1.2
Value Map

Products and Services

This is simply a list of what you offer. Think of it as all the items your customers can see in your shop window–metaphorically speaking. It’s an enumeration of all the products and services your value proposition builds on. This bundle of products and services helps your customers complete either functional, social, or emotional jobs or helps them satisfy basic needs. It is crucial to acknowledge that products and services don’t create value alone–only in relationship to a specific customer segment and their jobs, pains, and gains.

	Gain Creators describe how your products and services create customer gains.
	Pain Relievers describe how your products and services alleviate customer pains.
	This is a list of all the Products and Services a value proposition is built around.

Your list of products and services may also include supporting ones that help your customers perform the roles of buyer (those that help customers compare offers, decide, and buy), co-creator (those that help customers co-design value propositions), and transferrer (those that help customers dispose of a product).

Your value proposition is likely to be composed of various types of products and services:

Physical/tangible

Goods, such as manufactured products.

Intangible

Products such as copyrights or services such as after-sales assistance.

Digital

Products such as music downloads or services such as online recommendations.

Financial

Products such as investment funds and insurances or services such as the financing of a purchase.

Relevance

It is essential to acknowledge that not all products and services have the same relevance to your customers. Some products and services are essential to your value proposition; some are merely nice to have.

Pain Relievers

Pain relievers describe how exactly your products and services alleviate specific customer pains. They explicitly outline how you intend to eliminate or reduce some of the things that annoy your customers before, during, or after they are trying to complete a job or that prevent them from doing so.

Great value propositions focus on pains that matter to customers, in particular extreme pains. You don’t need to come up with a pain reliever for every pain you’ve identified in the customer profile–no value proposition can do this. Great value propositions often focus only on few pains that they alleviate extremely well.

The following list of trigger questions can help you think of different ways your products and services may help your customers alleviate pains.

Ask yourself: Could your products and services . . .

produce savings? In terms of time, money, or efforts.
make your customers feel better? By killing frustrations, annoyances, and other things that give customers a headache.
fix underperforming solutions? By introducing new features, better performance, or enhanced quality.
put an end to difficulties and challenges your customers encounter? By making things easier or eliminating obstacles.
wipe out negative social consequences your customers encounter or fear? In terms of loss of face or lost power, trust, or status.
eliminate risks your customers fear? In terms of financial, social, technical risks, or things that could potentially go wrong.
help your customers better sleep at night? By addressing significant issues, diminishing concerns, or eliminating worries.
limit or eradicate common mistakes customers make? By helping them use a solution the right way.
eliminate barriers that are keeping your customer from adopting value propositions? Introducing lower or no upfront investment costs, a flatter learning curve, or eliminating other obstacles preventing adoption.

Relevance

A pain reliever can be more or less valuable to the customer. Make sure you differentiate between essential pain relievers and ones that are nice to have. The former relieve extreme issues, often in a radical way, and create a lot of value. The latter merely relieve moderate pains.

Download trigger questions

Gain Creators

Gain creators describe how your products and services create customer gains. They explicitly outline how you intend to produce outcomes and benefits that your customer expects, desires, or would be surprised by, including functional utility, social gains, positive emotions, and cost savings.

As with pain relievers, gain creators don’t need to address every gain identified in the customer profile. Focus on those that are relevant to customers and where your products and services can make a difference.

The following list of trigger questions can help you think of different ways your products and services may help your customers obtain required, expected, desired, or unexpected outcomes and benefits.

Ask yourself: Could your products and services . . .

create savings that please your customers? In terms of time, money, and effort.
produce outcomes your customers expect or that exceed their expectations? By offering quality levels, more of something, or less of something.
outperform current value propositions and delight your customers? Regarding specific features, performance, or quality.
make your customers’ work or life easier? Via better usability, accessibility, more services, or lower cost of ownership.
create positive social consequences? By making them look good or producing an increase in power or status.
do something specific that customers are looking for? In terms of good design, guarantees, or specific or more features.
fulfill a desire customers dream about? By helping them achieve their aspirations or getting relief from a hardship?
produce positive outcomes matching your customers’ success and failure criteria? In terms of better performance or lower cost.
help make adoption easier? Through lower cost, fewer investments, lower risk, better quality, improved performance, or better design.

