You’re managing a product or service. Can you articulate the compelling reason your customers should buy the product or service? What’s the value proposition? You’re in marketing and have to write key messaging for everything, ranging from your website content, your product data sheets, brochures, RFPs, and proposals. What’s the quickest way to come up with this messaging? Is there a tool that can help you define the compelling reason behind your offering?

Mapping Business Goals to Product Value

I recommend using a Business Goals, Product Value, and Product Features Map. It’s a tool that I created to map business goals to the products value. I use org charts for everything, using this approach to map business goals to product value to product features. While defining the business goals and values per target audience title (like CFO’s, CEOs, CTO’s, etc.) can be time consuming, organizing your thoughts by mapping it streamlines the process. I also include if the target is a decision maker or champion in the sales process.

Below is an example of a map for a CFO target audience. In this example, there’s one business goal for the CEO, CFO/VP of Finance and Revenue Cycle Manager. The target audience’s goal is to: Improve Outpatient Profitability. The product value that meets this business goal requirement is mapped to each goal is the following: “Evaluate APC performance by department and individual procedure.”

Product Features to Product Value

Once the hard work of identifying business goals and product value is completed, map the product features for each business goal/product value. For example, the product feature of “1) Identify profitable and unprofitable departments in terms of providing outpatient services” supports, thus is mapped to “Evaluate APC performance by department and individual procedure.”  The process gets easier after you map one title in your target audience.

When I first created this tool in a org chart format, I first used an Excel spreadsheet to identify each product’s stakesholders (titles), creating column headers for goals, values and features. I emailed this spreadsheet to my product manager team mates, who identified their respective product’s stakeholders, goals, values, and product features. I used this information, creating it in a visual representation of an org chart for product.

I remember having five to six titles in a target audience just for one product, then mapped to five products, working with my product management peers in defining business goals, product value, and mapping features. Creating this process was easy, after I figured out my initial target audience, business goals, and product features for one product. I set up a repeatable process this step was complete, working with my product management team mates for maintenance after our initial creation of the maps.

A Must-Have Tool in Your Toolkit

The Business Goals, Product Value, and Product Features Map is square one for me from a marketing perspective. It’s a sales and marketing tool that assists everyone in the company from sales reps, to marketing and communications staff, product marketers, product managers, and client services/support. It’s a quick guide, allowing these people to articulate to the sales prospect or customer what the value proposition is for your product or service. It’s the first step in creating Solution Development Prompters, but that’s for another post in the future. It’s also a great tool for entrepreneurs, who need to think through their startup idea. Add this tool to your toolkit today.

Download the Business Goals, Values, and Features Map in Visio format, click here.

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