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Focus on - Value proposition design
“Value Proposition Design” is a book by Alex Osterwalder, who also created the Business Model Generation and Business Model Canvas. These two tools should be used together to create value for your business and your customers.
About this challenge
Using them, you’ll further explore the Customer Segment and Value Proposition sections of the Business Model Canvas, with one main goal: achieving product-market fit by understanding your customer profile and a value map. I highly recommend Osterwalder’s book, which contains a lot of useful information and guides you through the entire process.
Questions to ask about the value proposition of a social enterprise:
- What value do you provide your customers? Why would they keep coming back?
- What is the relationship between your commercial value proposition and your impact value proposition?
- How visible or prominent is your impact value proposition? Who values and would pay for your impact value proposition? Who understands it?
- How do you account for/ measure your value proposition (both commercial and impact)?
Questions to ask about customer segments in a social enterprise
- for whom are we creating value - and what kind of value are we creating for them?
- Who are our commercial customers and why will they continue to be our customers? Who are our impact customers and what value are they seeking from us (and how much are they willing to pay for this)?
- how important is the linkage between our products /services and our impact on our customers? are they prepared to pay more for the impact? Who else would / could pay for the impact?
- are our constituents customers? co-creators? partners?
- are our funders customers or partners, or both?
- What kind of value proposition will keep customers coming back over the long term?
Tips & tricks: While creating the Value Preposition Canvas, keep certain guidelines in mind:
1. Adopt a beginner's mind. Listen to the answers of your potential customers/beneficiaries with a fresh perspective, adapting your interview and exploring aspects you didn't expect to come up with.
2. Get facts, not opinions. Ask for confirmation and concrete examples of when or where they have done what they tell you.
3. Ask why to get real motivations. When you ask why to get a better understanding of their motivations.
4. Don't sell, learn. Avoid the temptation to talk about your solution and persuade your potential customer to buy it. Remember this is not the focus. You should listen much more than you talk.
5. Don't explain your solution too early. This can distract your interviewee and generate fake positive answers since they can already imagine what you are trying to build.
6. Follow-up. Always exchange contact information and ask if you can get in touch if you have any further questions. Believe me, you will.
7. Always open doors at the end. Ask people if they know anyone else you should talk to. This is the easiest way to connect with relevant interviewees.