Value Proposition Mapping

These past two weeks, I've been focused on one of my key goals for the early part of the year: mapping specific parts of my service portfolio to a specific target market (and identifying opportunities for improvement). This process has clarified how I create value—not just for myself, but for the specific customers and challenges I aim to support.

Over the past year, I've had over 100 conversations with leaders across revenue, marketing, product, and operations organizations and have learned a lot. I typically began each conversation with the same simple question: What's keeping you busy? This question broke the ice and opened the door to deeper discussions about their challenges, priorities, and aspirations.

One thing became crystal clear: Customers don't hire generalists; they hire experts with solutions to specific complex problems. Being intentional about your value proposition isn't just about positioning—it's about creating cohesion across the whole value delivery process. The best products and services in the world are unapologetically focused, and consulting is no different. It's the only way to build the expertise and credibility needed for customers to trust you with their challenges

What's interesting is that value proposition design, while fundamental to business success, often gets pigeonholed as just a product or marketing exercise. But in revenue organizations, it's much more than that. It's the thread that weaves together sales narratives, customer engagement strategies, and team alignment. When revenue leaders skip this work—or delegate it entirely to product teams—they miss the opportunity to create a unified story that resonates across every customer touchpoint.

So how do you figure out what that specific "something" is? Whether you're launching a product, service, or business, the question applies. I've found that the Value Proposition Canvas is the best starting point. It helps map the initial playing field, clarifying who you're serving, what they need, and how your offering creates value. I've documented my process below in hopes it can help you find clarity in tackling whatever opportunity lies ahead.

Getting Started

First, get clear on why you're doing this (for me, it was about making sure my services actually solve real customer problems and that I have some guard-rails or focus in where I spend my time). Because I have 12 months of detailed notes with leaders I used that as my data source. Other teams will draw from consumer insights, sales reports, purchase data, etc. bring what is most pertinent to your business but usually the best data comes directly from customers.

The core of this approach is pretty straightforward:

• Map out your customer's world (their jobs, frustrations, and what winning looks like for them)

• Look at what you offer and how it helps

• See if there's actually a fit

• Make adjustments to where you are focused or work towards filling gaps where needed

Step-by-Step Walkthrough

Below, I'll show you how I moved through these steps in my own business, focusing on CROs as my target audience.

1. Define the Context

Before diving into the value proposition itself, I needed to get precise about which part of organizations and which roles I should target. I'd had conversations across Revenue, Operations, Marketing, and Product teams, from C-level to individual contributors. But trying to serve everyone is the same as serving no one effectively.

So I created a simple forced-ranking exercise across four key factors:

• Expertise alignment (where does my background give me the deepest credibility?)

• Revenue potential (which areas have the budget and need for consulting services?)

• Solution fit (how well do my approaches map to broad problems in each domain?)

• Market access (how connected am I to potential customers in my network?)

I ran this evaluation twice: first against organizational functions (Revenue, Operations, Marketing, Product), then against roles within those functions (C-level, Directors/Division Leads, Managers, Individual Contributors). CROs emerged as my clear target: my background aligned deeply with their challenges, they hold significant budget (for the right solutions for the right problems!), the work I do most closely matches their common problems (sitting at a cross section of both strategy & organizational performance), and I have the strongest network access to this group.

With my target clear, my goal became simple: figure out where my service portfolio aligns best to solving specific domain problems for CROs. I'd seen consistent pain points around alignment, speed, and clarity in my conversations with revenue leaders. If my offerings didn't address their actual needs, I'd just be adding more noise instead of helping them meet revenue targets.

2. Map the Customer Profile

2.1 Jobs (What CROs Are Responsible For)

I started by asking one primary question; “What is the one job a CRO has to perform no matter what?” With the context of all my conversations, and a bit of desk research to back it up, I came to:

• Above all else, a CRO must maximize revenues.

  • And underneath that I had isolated across 3 axis; growth, predictability, profitability.

From there I asked myself “What is most important to delivering on that primary objective?” and started listing out the CRO responsibilities that most aligned with that outcome—both daily tasks and big-picture objectives:

• Define & drive revenue strategy

• Align the organization to that strategy

• Build & lead high-performing teams

• Optimize revenue motions (GTM, processes, pipelines, tools)

• Integrate new business models / Diversify Offerings

• Communicate & influence (executives, board, internal teams, partners/market)

• Improve customer relationships

• Manage risks toward scalability

• Demonstrate results (KPIs, ROI, etc.)

When I was sorting through these, I kept asking myself: "Which of these have most long term and sustainable impact?" It helped me determine what likely has the most impact on performing that hero job to be done. After some time, I felt this list was largely representative of the primary jobs to be done.

2.2 Pains (Barriers or Friction Points)

Next, I dug into what usually blocks CROs from succeeding at these jobs:

• Complexity & lack of clear priorities

• Misalignment across teams & goals

• Balancing short-term vs. long-term

• Speed to impact (pressure for quick wins)

• Inconsistent processes & reporting

• Disconnected frameworks (One-size-fits-all consulting that ignores specifics)

I then ranked these by how much they actually derail CROs. I heard over and over how team spin, a symptom of complexity, lack of clarity, misalignment, etc was a huge factor. In particular spin from misalignment (circling the wagons on the same problem over and over, revisiting decisions, etc), continued to surface in conversations as a having an outsized impact on the success or failure of expansion initiatives or new product go to market.

