TT#029 - (2 of 2) How to start productizing your services...
Part 2/2 on “productizing services.”
Last week I gave you an overview of what productized services are and why you (and your consulting, coaching, and fractional clients) benefit when you design them well.
If you missed that, check out that 4 minute read here.
This week, I’m going to break down the 3 parts of your professional service to productize, and how to get started.
This is the same way I created a sales audit product that drove $350k in sales last year, and a coaching program that’s driven nearly $200k in sales these past 4 months.
Let’s dive in.
The Big 3
The 3 main parts of your professional service to productize are:
How you “package” your services.
How you “price” your services.
How you “deliver” your services.
How You Package Your Services
In a retail store, good packaging stands out by making it easy to understand:
What it is
Who it’s for
What it does
How it’s positioned
While your “product” may not be sitting on the shelf of a retail store, it could be displayed all over the digital world conveying the very same information - if it’s packaged properly.
For example, with my coaching program, I make it relatively easy for people to understand:
What it is: A 4-month coaching program.
Who it’s for: Client-based solopreneurs & executive freelancers.
What it does: Accelerate scalable client acquisition, sales, revenue, & income.
How it’s positioned: Premium service for a limited number of people each month.
This makes it easier for me to market my services. And easier for prospects to determine if it may be a good fit for them.
The main goal with packaging is to explain what you can do for people without having to have one-on-one conversations that end up capping your growth.
That allows you to prequalify prospects, scale your marketing, and drastically increase your impact.
How You Price Your Services
Packaging will help you scale your marketing, but that won’t do you much good if everyone is getting a different price.
Do you really want to run a “car lot” for your services, haggling, negotiating, and fighting your own clients, just to have everyone walk away paying a different price for the same thing?
To fully leverage the benefits of “packaging” and maximize the client experience, you have to create a standardized approach to pricing your services. (And not hourly, here’s why).
An easy to understand, consistent pricing process allows you to:
Replace time-wasting proposals with prebuilt sales collateral and enablement resources.
Eliminate the energy-draining guesswork of determining, “What’s a fair price for this?”
Avoid the “taker’s mindset” of trying to figure out, “How much can I charge for this?”
Speak with confidence and certainty when you talk about pricing and investment levels.
Here are 2 pricing mechanisms I’ve standardized for products I sell:
Variable based on revenue:
My sales audit product was 0.1% of revenue when we launched it. As the size of the sale organization grew, so did the complexity of my audit. So, a company with $10 million in revenue would pay $10k, and a company with $20 million in revenue would pay $20k. But the mechanism was easy to communicate and understand.Fixed price for defined deliverables:
My coaching program has a fixed investment level for 4 months to start. Over the course of 4 months there are clear deliverables, including access to content, group coaching calls, one-on-one coaching calls, and other support resources. Again, easy to communicate and understand.
I've helped create dozens of other pricing mechanisms.
The primary goals with pricing are to make it easy to communicate and understand, consistent, profitable, and based on the value you deliver (not time).
How You Deliver Your Services
Packaging and pricing your productized service will help land more clients.
But systematizing how you deliver what you've sold is how you supercharge your business.
A lot of consultants, coaches, and fractional contractors insist their knowledge and expertise can't be systematized.
I get it. You've spent years, maybe decades, building up the experience you're now using to help clients get results. "Systematizing it" may feel like creating a dumbed-down version of your expertise.
But here's the thing:
Creating a consistent process for working with clients is less like asking Van Gough to replicate his genius in a paint-by-numbers template... and more like asking a 5-star Michelin-rated chef to create a recipe to ensure everyone gets a consistent experience.
You may not be able to systematize yourself out of the process entirely, nor is that the objective.
But I have yet to meet a consultant or coach that gets consistent results without a consistent approach to working with clients. Systematizing delivery starts with unpacking that approach at a high level and drilling down in more detail layer-by-layer.
Here's a simple way of thinking about productizing delivery:
Create your framework:
A high-level framework describing how you work goes a long way in clarifying what clients can expect. When I created the framework for my sales audit (below), it helped me define the scope and explain what I was doing for prospects.Document your process:
You probably can't document every step in your process out of the gate, but you can document what you know and build on that. Start by listing the things you do in every engagement (kickoff calls, client interviews, specific document requests, etc.). Then audit your engagements and document what you're doing as you go.Automate or delegate as desired:
As your process gets more detailed, you'll find things you can automate with technology, or delegate to someone on your team or a subcontractor. How much you dish off depends on what your goals are. If you want to be a "company of one," you'll "outsource" less than if you want to scale.
And there you have it...
A guide to understanding:
What productization is.
Why you and your clients will love it.
And how to get started productizing today.
