The value proposition triangle
Future state at the apex, offer and assurance at the base, the proposition in the middle. A future state with no offer beneath it is a daydream.
Stripped to its simplest form, a value proposition is a triangle. At the apex sits the customer’s future state: where their business will be once your promise is kept. At one base corner sits the offer: what you will actually do. At the other sits assurance: why they should believe you. The proposition itself is the middle, the sentence that joins the three.
Most proposition documents are missing a corner. A future state with no offer beneath it is a daydream, the slide with the customer’s ambition on it and nothing about how you get them there. An offer with no future state above it is the brochure. And a proposition with no assurance is an ask for trust that has not been earned yet. The triangle is a quick test to run on your own last proposal: which corner is thin?
Set out in full in: Creating Customer Value Propositions with AI (Kogan Page, 2027), chapter 7.
Related terms
The future state
The customer's business as it will be once your promise is kept, described in their world and not yours. The centre of the wheel, in a dozen words.
The offer
Everything a supplier does for a customer: products, services, prices, people, processes and proof. Not what the customer gets, but how they get it.
Assurance
The corner of the proposition that answers why should I believe you: credibility, return on investment, and the measures both sides will use.
Customer value proposition
The answer to the customer's one real question: what is this worth to me? Said in two sentences, in their financial language.
See the method run on one real account in three days: the One Page Proposition.