The Solutions Value Chain Framework

The Solutions Value Chain is a sub-section of our Product Strategy Framework that helps you uncover real, strategic value for your target customers—from the top of their organization all the way down to the people in the trenches doing the day-to-day work. 

It’s designed to ensure that your products don’t just help users but make a measurable impact at every level of the customer’s organization, from the C-suite to the department heads to the front lines.

The concept is pretty simple. If you want to be sure your products are delivering quantifiable strategic value, you have to understand what’s driving your target customer organizations starting from the top down, even when you don't have regular access to customer executives.

How Does The Solutions Value Chain Work?

First off, pretend for a minute that your company and your products don’t exist. This is super important as it helps you see the market through the eyes of your target customers. Viewing the market through the lens of your products can actually distort your understanding of their real needs and you run the risk of building products and features that don't have much value.

Start from the Top Down

Let’s start by stepping into the shoes of your target customers, beginning with their CEO.

If you’re a customer CEO, you’re always keeping an eye on the dynamics of your market. These market dynamics are the key influencer to your company’s strategic priorities—they help you figure out what you need to do to keep delivering value to your customers and grow profitably.

Strategic Recap:

• The market dynamics your target customers are dealing with shape their strategic priorities at the highest level.

Quick side note: customer revenue and profitability aren’t strategic goals—they’re financial outcomes. Strategic priorities are the actions they take to hit those financial targets.

Operational

Now, put yourself in the shoes of a customer department head in one of the areas that uses your products (even though, remember, we’re pretending your products don’t exist yet!).

If you’re that department head, your priorities are pretty much driven by the organization’s overall strategic goals. The CEO is looking to you for action items in your department that will have the biggest impact on achieving the company’s big-picture goals.

Strategic + Operational Recap:

• Market dynamics shape your target customers’ strategic priorities at the top.
• Those strategic priorities trickle down and dictate the operational priorities for department heads so they can have the maximum impact on the company’s goals.

Getting Tactical: What Jobs and Workflows Need to Change?

As a department head, if you’re going to hit those operational department goals, some jobs and workflows will need to change. But which ones, and why?

As a product manager, understanding these jobs and workflows is crucial. This is where you’ll find the biggest obstacles preventing customer organizations from hitting their goals. It’s also where your value bullseye starts to take shape.

Strategic + Operational + Tactical Recap:

• Market dynamics shape strategic priorities.
• Strategic priorities dictate operational priorities.
• Operational priorities reveal the jobs and workflows that need to change most to hit those operational and strategic goals.

Zeroing in on the Jobs

Now it’s time to step into the shoes of your would-be users—those in the trenches whose jobs are impacted by these priorities. Your focus should be on the tasks and workflows that make the biggest difference to the department goals and therefore the company’s strategic goals.

So, what’s the ideal outcome for each of these jobs? Why is it important? And what makes it tough or impossible for users to achieve that outcome? This is where you dig deep into the procedural details, all while still keeping your own products out of the picture for now!

Strategic + Operational + Tactical Recap + Jobs

• Market dynamics shape strategic priorities.
• Strategic priorities set the operational focus for department heads.
• Operational priorities dictate which jobs and workflows need to change.
• Improving job outcomes makes a measurable difference at both the operational and strategic levels.

Time to Bring Your Products Back into the Mix

Now that we’ve walked through the customer’s world without your products, let’s bring them back into the picture.

Without any regard to your products, you’ve got to fully understand your customers’ strategic, operational, and tactical goals—and the jobs that are impacted. Without this understanding, you won’t have the right context for the value your products can bring, and you risk missing the mark entirely.

Here’s something that gets overlooked a lot: Your products need to help users do their jobs better. This means you need to know how their job performance is being measured and make sure your product is actually improving their performance.

The Two-Part Value Equation

1. Your products have to make users measurably better at their jobs. If they do, chances are the users will love them.
2. Your products also need to improve job performance in a way that positively impacts the department’s operational priorities. When that happens, you’re contributing to the company’s strategic goals at the executive level by default.

The only way to achieve this is by truly understanding what’s driving the business of your target customers from the top down. Once you do, you’ll be able to zero in on the users and jobs that have the biggest impact on those strategic goals and your product investment priorities will be more obvious than they've ever been.

The Solutions Value Chain: It’s Not Just For Product Management

The Solutions Value Chain is a powerful framework, and it’s not limited to just product management. It can make a big difference for product marketing, sales & pre-sales, and customer success. Here’s how each team can leverage it to deliver more value.

For Product Marketing

The Solutions Value Chain can help you create stronger, more compelling product positioning by looking through the eyes of your customer. By using this framework, you’ll be able to clearly connect the dots between the tactical value your products provide to users, the operational value they provide to department heads, and the strategic value they deliver to executive decision-makers. This approach makes your unique value crystal clear at every level of the organization.

For Sales & Pre-Sales

Sales teams can use the Solutions Value Chain to uncover the full scope of customer needs through top-down discovery. This means you’ll be able to tailor your sales presentations and demos not just to immediate pain points of the users, but also to strategic, operational, and tactical outcomes that set you apart from the competition.

The easiest way to differentiate in the sales process is to be more knowledgeable than your competition on the business of the customer. It creates the perception your products are superior.

For Customer Success

For customer success teams, the Solutions Value Chain is a perfect strategic account planning tool. Start with top-down discovery to uncover the specific goals and challenges your customer is facing. This approach helps you identify opportunities to maximize customer value from products they already have and it opens the door for add-on solutions that directly address their strategic priorities while growing your account revenue and meeting retention goals.

The Bottom Line on The Solutions Value Chain Framework

What makes The Solutions Value Chain so effective is it creates a clear line of sight from the customer's C-suite all the way down to the users doing the work and the specific capabilities of your products that can make a real difference.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re building, marketing or selling products, onboarding customers or managing customer accounts. When you understand your target customers from the top down, you'll deliver more strategic value to them, and they'll gladly return the favor.