Map jobs, pains, and gains on one side; pain relievers and gain creators on the other.
A value proposition canvas template is Strategyzer’s two-sided worksheet: the customer profile and the value map. Use this value proposition canvas pdf-style page when you need fit you can see, not a slogan you can chant.
Left: customer jobs, pains, gains. Right: products, pain relievers, gain creators. Fit is when the right side addresses the left with evidence. Empty cells are more honest than invented ones.
Functional, social, and emotional jobs — in their words.
Obstacles and risks that block the job.
Outcomes they want and would pay to make certain.
What you actually ship, not the roadmap.
One-to-one maps. Orphans on either side mean a gap.
An onboarding analytics product mapped “get new accounts to first value” as the job. The gain was not “more dashboards” — it was “CS does not spend Friday rebuilding a health score.”
Onramp (onboarding analytics)
| Field | Filled |
|---|---|
| Job | Get a new logo to first value before the 30-day risk window |
| Pain | CSMs rebuild health scores in Sheets every Friday |
| Gain | A shared view AE and CS will both open |
| Reliever | Auto health score from product events, no SQL |
| Creator | Playbooks triggered when a milestone slips |
Do not start with your product column. That is how canvases become fan fiction.
Circle the two that actually move budget. The rest is context.
If a pain has no reliever, that is a product or positioning gap.
If no customer said it, it does not belong.
The canvas is the investigation. The sentence is the output.
| Mistake | Fix |
|---|---|
| Starting on the product side | Customer profile first. Always. |
| Treating it as a poster | Use it to kill a feature or a segment, not to decorate a wall. |
| Mixing ICP and persona on one canvas | One role or one segment per canvas. |
No. The canvas is the map. The value proposition template is the sentence you ship from the map.
The slots are public methodology. Use this page as the working form; export however your team stores artifacts.
When a new segment starts closing or a pain you ranked #1 stops showing up on calls.