommend attending at least 6 of the 8 live modules.

Does the workshop use AI or real interviews?

Both – but not in equal measure. The standard is real in-depth JTBD interviews with real people. In Module 4 we run a live interview with a real interviewee and analyse it together – that is the core.

We use AI deliberately as an assistant: for research, analysis, documentation and pattern recognition afterwards. Synthetic interviews with AI personas are available as an optional deep-dive module (bookable separately) – useful for special cases where real interviewees are out of reach. They do not replace the real conversation.