A structured workshop using the Value Proposition Canvas to understand your customers and build services they will actually buy.
Many businesses invest significant time and money developing products and services based on assumptions about what customers want. They build what they think the market needs, only to discover that customers are indifferent, that the pricing is wrong, or that the real opportunity lies somewhere else entirely.
The root cause is usually the same: a lack of structured thinking about who the customer really is, what problems they are actually trying to solve, and what they would genuinely pay for.
The vitamin vs painkiller test. Is your product or service a vitamin or a painkiller? Vitamins are nice to have. Painkillers are must-haves. Customers will delay, deprioritise, or forget about vitamins. They will actively seek out and pay for painkillers. Value Mapping helps you find the painkillers.
Value Mapping uses the Value Proposition Canvas to systematically understand your customers and connect their needs to what you offer. It brings together two sides of the same question: what your customer needs, and what you provide.
The canvas forces clarity on three interconnected questions:
Who are your customers, and what distinguishes different segments?
What jobs are they trying to do, what pains do they experience, and what gains do they seek?
Which of those needs represent genuine commercial opportunities, and how do your offerings address them?
Done well, Value Mapping replaces assumption with evidence and enthusiasm with strategy. It identifies where to focus your efforts and how to position what you offer so that it resonates with the people you are trying to serve.
This workshop is designed for business leaders and teams who need to make strategic decisions about products, services, and market positioning. It is particularly valuable when you have many ideas but lack clarity on where to focus, when you are launching or repositioning a product or service, when you suspect your assumptions about customers may be wrong, or when you need to align your team around a shared understanding of value.
A structured one day session that takes your team through five steps, each building on the previous one:
Identify and describe the distinct groups you serve or could serve.
Surface what customers are trying to achieve and what gets in their way.
Determine which problems are painful enough to be commercial opportunities.
Connect what you offer to what customers actually need.
Decide where to focus and how to communicate your value.
A clear picture of your target customer segments and what distinguishes them
A prioritised list of customer jobs, pains and gains worth addressing
An honest assessment of which opportunities have commercial potential
A value proposition map showing how your offerings create customer value
Positioning statements that articulate your value clearly and compellingly
Alignment across your team on where to focus
You can run this workshop yourselves. The methodology is straightforward and we are happy to share the guide. But an external facilitator brings fresh perspective, challenges assumptions your team may not question, and keeps the session focused on outcomes rather than internal politics.
If you would like to discuss running a Value Mapping Workshop with your team, or would like a copy of the workshop guide to review, please get in touch.
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