Value Proposition Canvas – visualize customer requests

If you are starting a business or looking forward to improving on the one you own currently, a value proposition canvas can make all the difference. It will make you understand your market and customers’ desired products and services.

How Does The Value Proposition Canvas Work?

Understand the structure

The structure will include the value proposition and a customer’s profile. The profile will consist of the customer’s pains, gains and jobs; create a profile for every segment in your business. Different segments will have different pains, gains and jobs. The value proposition should be unique and sufficient for the customer’s needs: outline what helps relieve customer’s pains and gains from your products and services. Once the structure is done, you can move to the next step.

Validate your structure

Having the plan on paper is only the start; make sure you validate your structure before using it. Reach out to customers to find out if the structure addresses their needs. Getting direct feedback from them is the easiest way to know their needs. After you have filled the value proposition structure, you can start working on your products and services to meet your customers’ demands.

Test your value proposition

Before you implement the value proposition entirely, you can test it with a few of your customers. The test will let you know whether you have achieved the fit or not. If the fit is not attained, you should revise the proposition.

Implement the plan

After you have tested the proposition and have attained your fit, you can start using your value proposition canvas, depending on why you needed it. If it’s for a new product or new market, you can implement it and wait for the results. It also works best if you want to re-invent an old product.

Value Proposition

The value proposition is divided into three parts:

Gain creators show how your business adds value to the customers. You should know whether you are helping the customers to achieve their goals.

Pain relievers focus on ways to relieve the customer’s pain. The relievers should be in line with the pains of the customer. Find out whether your products and services fix the customer’s problems.

Products and services that you provide should be listed down. Focus on whether your product features help the customers get their jobs done. If you want to produce new products they should be listed too.

Customer Profile

The profile is divided into three parts: jobs, pains and gains.

The jobs can either be social, emotional or functional; it includes the problems your customer struggles to overcome. All the efforts that a customer enforces in solving a problem are included in the customer jobs.

Pains are the obstacles that prevent a customer from getting their job done. They are the negative outcomes that they would like to avoid. Categorising the pain helps you know what to prioritise.

Gains are the desires and positive experiences that your clients want; they are not the opposite of pains. They are what makes a customer to be motivated to use a specific product. They can be essential or just ordinary aspects.

Achieving the Fit

To achieve the fit, you should match the things that create gains in your products with the customer’s gains and the ones that relieve pain to customer’s pains. It’s important to know that your business will not solve every customer’s pain; achieving 100% fit may not be possible. But you should make sure your fit does not go below 50%. Ensure you cover every crucial concept in the value proposition canvas; your products and services should cover what your customers want. Achieving the fit should be the goal while you are making the canvas.

Value Proposition Canvas: Do’s and Don’ts

The Do’s and Don´ts of a Value Proposition Canvas are:

• Identify the customer’s jobs, do not ignore either of them and work towards addressing them. Your customer should be put first when making a value proposition canvas. Create propositions that will help in addressing the jobs
• It’s essential to categorise the customer’s pain; their pain can either be severe or mild. Having organised them, you should prioritise the severe ones.
• Test your proposition; the customer should not doubt whether or not you are delivering the best products to meet their needs. A test will be useful to you before you start implementing the value proposition canvas.
• Validate all the assumptions before you start working on your value proposition canvas. Make sure the customer’s needs are your primary focus.
• Update your value proposition canvas to make sure that you meet customer’s needs when they change. You can also update it if you have a new product.

• Do not combine the value proposition and the pains, gains and jobs on the profile when making the value proposition canvas. It’s important to separate the two.
• Mixing many customer segments under the same canvas will be a bad idea. It would be best to separate each segment because different customer segments will have different pains, gains and jobs.
• Do not make the profile of customers by looking at your value proposition. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes when creating their profile and update the value proposition afterwards.
• Do not try to address every single pain and gain of your customers. The value proposition canvas will not solve all of their problems, but it should come close.
• It would help if you did not focus on functional jobs only. To attain the best results, you should consider the customer’s social and emotional jobs.