How to Use the Business Model Canvas – Alper Cakir, Xtensio

We were helping them launch new products, position themselves, go to market better, grow efficiently, etc. One thing led to another and inside the agency we started this little tool that we call Xtensio.

One thing I’ve seen over the years from Founders is not having clarity about their brand or what they’re trying to build. There are validation points where people can just go over a checklist and say, ‘well how do I define my brand?’ Or, how am I going to make this thing successful? Why would people buy this, or will people buy this? Who would be the ideal customer? Go to xtensio.com/templates. We have hundreds of examples of templates we built, and the strategy templates are great for this. They can find brand positioning, or the business model canvas.

Those two exercises will help you really define your businesses better. This is useful for multiple things. A lot of times, Founders are either alone or they’re maybe a couple of people. That’s a good start. This helps them really understand where they should put their focus, how to prioritize things, what to clarify better. This will help them go to investors. If they need to have a better understanding, this will help them market to the right audience early on. Even better, this will help them pinpoint their strengths and avoid the pitfalls as much as possible. Try those two exercises to start with.

It’s also very useful when you’re building up a team. The minute you have four, five, six, ten people, what you think about a business or what you think about an idea is not the same as the others that you brought in. It’s very common that slight differences in understanding the target audience, or the slight differences understanding how you’re going to grow lead to bigger problems. If you can as a team build these exercises and share on an ongoing basis, that helps focus everybody on the same thing at the same time, which accelerates growth tremendously.

Let’s focus on the business model canvas for now. It’s going to ask you a couple of questions. What is your unique value proposition? Why is Xtensio different? Why should I use it versus other things? Every business has something unique about it. If it’s a restaurant maybe you’re all about sustainability. Maybe it’s all about cleanness. Maybe it’s about the price point. Maybe it’s about the location. Maybe it’s the cuisine. So defining your unique value proposition is the center of it. But the business model canvas also is going to ask other things.

Who are your key Partners? When you’re doing this, how are you going to market it? Who’s going to help you reach the target audience? What are the key activities you’re going to do? Let’s say you know you’re building this company. What are the things that you need to go over to reach that audience and convince them that you are a viable resource for them? Who are the customer segments? I see this a lot.

Another very useful template in the Xtensio arsenal is the user personal table. Defining your audience and customer persona is very crucial to building a successful business. You should be looking at, among all these people, who cares about this? Let’s say you’re building a restaurant. You know about your price point, which helps you understand who will be the ideal customers. Maybe you’re for students, or maybe it’s for people on a budget. Maybe it’s for three or four people on the go. Maybe it’s for moms who are not able to spend time cooking at home that much, but they still care.

Understanding the needs of that user persona helps you with everything moving forward. It helps you choose the colors. It helps you choose the menu items. It helps you define your marketing strategy, and marketing message, etc. The business model canvas helps you ask the right questions so you can really clarify a roadmap moving forward. Find me online at the usual places I’m on LinkedIn, Twitter, or email me.