What is a Value Proposition Hypothesis?
Every couple of weeks it’s critical that you’re continuing to find your best customer by hypothesis testing. The purpose of hypothesis testing is confirming your hypothesis before putting too much time into building the operations behind your product/service/offer, or putting any marketing effort or dollars towards it.
1. Decide what you’d like to do
What value do you think your business has to offer? Think about what you have access to today, and what you could have access to if you had the funding and resources to get there.
Types of value you might have or could create:
Offer Products
Provide Services
Build communities
Create art or media
Gather information
Professional services
2. Guess who needs your value
What type of customer needs what your business has to offer? Think about what problems they might be facing day-to-day and what would drive them wanting that value.
Types of organizations that might need your value:
Mid-sized companies (in a certain industry, region, serving specific customers)
Large corporates (in a certain industry, region, serving specific customers)
Individual consumers (in a certain category, luxury or low-cost)
Charities or non-profits
Municipal, provincial or federal governments
Startups or individual founders
Investors, private equity, or banks
If your persona is a company, also take a guess at who within that company might be the one who needs your value the MOST. e.g. a marketing director might want more leads, but an operations director might want to cut costs
3. Articulate why they need it (their current problem)
What problem does your value solve for the type of customer? Think about what they really, really need - not what you really, really want them to need.
For BUSINESS CUSTOMERS what you need to do is connect what you have to a real, deep, painful problem that businesses deal with every day:
Lower Costs **
More Sales **
Regulatory Compliance **
Employee Safety **
Good Reputation
Easy-to-Work-With Suppliers
Happy Employees
For CONSUMERS it’s not as straight forward because emotions play a bigger role - to get started you need to find a deep, emotional, or convenience reason why folks will buy from you:
Price & Value (low price or high brand value)
Quality
Emotional Appeal
Convenience
Culture & Personal Identity
If your value can’t directly map to one of these deep down needs, it’ll be an uphill battle to generate sales for your business.
Whatever you come up with is a great guess! You’ll need to validate that hypothesis by talking to who you think might be your customers to get real feedback. Your value prop is validated when you make repeat sales (not when your mom buys it)!
4. Write out all of your potential value propositions
Put it all together! A value proposition is one combination of one persona, one problem, and one solution.
This exercise may have your brain going all over the place, and you might have a list of 20 different value propositions - that’s great!
Write them all down - this is your parking lot.
5. Test your hypothesis
The way you test your hypothesis is by finding a bunch of people who fit in your persona, and using the time to not sell them anything - instead you need to ask them about the problems they experience, the priority to solve those problems, and what solutions they’d like to have available in the market.
Over time you will build confidence in the problem and solution - and certain hypotheses will rise above other hypotheses, guiding how you build your business.
The most successful hypothesis testing is when these discovery interview type conversations easily turn into sales conversations - and you eventually make a sale. If you need help navigating any part of this process, consider joining Go-to-Market Sprints!
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Impact Zero empowers climate founders to turn their ideas into thriving, revenue-generating ventures. Through hands-on training, real-time feedback, and structured go-to-market frameworks, founders learn how to define real customer problems, validate solutions, and close sales. The goal is to build sustainable businesses that don’t just make impact—they make money too.