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Design value


The next mission you have received is to draw your first customer profile and to get acquainted with the Value Proposition Canvas. Starting from Value Proposition Canvas, fill in the Customer Profile, the right-hand part of the canvas, based on assumptions. Dig deeper into what you drafted in the Customer Segment section of your Business Model Canvas. To complete this section, you should exercise empathy and put yourself in your customer’s shoes.

Customer discovery and profile validation

Meet your potential customers, and collect insights about them to enrich your customer profile and validate your initial assumptions. Here are two exercises you can do to complete the profile. The main difference between observing and interviewing is that observation shows you objective reality and not the customers’ perception.

1. Interview your customers - Look at your assumptions and write down aspects of your customer profile you need to validate. List any doubts you have about the profile. Include everything you want to learn about the customer and create an interview format with specific questions. Interview five to ten people in your customer segment.

2. Observe your customer’s world - Shadow your customers from your local community for a day when you return home, and note down in detail everything that is relevant to your profile. Write down times, activities, pains and gains you observe and insights that come up. Put all this information in your profile. Use affinity mapping to find connections and patterns in what you’ve observed, and use sticky notes to represent your customers.

Customer Jobs - describes what customers are trying to get done in their work and lives, expressed in their own words.

Describes outcomes, risks and obstacles related to the customer jobs.
Describes the specific outcomes customers want to achieve.

Value Map - define your idea in the Value Map on the left-hand side of the canvas and ensure it fits with customers’ needs.

Should be a list of what your value proposition is built around.
Describe how your products and services help with customer pains.
Details how they create customer gains.

Fit happens when your value proposition addresses your customers’ real pains and gains. As a result, they will be motivated and excited by your product or service and hopefully persuaded to buy it. There are three levels of fit to take into account: Problem-solution fit: when you gather evidences of your customer segment’s jobs, pains and gains and design productsor services to address them. Product-market fit: when your customer segment gets excited about your value proposition and buys your product or service, bringing traction to your business. Business model fit: when you can create a functional, profitable and scalable business model around your value proposition. For this exercise, you will focus on Problem-solution fit. Compare your value map with the integrated customer profile you’ve built, and look for connections. Ideally, the map will have sticky notes that address important and specific customer pains and gains, helping them to get jobs done. Congratulations, you’re almost done! Now it’s time to write down your value proposition in a clear way. This exercise will help you explain what you ‘re building and make sure you’re aligned with the team. Fill in the following model and adapt it to your needs. This will be your start-up explanation!

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Mentor Card Mission 7

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.