Sharepening your offerings value propositions

Now that the business climate has been severely affected, we need to make sure our business developers within sales and marketing are equipped with the sharpest offerings possible. When the business environment is changing, customers focus will be redirected and therefore we need to adjust our offerings business model accordingly. Each offerings customer segment(s), value chain, revenue model and value proposition should be tweaked to match our customers current and future needs. An easy tool to use as a base for revisiting your offerings business model is the classic Business Model Canvas. I know that most of you new companies are eating this canvas for breakfast but it seems like larger corporations has somewhat forgotten about it. A possible explanation is that different parts of the canvas are handled in different silos. To be successful, you should act cross functional and involve units like innovation, the product owners, finance and of course marketing and sales, in adjusting the business model. The parts that is essential for marketing and sales are the customer-, revenue stream- and value proposition parts.

Business Model Canvas

If you are in a large, maybe even international, organization you might think that this is not your job, it is the headquarters responsibility to make sure that the offerings are optimized. My experience is that you have to adjust the general offerings provided to your local market conditions. Usually the offerings are developed with other flavours of customer segments, business culture in mind why you have to “translate” the business model to your home turf.

For you who wants to remind yourselves about the Business Model Canvas, go here; https://www.strategyzer.com/canvas/business-model-canvas. If you want a tool for using this tool you can check out this online tool; https://next.canvanizer.com/demo/business-model-canvas.

This article will zoom in on a central part of the business model; the value proposition (I will return to the business model's revenue stream- and customer dimension later). One approach to sharpen the value proposition is to use the Value Proposition Canvas (surprise, there is a canvas for that too).

Value Proposition Canvas

Value Proposition Canvas, https://www.strategyzer.com/canvas/value-proposition-canvas, is a straight forward tool that provides support for developing the value proposition or refining an existing one. The canvas is divided into two parts; Value Map and Customer Profile. The Customer Profile is all about identifying your customer's major Jobs-to-be-done, the pains they face when trying to accomplish their Jobs-to-be-done and the gains they perceive by getting their jobs done. The Value Map defines the most important components of your offering, how you relieve pains and create gains for your customers and your products/services/features which underpin the creation of value for the customers.

After listing gain creators, pain relievers and products and services, each point identified can be ranked from nice to have to essential in terms of value to the customer. One way of doing that is to place the various components from the Value Proposition Canvas in a four-field matrix where you rank the components based on value for the customer and competitiveness for you the supplier. A fit is achieved when the products and services offered as part of the value proposition address the most significant pains and gains from the customer profile.

Value Proposition Refinement Matrix

The development/modification of a value proposition is usually started from an inside-out perspective. We start with what we think customers need but, as we all know, it will be far from one hundred percent accurate. Therefore, you can manage your value propositions as you manage the launch of a new product; prototype - proof of concept - MVP - test – launch – refine – test…or similar. It has the same logic as any other ideas or innovations, it is better to get imperfect stuff going and fail fast than trying to create the holy grail. If you have close relationship with your existing customer base you can well be involving them in the process.

I hope you found the article somewhat interesting and I look forward to your feedback and comments on how you sharpen your offerings to boozt your business.