Value Proposition - Summary

Value Proposition

  • Value: something’s worth, importance, or usefulness.
  • Value Proposition: worth you offer to your customers.
  • It should articulate what your service, business, or organization does, who it brings value to, and why it’s valuable for those people.
  • Value can be tangible (lower price, higher quality) or abstract (better customer service).

Value Proposition Canvas

  • Understanding customers:
    • What are their jobs (what they do at work/life, problems)?
    • What pains do they experience (risks, obstacles, bad outcomes)?
    • What positive gains are they looking for/receiving?
  • Business responses:
    • What products/services are offered to help customers complete jobs?
    • Is it a pain reliever that cuts out risks, obstacles, and bad outcomes?
    • Is it a gain creator?

Customer Research

  • Find target market (people most likely to buy).
  • Connect via interviews, focus groups, surveys.
  • Goal: Learn from potential customers to turn idea into a solution.
  • Sleuth out the Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How of target market.

Customer Jobs

  • Functional: traditional work that pays the bills.
  • Social: obligations to look good or support community.
  • Emotional: Work we put in to grow as humans.
  • Entrepreneurs want to change the status quo.

Disruption as a Value Strategy

  • Create a new market (blue ocean) instead of challenging existing ones.
  • Offer customers a new way to achieve the same jobs.

Customer Pains

  • Risks or annoyances that get in their way.
  • Addressing these pains creates a better business with more value.

Customer Gains

  • What they need or want to experience before/after a job.
  • Examples: better career prospects, higher salary, new thoughts and ideas, fresh start, new friends.

Stitch Fix Example

  • Value Proposition: “We save our clients time by doing the shopping.”
  • Detailed: “Stitch Fix leverages technology to save working clients time by using personalized measurements, preferences, and stylists to shop for clothes, which are delivered straight to their doors.”