Bobby MoestaInnovator, Entrepreneur, Professor and Advisor

It's Not About the Mattress...It's About Sleep! #sales #jobstobedone #bobmoesta

20 Jul 2023 · 1 min

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In this segment, the speaker (Bob Moesta) critiques the common mattress‑marketing approach that fixates on product features—hybrid foam, cooling layers, innersprings—while trying to educate consumers about what makes a good mattress. He argues that this feature‑centric messaging forces marketers to become experts themselves and still leaves buyers confused, because the real competition for a mattress is not other brands but a sleep‑aid like ZzzQuil. The core insight is that marketers should shift focus from the mattress itself to the customer’s struggling moment and the desired outcome—better sleep. By understanding the context in which a buyer is seeking sleep, companies can frame their value proposition around the job‑to‑be‑done (sleep) rather than the product’s technical attributes.

Chapters

Good. For example, I work with a mattress firm, right? And Casper. When you start to go here and you say like, well, we make mattresses. What are the features and benefits of the mattress? Ooh, it's got a hybrid foam. It's got cooling. It's got inner springs. It's got all these things to it, right? I now have to educate the crap out of myself about what is a mattress, what's a good mattress. I have to go to websites and do all this research, and I still don't know what I should buy. The greatest competitor to a new mattress is a bottle of ZzzQuil. Everybody was so focused on the mattress side that they all competed with each other on features and benefits, and literally they, they confused the crap out of the customers. So it's the context people are in, it's that struggling moment they're in, and it's understanding the outcome that they want. And so it's not about the mattress, it's about sleep. What we're doing