What Should a Founder's Plan Say About the Customer?

What should the customer section of the plan contain?

The Founder Blueprint's plan has a customer section called Position. It holds four lines, listed in this order:

• Proof: why a customer should believe us.
• Promise: the result the customer can expect.
• Pain: the problem we fix.
• Plan: how we deliver it.

The plan fits on one page, two at most, so each line stays short. Keep the evidence and working notes behind a line in the documents that hold them, and let the line state what that evidence shows. These four lines are unrelated to the marketing mix's four Ps of product, price, place and promotion.

In our judgment, a reader should be able to tell from the four lines which customer the company serves. A leader looking at a new opportunity should be able to see whether it fits the offer or needs a different one. Our guide to how founders scale past $5M covers what else belongs on the one-page direction.

Why does it belong in the operating plan?

Leaders make customer decisions as part of ordinary work. Say a salesperson agrees to a faster turnaround for one account. Operations then has to fit that commitment into work already scheduled, and the two functions can end up disagreeing about what the company agreed to provide. When the position is written down, both leaders can check the request against the same four lines before anyone commits.

Writing the position into the plan gives leaders one agreed reference for which work to pursue and which to decline, so nobody has to reconstruct the founder's intent from memory.

Make the boundaries specific enough to settle a decision. If an opportunity depends on a service the Plan line does not cover, record that difference before the work is accepted. A claim to serve everyone gives leaders nothing to decide against.

Who should write the customer position?

In the Blueprint, Position belongs to the founder. The founder sets it with the coach at a one-day Founder's Vision Session, before the leadership team is involved. We treat it as market strategy, and it follows from why the company exists, so it sits in the vision work beside the founder's reasons for starting the company, the core purpose and values, the company's edge, the ten-year goal and the three-year view.

Before the session, the founder writes down in their own words the ideal customers, the problems the company solves and the outcomes it promises. During the day, the coach tests each entry against the business as it stands.

As with the rest of the vision, equal co-founders write Position together before the wider team is involved. A disagreement between owners about who the customer is needs settling before leaders build a year's work against it. Our guide to setting the vision alone or with the team covers the wider ownership question and its exceptions.

How do you write each of the four lines?

Use words a customer would recognize, and keep each line to a sentence a leader can apply without a separate explanation. The guidance below is our practitioner judgment for drafting inside the Blueprint's four lines. As a hypothetical illustration, picture a commercial cleaning company that serves offices.

Proof: why should a customer believe you?

State the evidence that gives a customer reason to believe the Promise, and limit it to evidence the company can show today. Identify the record or demonstration behind the claim before it goes into the plan.

For the cleaning company, completed inspection records could support a promise about offices ready for the next working day, provided they record that result. Records showing only that a cleaner attended support a smaller claim. If the evidence covers part of the Promise, narrow the Promise to that part.

Promise: what result can the customer expect?

Write the result as the customer would judge it. State the result itself, because a sentence about the company's effort leaves open what the customer receives.

Limit the Promise to what the Plan can deliver. If the result depends on the customer doing something, such as giving access by an agreed time, put that condition in the line when it changes the commitment. Keep an ambition out of the Promise until the business can deliver it and show evidence that it has.

Pain: what problem do you fix?

Describe the problem of the customer you intend to serve, in a situation that customer would recognize. If you reach for a broad term such as inefficiency, write down what it means for that customer.

For the cleaning company, Pain might describe office managers whose staff arrive in the morning to premises that are not ready. That gives the plan a customer and a specific problem, and it sets the limit of what the Promise has to answer.

Then check that the company wants to keep solving this problem for this customer. Sometimes an existing customer requires work that conflicts with a value the founder holds. That tension needs a decision during the vision work, before the team plans around it.

Plan: how do you deliver it?

Describe how the company delivers the promised result, with enough of the approach for a leader to see the work it requires. Detailed procedures belong in the process documents.

For the cleaning company, the Plan could describe scheduled cleaning followed by an inspection and any correction before staff arrive. The line holds only if the company can do that work within the promised time.

Check the Plan against current capacity. A line that depends on a person you have yet to hire describes a delivery requirement you have not met. Narrow the commitment, or meet the requirement, before treating the Promise as one the company can keep.

Put together, the hypothetical cleaning company's Position might read:

• Proof: inspection records for every visit, completed before staff arrive.
• Promise: your offices meet the agreed standard before staff arrive, provided we have access at the agreed time.
• Pain: office managers whose staff arrive in the morning to premises that are not ready.
• Plan: scheduled evening cleaning, then an inspection and any corrections before opening.

How do you test the four lines?

The Blueprint's rule for this section is that a customer promise needs proof the company can show today. The coach tests every entry against the current business. The table gives our practitioner checks for preparing that review.

The second test compares the four lines with what the company already says in public. Before the Vision Session, the coach's preparation reads the company's website and public material as a serious buyer would, and lists line by line where the founder's stated Proof, Promise, Pain and Plan differ from what the company publishes. We designed the preparation around that gap because it gives the founder and the coach specific differences to settle during the day. The preparation also looks for tensions, such as a customer the company keeps serving against a value the founder has stated.

Run the same comparison yourself against your website and the proposals you send customers. Put each claim beside the matching line and write down the difference in specific terms, such as a wider result or a delivery condition that has dropped out.

For each difference, decide whether the plan or the public material changes, and check that decision against current evidence. Two documents that agree can still describe a promise the company cannot keep. Keep the open differences on a list until the founder decides what the company can support.

How does the leadership team use it?

The founder presents the finished vision, Position included, at the first team day. The leadership team then builds the execution against it: this year's milestones, the critical functions, the people moves, the core processes, the weekly scorecard and the meeting cadence.

Use Position when an opportunity would change what the company delivers. Compare the requested result with the Promise, check the work against the Plan, and record the requirement that makes the opportunity fit or not before deciding.

Use it again when deciding what a process must produce. A process behind a customer promise has to deliver the result the plan describes. Our guide to which processes to map first covers the work behind that delivery. When a new leader joins, show them which part of the Plan their function is responsible for and which result their manager will check.

Turning the position into sales messaging, conversations and a sales process is sales work. That belongs to Performance Edge, a separate 305Founders pathway, and this page stops at the plan.

How often should it change?

In the Blueprint, the founder refreshes the vision at the annual review, and Position is part of it. Between reviews the four lines stay stable, so leaders can rely on them.

In our judgment, reopen Position early only when something material changes: the customer you serve, the offer, or the company's ability to deliver. When you change a line, record the old wording beside the new one with the reason, check the revised Promise against current Proof, and give the leadership team the updated version so its decisions use the same text.

Where should we start this week?

Write down, in your own words, your ideal customers, the problem the company solves for them and the outcome you promise. Turn those notes into one line each for Proof, Promise, Pain and Plan.

Find the evidence behind the Proof line. Compare the Promise with the delivery work the company can do now, and mark any commitment you cannot support yet. Then set the four lines beside your website and your two most recent proposals, and note every difference.

Bring that draft to your vision work. In the Founder Blueprint, Position is set in the founder's session with the coach and becomes part of the plan the leadership team builds the year against.

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Next step

If much of the company's direction is still unwritten, the Leadership Scorecard is a ten-minute self-assessment across twelve leadership dimensions and the six drivers of founder-led growth, and it shows where the company still depends on you.