Relevance

A gain creator can produce more or less relevant outcomes and benefits for the customer just like we have seen for pain relievers. Make sure you differentiate between essential and nice to have gain creators.

Download trigger questions

Mapping the Value Proposition of Value Proposition Design

Remarkable value propositions focus on jobs, pains, and gains that matter to customers and achieve those exceedingly well. Again, you should not try to address all customer pains and gains. Focus on those that will make a difference for your customer.

It’s okay to aggregate several value propositions into one.

“Naked" list of the products and services that your value proposition builds on to target a specific customer segment.

Pain relievers outline how exactly your products and services kill customer pains. Each pain reliever addresses at least one or more pains or gains. Don’t add products or services here.

Gain creators highlight how exactly your products and services help customers achieve gains. Each gain creator addresses at least one or more pains or gains. Don’t add products or services here.

Formal Map of how we believe the products and services around this book create value for customers

EXERCISE
Map How Your Products and Services Create Value

OBJECTIVE

Describe explicitly how your products and services create value

OUTCOME

1 page map of value creation

Instructions

Sketch out the value map of one of your existing value propositions. For example, use one that targets the customer segment you profiled in the previous exercise. It’s easier to get started with an existing value proposition. However, if you don’t have one yet, sketch out how you intend to create value with a new idea. We will cover the creation of new value propositions more specifically later on in this book.

For now:

Grab the customer profile you previously completed.

Download the value map.

Grab a set of small sticky notes.

Map out how you create value for your customers.

Download the Value Map pdf

1
List products and services.

List all the products and services of your existing value proposition.

2
Outline pain relievers.

Outline how your products and services currently help customers alleviate pains by eliminating undesired outcomes, obstacles, or risks. Use one sticky note per pain reliever.

3
Outline gain creators.

Explain how your products and services currently create expected or desired outcomes and benefits for customers. Use one sticky note per gain creator.

4
Rank by order of importance.

Rank products and services, pain relievers, and gain creators according to how essential they are to customers.

Do this exercise online

Pain relievers vs. Gain creators

Pain relievers and gain creators both create value for the customer in different ways. The difference is that the former specifically addresses pains in the customer profile, while the latter specifically addresses gains. It is okay if either of them addresses pains and gains at the same time. The main goal of these two areas is to make the customer value creation of your products and services explicit.

What is the difference with the pains and gains in the customer profile?

Pain relievers and gain creators are distinctly different from pains and gains. You have control over the former, whereas you don’t have control over the latter. You decide (i.e., design) how you intend to create value by addressing specific jobs, pains, and gains. You don’t decide over which jobs, pains, and gains the customer has. And no value proposition addresses all of a customer’s jobs, pains, and gains. The best ones address those that matter most to customers and do so extremely well.

Best Practices for Mapping Value Creation

Common Mistakes

List all your products and services rather than just those targeted at a specific segment.

Add products and services to the pain reliever and gain creator fields.

Offer pain relievers and gain creators that have nothing to do with the pains and gains in the customer profile.

Make the unrealistic attempt to address all customer pains and gains.

Best Practices

Products and services create value only in relationship to a specific customer segment. List only the bundle of products and services that jointly form a value proposition for a specific customer segment.

Pain relievers and gain creators are explanations or characteristics that make the value creation of your products and services explicit. Examples include “helps save time" and “well-designed.

”Remember that products and services don’t create value in absolute terms. It is always relative to customers’ jobs, pains, and gains.

Realize that great value propositions are about making choices regarding which jobs, pains, and gains to address and which to forgo. No value proposition addresses all of them. If your value map indicates so, it’s probably because you’re not honest about all the jobs, pains, and gains that should be in your customer profile.