Pains & Gains List

Describe the customer's world before you describe your answer to it: what goes wrong, what they hope for, how much each matters, and how you know.

The pains-and-gains vocabulary comes from the Value Proposition Canvas, a practitioner framework without empirical validation (Osterwalder, Pigneur, Bernarda & Smith, 2014). The jobs lens behind it is practitioner theory with case-based support (Christensen, Hall, Dillon & Duncan, 2016). Scales and gain classes on this page are rules of thumb.

Use it when:

• You are about to write a value proposition, a pitch or a campaign and want it to answer what matters most to one customer group.
• Customers praise your offer but do not buy, and you suspect you are solving a smaller problem than the one they have.
• You have interview notes or support tickets and need to turn them into priorities.

Skip it when:

• You have not yet defined the customer or the job: use 6.1 Who Are Our Customers and 6.4 Jobs-to-Be-Done Canvas first.
• You already have the list and want to match your offer to it: use 6.7 Value Proposition Canvas.

An offer works when it relieves the pains and creates the gains that matter most to a defined customer. Writing the two sides separately, in the customer's terms, keeps the offer honest (Osterwalder, Pigneur, Bernarda & Smith, 2014). Underneath is the jobs lens: pains are what blocks or punishes the customer's progress, gains are what that progress should deliver (Christensen, Hall, Dillon & Duncan, 2016).

Both are practitioner frameworks. No empirical validation of the canvas has been found, and jobs theory rests on cases rather than systematic tests. What the method buys is separation: you describe the customer's world first, a discipline most teams skip. So this page splits functional from emotional and social entries, because the non-functional ones are the ones teams forget. It forces a rank, since a list where everything matters gives no direction. It separates required gains from the rest, because table stakes cannot set you apart. And it asks where each entry came from, because a list written from memory is a mirror, not research.

One segment only (from 6.1 or 6.2). Write each pain as the customer would say it, in three groups: functional (the task goes wrong), emotional or social (how it feels or looks), and risks or obstacles (what could go wrong, or stops them starting).

Strong answer: emotional: "I feel anxious that the bank will ask for a number I cannot find." Risk: "A missed deadline means a late fee." Not "poor reporting features."

Segment and context:

Illustrative example: the business and all numbers are made up.

A five-person accounting firm in rural Sweden serves small farms. The partner fills in the page after seven customer conversations and a read of last year's support emails.

Step 1: functional: receipts spread over three places; emotional: anxiety before bank meetings; risk: late fees at deadlines.

Step 2: missing receipts rank first (felt every quarter). The bank anxiety is severe but rarer, so second.

Step 3: correct figures are required; a one-page overview for the bank is desired; a reminder before the customer notices something is missing is unexpected.

Step 4: the overview ranks first on setting the firm apart. Correct figures are important but every firm delivers them.

Step 5: pain 1 is paired with a monthly missing-documents list; pain 2 with the overview. Pain 3, late fees, has no partner.

What changed: the firm sells the overview and the list, not faster bookkeeping, and puts a deadline calendar on its to-do list for the orphaned pain.