If you’ve ever been cornered in a meeting and asked, “So what’s our value prop, really?”—this guide is for you. Building a customer value proposition sounds like marketing fluff until you actually have to do it, especially if your company uses tools like Valkre to manage the process. This walkthrough is for product managers, marketers, or anyone who needs a clear, no-nonsense way to define and sharpen what you offer customers.
Let’s cut the abstract talk and get to the practical steps.
Step 1: Get Your Raw Materials Together
Before you even open Valkre, get your facts straight. The tool can help organize your thinking, but it won’t magically invent customer value out of thin air.
What you’ll need: - A list of your main customer segments (don’t overthink it—start broad). - A basic understanding of your product’s main features and benefits. - Any feedback or complaints you’ve collected from customers (emails, survey results, sales notes—messy is fine).
Pro tip: Don’t wait for “perfect data.” It’s better to start with what you have than stall out chasing the mythical perfect spreadsheet.
Step 2: Set Up Your Workspace in Valkre
Open Valkre and create a new “Value Proposition” project. The interface is pretty self-explanatory, but here’s what to focus on:
- Name your project something clear and practical (e.g., “2024 Enterprise SaaS Value Prop”).
- Add team members who’ll actually contribute. Don’t invite the whole department unless you like endless notifications.
Valkre is designed to keep you focused on customer value, but it’s still software. Garbage in, garbage out.
Step 3: Define Customer Segments
Valkre will prompt you to define segments. Here’s where people go wrong—they try to get hyper-precise. If you have to look up your own segment definitions every time, they’re too complicated.
- Start broad (e.g., “SMBs,” “Enterprise,” or “Channel Partners”).
- You can always split them later if needed.
What to ignore: Don’t get caught up in edge-case segments. If a group isn’t at least 10% of your business, skip it for now.
Step 4: Capture Customer Needs
Now you’re into the real work. Valkre’s interface will nudge you to list out the needs, pains, and “jobs to be done” for each segment.
How to do it: - Use real customer language. If a customer says, “Your product is slow,” write that, not “suboptimal performance.” - Don’t try to make your company look good yet. This is about what customers actually want or hate, not what you wish they cared about. - If you don’t know, add a guess and mark it for follow-up. Waiting for certainty is a trap.
Honest take: This step is the messiest, and that’s normal. Value props built on assumptions alone tend to flop.
Step 5: Map Your Offerings to Customer Needs
Here’s where Valkre gets useful: you can directly connect your product features or services to each customer need.
How to approach it: - For each need, list out which features (or parts of your service) address it. - Be honest about gaps. If you don’t solve a need, it’s better to admit it here than get surprised by a customer later.
Example: - Customer Need: “Easier onboarding for new users” - Our Solution: “In-app walkthroughs, onboarding webinars, dedicated support for the first 30 days”
If you’re stretching to make a feature fit a need, that’s a red flag. Don’t force it.
Step 6: Gather Evidence
This is the step most people skip—don’t. Valkre lets you attach “proof points” or evidence to each claimed value.
What counts as evidence: - Case studies or testimonials - Usage data (“70% of users complete onboarding in 3 days”) - Competitive comparisons (but only if you have real data, not guesses)
What doesn’t: Vague claims like “Our customers love us” or internal hype slides. If you wouldn’t show it to a skeptical customer, don’t include it here.
Step 7: Prioritize and Refine
By now, your value proposition will look like a wall of sticky notes. Valkre can help you prioritize by letting you rate needs by importance and how well you meet them.
How to prioritize: - Focus on needs that are both important to customers and where your solution is strong. - It’s tempting to focus on “table stakes” (stuff everyone offers), but those won’t differentiate you.
Ignore: Needs where you’re weak and customers don’t care much. That’s a distraction.
Don’t let the team vote everything as “high priority.” Push for real trade-offs.
Step 8: Test with Real Customers
You can brainstorm value props all day, but they’ll fall apart if you never sanity-check with actual customers.
- Use Valkre’s sharing and feedback features to show early versions to a few trusted customers.
- Ask what’s missing or sounds like marketing spin.
- Listen more than you talk.
Pro tip: If your “unique value” doesn’t get a reaction, it’s probably not unique (or valued).
Step 9: Finalize and Share Internally
Once you’ve got something that holds up in the wild, Valkre makes it easy to package up your value prop and share it with sales, marketing, and the rest of the company.
- Keep it to one page if possible. If you need a 30-slide deck, you haven’t boiled it down enough.
- Make sure everyone uses the same language. Consistency beats cleverness here.
What to watch for: Teams ignoring the new value prop and falling back on old habits. You’ll need to reinforce the shift for a while.
Step 10: Keep It Alive
A value proposition isn’t a one-and-done exercise. Valkre is designed to help you update and revisit as you learn more from customers or your market changes.
- Set a reminder to review it every quarter.
- Update with new customer feedback or product changes.
- Kill any value claims that are no longer true.
Reality check: Most companies let their value prop go stale. If you keep yours fresh, you’re already ahead.
A Few Pitfalls to Avoid
- Overcomplicating things: Start simple. Complexity kills momentum.
- Chasing consensus: Not everyone will agree on every word. That’s fine—focus on clarity, not universal buy-in.
- Thinking the software will do the work: Valkre is a tool, not a silver bullet. It helps, but you still need to have real conversations and make real decisions.
- Ignoring customer feedback: The fastest way to irrelevance is to build a value prop in a vacuum. Get outside your bubble early and often.
Keep It Simple and Iterate
Building a customer value proposition in Valkre isn’t magic, but it’s also not rocket science. Start rough, get feedback, and keep refining. Don’t get hung up on the perfect words or the flashiest evidence—just focus on being clear about why customers should pick you.
And if you ever get stuck, remember: customers care more about their own problems than your clever phrasing. Meet them where they are, and you’ll do fine.