2.3 Gains (What "Winning" Looks Like)

Finally, I listed the expected or delightful qualities CROs truly appreciate when things go right:

• Clarity & focus (No second-guessing priorities)

• Aligned teams & functions (Fewer silos, less confusion)

• Scalable, high-impact results (Beyond small, incremental gains)

• Predictable revenue & consistency (Fewer surprises)

• Engaged & empowered teams (high morale, sense of ownership)

• Balance immediate & long-range Goals (Hit this quarter's number and plan for next year)

• Improved customer relationships (Retention, upsell, brand loyalty)

Much like the pains, I prioritized gains that have the biggest perceived impact on ability to get that hero job done.

(my wall, quickly running out of room)

3. Map Your Value (The Value Map)

After clarifying the CRO's world, I evaluated my own offerings. The Value Map is simply:

• Products/services you provide

• Pain relievers (which pains the products/services solve)

• Gain creators (which gains the products/services enable)

Here are my three core offerings:

Targeted Labs

Tailored workshops for clarifying key priorities or solving a specific revenue challenge within the domain of expansion (Strategy, GTM, Driving Success)

• Pain addressed: lack of clarity, misalignment

• Gain created: clear direction and buy-in from cross-functional teams / stakeholders

12-Week Sprints

Structured engagement combining labs with ongoing advisory services through critical stages of an expansion journey.

• Pain addressed: misalignment, lack of cohesive plans

• Gain created: high-impact, scalable results, with a tangible roadmap

Advisory Partnerships

Ongoing guidance to integrate new business models, partnerships, or growth plays

• Pain addressed: complex organizational changes where "checklist consulting" falls flat

• Gain created: predictability and smooth transition into new revenue streams

For each offering, I asked myself: "Am I directly addressing the top pains (like misalignment and complexity) and delivering the top gains (clarity, predictable revenue)?" If something didn't clearly map to a pain/gain pair, I either revised it or deprioritized it.

4. Review, iterate and/or close gaps

At this point, I took a step back and isolated the highest ranked parts of both the customer side and my service portfolio into one canvas, then I compared the customer profile side to the value map side noting relationships and gaps. Some questions I asked:

• What of my products/services directly address a pain/gain that customers have?

• Are there unaddressed pains that matter most to CROs?

• Are there linkages between certain pains/gains and my solutions that naturally exist & could be incorporated into my offering?

• Does each offering clearly solve a priority problem? What are they?

• Is my language direct and relevant to customers and an important set of jobs/pains/gains, or too broad?

If this were a larger group workshop, I'd definitely bring in stakeholders (sales leads, marketing heads, product managers) to weigh in, making the final mapping stronger and with more fidelity to what is happening on the ground.

5. Synthesize & Distill

Finally, I distilled everything into a concise summary:

• Key CRO Jobs: Drive revenue strategy, align org, manage risk, show results

  • When I double tapped on my own services, the underlying quality was it is specifically for diversification or expansion for new business lines (my experience + my particular set of tools I bring to the table)

• Critical Pain: Spin = Misalignment, complexity, short-term vs. long-term conflict

• Essential Gains: Clarity, alignment, predictable results, growth at scale

• My Offerings: Labs, Sprints, Advisory—each mapped to specific pains/gains

This clarity shapes not only how I talk about my services, but how I design them going forward. For a CRO or other revenue leader, it provides a straightforward view of why you'd deploy a certain initiative.

The last small step I took was I drafted a revised value proposition statement that aligned my business most closely with the people, jobs and qualities most pertinent to the services I can offer. This statement can be used in conversation but also just as a steering mechanism for how I develop the business forward.

“I help consumer platforms under topline pressure remove the spin and land their next play"

Outcomes & Next Steps

Why This Matters

• Reduces Guesswork: No more "I hope this resonates." You see exactly how your offering fits

• Drives Alignment / guardrails: Internally, teams understand what matters most to customers and where focus should be placed

• Facilitates Iteration: Market conditions shift. A relatively quick effort can help teams iterate as changes occur around the business or if the business itself evolves.

Considerations

• Involve multiple perspectives for richer insights (especially product, marketing, and sales)

• Keep it living: As you learn more, update the canvas

• Don't try to force-fit every service or feature into "must-have" territory; it's okay to deprioritize and its especially okay to focus in on only a small subset or even single job (which will be the case for most businesses)

A few resources:

• Strategyzer; originated the value proposition canvas

• Modelthinkers; some additional context around the value proposition canvas

Closing Thought

Ultimately, mapping out your value proposition like this isn't rocket science. But I do think it is a largely under-utilized and simple tool for creating clarity across organizations. When you ground the exercise in real data against real customer problems, it can make a huge difference in how you think about and deliver value to customers. Whether you're an early-stage startup or a mid-market enterprise, having an up-to-date picture of your customers' Jobs, Pains, and Gains—and a realistic plan for addressing them—removes a lot of the spin that can occur in day-to-day work.

That's it—a structured way to walk through the Value Proposition Canvas and see, clearly, how you can tune your offering to match what your target audience needs most. If you're a revenue leader, its useful to run this same workshop with your own products or services. The goal isn't perfection—it's getting practical clarity that you can act on right now.