How productizing your services can grow your business
Productized Services Might Be Your Dream Business Model
One of the things I talk about a lot with clients is how to grow your business if you don’t want to go down the conventional route to scaling, which usually involves online courses, a big advertising budget, big launches and a focus on audience growth.
Productizing your services can be the ideal route to growth under these circumstances - you can serve more clients than you can when you create bespoke packages, and one of the big surprises (to me, at any rate) is that you can also charge MORE than for bespoke packages.
Before we dive into why that is, what is a productized service?
A productized service is one where you make a very specific offer, with no option to customize, no a la carte choices available, with a set price point, and you use the same back-end processes for every client. You still offer lots of high-touch support (in fact, Web Designer Sarah Moon makes the point in my podcast interview with her about productizing services that she actually has more time to offer high touch support when it’s needed, because she is freed up from handling different details with every site she designs) but you’re using an identical process every time you take on a new client.
By definition, you would never create a proposal for a productized service, and you might specify things such as which days of the week you do different elements of the package (for instance, Sarah’s former Design In A Day package was ALWAYS delivered on a Thursday, so that she could plan the rest of her week, for her and her team, around that deadline). This allowed her also to dedicate every Monday to marketing work for her business, because she knew for sure that she wouldn’t get sucked into client work on that day.
Why can you charge more for productized services?
Productized services tend to create predictable results faster than bespoke packages. Because everything behind the scenes is following tried and tested systems and processes, you can deliver a reliable result at speed. This doesn’t just make things easier for you, it also gets your client to where they want to be more quickly, which is something almost everyone wants. Remember, people don’t actually care anywhere near so much about how long you spend on their project as they do about the result you create for them - and getting that result faster is a selling point.
Also, a productized service positions you as the expert. It says, I’ve been doing this for a while, and I know how to get you the best result. I’m only going to spend time on doing the work that will move the needle for you. You’re being less consultative with the client than in a bespoke package because, ultimately, you’re working in your area of expertise, so you are the final judge of what it makes sense to do.
By streamlining and systematizing all your processes, you make things faster and easier to execute for yourself and your team (and you make it exponentially easier to delegate all or part of the work to others) but you also make it really clear to your clients what you need from them, and when. Again, this is a benefit for them as well as for you. If you are going to need their involvement at some point in the project, to sign off elements of a design for instance, it’s much easier if they have that on their calendar from the start.
One point to consider is that productized services may not have as high a price point as a proposal-based bespoke project. However, they may be more profitable. Getting really clear on the difference between revenue and profit is crucial here - you’re not really earning more if it’s taking you twice as long to deliver your results.
Finally, because all your time is not being taken up in back-and-forth communications with your client, and creating a new process for each bespoke project, you have more time to bring your creative and strategic brain to each client’s specific problem or issue, so you can, ironically, deliver something more specifically tailored to them in the end.
Other benefits
Sales calls are quicker and easier - your prices and processes can be fully laid out on your website, and since every project will be similar, you can include videos talking through how it all works etc. This means that a sales call doesn’t need to go into so much detail, nor do you need to gather anywhere near as much information from your client as you would if you were generating a proposal. The sales call can simply establish whether your service is the right fit for the potential client, or not.
You can plan time off much more easily, since you know in advance how long each project will take - and scope creep won’t destroy all your planning. You can choose, for instance, to take one or two weeks off per month from client work, in order to focus on marketing and outreach, or on further perfecting your systems, or training your team, or doing further strategic planning.
As a result, you are far less likely to burn out than entrepreneurs who are either trying to build an audience big enough for the conventional e-course launch, or who are constantly creating new systems and new processes for individual client projects. You can keep refining and streamlining your processes, to create more and more space and freedom within the constraints of your systems.
If you want to explore creating a you-shaped business, with offers aligned completely with how you work best, check out my 1:1 services.