Value Proposition Canvas

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Building for value

For me this is the most important function of product management. Here are my top recommendations:

Research , research, research— Learn early how correct your value/cost assumptions are. Do they really have this pain? Is it going to make a big difference to have this feature. The answers are often surprising and unintuitive. The best way to do this in the early stages of the product is through direct interviews, user research and MVPs. Later smoke tests, large-scale studies and A/B experiments are key.

Create a “value map” — what they wish to achieve (functional, social and emotional jobs), what hard about them (pains) and what would be a great outcome (gains) — a great tool for this is Strategizer’s

Value Proposition Canvas⁠

Use value Metrics — You can get a sense of value indirectly through metrics like satisfaction and price sensitivity, or directly using answer surveys, interviews, A/B experiments and so on. Pirate metrics reflect the value users find in your product through the funnel. Ultimately your North Star metric should be about value delivered to the market.

Manage the value life cycle — Understand how value perception changes over time. What people like on day 1, on day 7, day 14 and on day 90. This may have important implications for your product, for example you may wish to promote some features or capabilities in later stages of use.

Map competitors and alternatives — Find what perceived values and costs users find in competitor and alternative products. Most important is what people use, not who is your most direct competitor. This will give you an idea what will get people to switch.

It’s not all functional value — Look for opportunities to address Social and Emotional needs. We’re not thinking of those nearly enough and they can make or break your product. Slack was a game company that pivoted and found a way to make inter-company communication fun. Those elements of social and emotional value were key to the success of the product in a sea of boring corp chat systems.

Instant magic — The most crucial moment to demonstrate high value is at first encounter aka The Magic Moment, aka The Aha Moment. Show, don’t tell.

Stay “value positive” — Don’t suck more value than you give. We dislike people that are needy and are constantly asking for things. Products and services are no different. Be patient and ask them to do things for you later, after you gave them lots of value.

Demonstrate high value — Consider reminding users what value they’re getting in subtle ways. For example some travel sites graphically show that they are scanning and sorting through other travel sites’ offering to find the very best deal. Research shows that this made users appreciate the service more.

Don’t trust NPS — Satisfaction is correlated with value, but they’re not one and the same. Net Promoter Score is a very

iffy metric⁠

, full of questionable assumptions. You should never trust it as the only/primary value metric.

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