Crafting Your

Unique Value Proposition

Carlos E. Peña
Senior Loan Officer

3/1/2017
What is a Unique Value Proposition (UVP)?

• UVP is a clear statement that describes the benefit of your offer, how you
solve your customer's needs and what distinguishes you from the
competition

• A value proposition is a business or marketing statement that a company

uses to summarize why a consumer should buy a product or use a
service. This statement convinces a potential consumer that one
particular product or service will add more value or better solve a problem
than other similar offerings

• A short statement that encompasses the services you provide and how
you differentiate yourself from your competitors.

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A Few Examples

• Small Business Accounting Software Designed For You, The Non-Accountant

(FreshBooks)

• A Great Shave For a Few Bucks a Month (Dollar Shave Club)

• We Help The World’s Biggest Brands Scale And Secure WordPress (Pagely)

• The Easiest Way To Make a Website (Weebly)

• Bring Everything You Need Without Checking a Bag (Tortuga Backpacks)

• Send Better Email (Mailchimp)

Why should I have a UVP?

• Engage your consumers and deliver your message

• Explain your business model to investors in a concise way

• Understand what key activities drive your company’s growth

• Effectively articulate your mission to potential partners

• Formulate business strategy with a clear mission

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Business Model Canvas

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Template Canvas

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Example Canvas

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Exercise

• Take 10 minutes and create a canvas for your business.

• Create your canvas based on what you envision the business to be at its full
potential (as opposed to in its startup phase)

• Start from either the Value Proposition or Customer Segments boxes and
then branch out (however you see fit)

• Understand your customer segment. Ideally you identify your segment

broadly but also identify early adopters (EA). Examples:
 Pregnant couples (EA: first time parents)
 Immigrants (EA: immigrants from a specific region/background)
 Econ Development Institutions (EA: early-stage enterprise incubators)

• If you can’t think of what to populate certain boxes with just leave the box
blank.

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Canvas Exercise Continued

• Which box did you start from?

• What were the easiest boxes to populate?

• Any blank boxes? It’s ok.

• Canvas Exchange (optional)

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Creating a UVP

• Where to start?

• End-User Driven
– Specify consumer, identify pain point, ideate product/service

• Activity Driven
– Select skill/role, determine pain point, narrow down user

• Mission Driven
– Commit to goal (which counters pain point), explain theory of change,
highlight beneficiary

• Components
 Activity
 Delivery
 Target

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Value Proposition Canvas

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Takeaways

• Which method did you take?

• What insights have you gained?

• Which (if any) of your assumptions has changed?

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Carlos E. Peña
Senior Loan Officer
cpena@accionchicago.org
312-924-2185