Value Proposition

The value you'll sell is hiding in the work you've already done

I'll admit it up front — this is my favourite section of the whole framework. I say that about a lot of them, but I mean it here. Value Proposition is where the abstract stuff starts to bite. You've named your brand, you've mapped your business model, and now we get to deeply and clearly define the value you create, so you can actually get it into the hands of the people who need it.

Here's the thing most founders get wrong. They sit in an armchair and try to invent their value proposition from scratch, projecting forward into some imagined future. That almost never works. The most reliable way to name the value you'll deliver tomorrow is to look hard at the value you've already delivered. You've worked for clients. You've worked with staff. You've worked alongside other businesses. The evidence is all there — you just haven't read it back to yourself yet.

Start with what you've already created

So we start with value creation. Grab your resume, your LinkedIn, the invoices you've sent, your project plans, your statements of work — anything where you traded your time and resources for money. With all that in front of you, the first question is simple and surprisingly hard: who have I created value for? List every person and every business.

Then go back through and answer the second question: what was the value I created for them? When I did this myself, the pattern jumped out fast — early on it was leadership guidance and project delivery, mountains of reports, data, evidence and user insight that let people make better decisions. Yours will have its own signature. Circle the themes and the words that keep coming up. Those words matter — they'll sharpen your brand language later.

Done properly, this reflection tells you who your core customer is, the level you need to target, the value you deliver, and the words that are genuinely yours. It's quiet work, but it's the foundation everything else stands on.

Find the pattern that predicts your next customer

Next comes customer attributes — and this is the part I find genuinely exciting. The question is: what are the similarities across your past customers that tell you who your future customers are?

Look at the people you've served and ask what level they sat at. In a consulting context that might be an executive, an SES member, a contractor; outside government it might be a founder, a CEO, a managing director. What role were they in? And what type of organisation did they belong to — the agency, the industry, the company category? When I worked across federal government, the pattern was clear: advisory agencies, policy agencies, operational agencies delivering services to the public. Once you see the pattern, you stop guessing who to talk to. You can target the right people, at the right time, with the value you actually create.

Map both sides of the exchange

From there, the canvas comes together — and credit where it's due, the Value Proposition Canvas is Strategyzer's work, Osterwalder and Pigneur's brilliant tool, and I lean on it gratefully. The trick is that it has two sides that have to talk to each other.

On the customer side, you map their jobs to be done — what are they actually trying to get done? To look good, gain status, feel secure, serve their own customers? Then their pains — the negative emotions, the costs, the risks they carry before, during and after the job. Then their gains — the benefits they expect, desire, or would be delighted to be surprised by.

On your side, you map the mirror image. Your products and services. Your pain relievers — how you actually take that pain away. Your gain creators — how you produce the gains they're chasing. The discipline here is unforgiving in the best way: every claim of value on your side has to pair with a real job, pain or gain on theirs. If it doesn't pair, it isn't value — it's just noise you've talked yourself into.

When all six cells are populated and paired, you've got something powerful: a crystal-clear picture of the value you deliver, to whom, and why they choose you. That clarity feeds straight into your marketing copy, your sales conversations, even how you train your team — because now everyone knows exactly who they're here to help.

Where to take this next

You build one of these for each customer segment you serve, and the picture gets sharper every time. The work itself is reflective and practical — collect your evidence, mine it honestly, and let the pattern surface. The honest answers come from the work you've actually done, not the future you'd like to imagine.

If you want a hand walking the full canvas — mining your own value creation, finding your customer attributes, and pairing both sides cell by cell — that's exactly what The Success Framework is built for, and it's the kind of thing Rob loves rolling his sleeves up for.

Join the list, and I'll take you through it properly.