A value proposition is a promise of value to be delivered, communicated, and acknowledged. It is also a belief from the customer about how value benefit will be. Simple to learn and practical to apply. Our canvases have been used by over 5 million people worldwide to add clarity to their business discussions and decisions. Customer Value Proposition Tools' title='Customer Value Proposition Tools' />Supercharge Lean Startup and Cust. Dev Principles Business Model Alchemist. In my last post I described a new business tool, the Value Proposition Designer Canvas. In this post I outline how you can use the tool to not only design Value Propositions, but also to test them. Youll learn how you can supercharge the already powerful Lean Startup and Customer Development principles to design, test, and build stuff that customers really want. The Value Proposition Designer Canvas VP Designer Canvas allows you to zoom into the details of your Value Proposition and the Customer Segments you target. You can use it as a poster cf image below to design better Value Propositions with sticky notes. Value_Proposition_Design_Customer_Profile' alt='Customer Value Proposition Tools' title='Customer Value Proposition Tools' />1. Canvas. 2. Design. Customer Profile 10 1. Value Map 26 1. 3 Fit 40. Prototyping Possibilities 74 2. Starting Points 86 2. Understanding Customers 104 2. What is a Unique Selling Proposition USP, examples of USPs and how to create one for your own small business. The online companion to our latest book, Value Proposition Design, is designed to help you apply what you learn. However, to make sure your customers really want what you design, youll need to test all the assumptions you make with the VP Designer Canvas. We already now know how to do this kind of designing and testing for business models by combining the Business Model Canvas with the Customer Development process. Steve Blank has impressively demonstrated this in his work. We can achieve the same for Value Propositions by combining the VP Designer Canvas with the Lean Startup process. This will help us more systematically work towards achieving what the startup movement calls a product market fit or problem solution fit. In other words, buildingoffering stuff that customers really want. In a nutshell, the Lean Startup process essentially consists of iterating through the building of, measuring of, and learning from product and service prototypes. The Lean Startup movement calls these prototypes Minimum Viable Products MVP. Supercharge the Lean Startup Process. The VP Designer Canvas can add two crucial things to this process that are currently missing. Corporate/Images/Eenmalige-images/2%20Research%20and%20faculty/2-2%20Research%20for%20business/2-2-8%20Marketing%20and%20Sales/2-2-8-3%20Vlerick%20Sales%20Excellence%20Centre/2-2-8-3-1%20Activities/Customer-value-propositions-in-business-markets-image1%20png.png' alt='Customer Value Proposition Tools' title='Customer Value Proposition Tools' />Adding them to the mix will bring us to a whole new level. Firstly, the VP Designer Canvas gives you a simple and practical way to rapidly sketch out WHAT you are building and how you believe this will create customer valuebenefits, as well as WHY your are building it which customer jobs, pains, and gains you intend to address. Doing this BEFORE building an MVP, will help you better track and manage the testing, measuring, and learning process. Secondly, the VP Designer Canvas helps you distinguish between ProductVP and Customer assumptions. If you just build an MVP to measure and learn, you wont know if a negative outcome of your experiment is related to your MVP or to a lack of customer interest. In science such a significant bias would invalidate your results all together. Hence, you need to separate the testing of your productVP assumptions i. WHAT and your customer assumptions i. WHY whenever possible. The latter is something you can observe and investigate even before designing an MVP. Using the Value Proposition Designer Canvas Step by Step. Let me walk you through a rough step by step process of how to use the VP Designer Canvas for testing. In reality, of course, these steps will be less sequential and much more messy. Youll also want to adapt this process to your needs and circumstances. Fill Out Your VP Designer Canvas. Describe the JOBS your customer is trying to get done and outline their PAINS and GAINS. List the PRODUCTS and SERVICES you intend to offer and describe how you believe they will ALLEVIATE your customers PAINS and CREATE GAINS. You can use the trigger questions in the poster and in my last blogpost if you need help. Voil, you now have a great list of ProducVP and Customer assumptions. You described who you think customers are and what you think would create value for them. Its your best guess but still just your smart opinion. Test your Customer Assumptions. Now its time to get out of the building to use Steve Blanks terms in order to verify your customer assumptions. Talk to as many potential customers as possible to verify if they really are trying to get those JOBS done that you described in the VP Designer Canvas. Find out if those JOBS are crucial to them or unimportantFind out if the really have those PAINS you believed they have. Are those PAINS severe or minor Verify if they really value the GAINS you believed they value. Its even better if you can test your customer assumptions more rigorously. What I mean with that is going beyond simply talking to customers, but not yet building an MVP. The design professions have several techniques to achieve that. Adjust your Customer Assumptions Based on Insights. Now that you better know who your customers are you should revisit the Customer Profile in your VP Designer Canvas. Ideally you now understand the significance of your customers JOBS, the severity of their PAINS and the intensity of their desired GAINS. Redesign your Value Proposition Based on Insights. Adjust which pains and gains you want to focus on, based on your customer insights. Then redesign your Value Proposition accordingly. Dont forget that great Value Propositions rarely address all customer PAINS and GAINS. They address a few really wellThis will give you a readjusted VP Designer Canvas. Start Testing your Value Proposition. Now its time to build your MVP and continuously test and adjust your Value Proposition based on what you learn. The VP Designer Canvas will serve as your map to permanently track assumptions and tests, while youre pivoting through the Lean Startup process. Ebert Business Essentials 9Th Edition. The moment this circle ends is when youve achieved a fit between your Value Proposition and what your Customers expect. This is what the startup movement calls product market fit or problem solution fit. Its when you build stuff that customers really want Dont hesitate to give me your feedback, since this process is just a first suggestion of how to use the Value Proposition Designer Canvas.