Have you ever had any trouble with selling your services? Have you ever thought about selling them like a product? Welcome to productization.
When it comes to productized services, it is very much ‘what you see is what you get’, and this is a very tempting way of doing business. This guide will help you to better understand why this is the case.
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Here at Precursive, we’re continuing to shout about productization and the many advantages it can bring to your business. Of course, this is not all we talk about, and for more information on topics such as churn, onboarding, and professional services, see our other blogs here.
WHAT IS PRODUCTIZATION?
Productization is the practice of selling a standardized service as a product, with clearly defined parameters and pricing. Once you have outlined precisely what a customer will receive and the price they have to pay for it, you can market and sell this as a product over and over.
There are no personalizations when it comes to productized services, meaning you will rarely have to make adjustments for each client, which is why productized services are typically seen and quoted as packages that are set in stone.
WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF PRODUCTIZATION?
Your ideal productized service should feel like the perfect fit for every incoming lead. We’ve compiled a list of the top benefits of productized services to see if they’re the right fit for your service-based SaaS business.
Defined pricing structure
You no longer have to face any issues with any leads attempting to be cheeky and offer less than your asking price. It’s much easier to stand by your rates because it’s the same flat fee for everyone you deal with.
Have you ever had any issues with people asking for discounts or tried to justify giving everyone a lower rate so you can guarantee you win the project? Productized services will give the extra confidence you need to stick to your rates.
Your pricing is not up for debate when you’re offering a productized service package. A lot of your prospects will be more likely to honor your prices when they know you’re offering a pre-built, predetermined package. If you’ve had problems in the past with defining your pricing structure, this can be the perfect solution.
Save time on sales calls
For most businesses, sales calls are a necessary part of doing business. The amount of time you spend on these however is not set in stone, and you could do a lot to improve this. This is especially important for small businesses who are looking to scale.
Hubspot highlights that prospects are more likely to show up for a call that’s scheduled for 30 minutes rather than an hour. Companies that don’t utilize productized services will fall into the trap of using most of the call to describe the various different ways they could help the prospect. This could be more trouble than it’s worth by presenting them with too many options. It’s vital that you use your limited time on sales calls wisely.
For all of your sales calls, it’s important to spend the time listening so you can gather the information you need to identify their most pressing needs so you can recommend a pre-built package for them. Updating your sales calls practices to align with your productized services will go a long way to making this process as seamless as possible.
Increased schedule efficiency
An important factor when it comes to client bookings is scheduling projects in your calendar. This is much easier with productized services.
If you had to custom quote for each client, you would find that you could work with them for a varied amount of time. While it may be an appealing prospect to work with some clients for longer than others, this will undoubtedly cause confusion.
It is made simpler when you’re following the exact same process for each customer. With a process that is easy to reuse and repeat, booking clients and fitting them into your schedule will become a whole lot easier.
Productized services help you stop serving too many clients at once and limit the amount of project overlap. It also gives you a clear schedule overview so you don’t feel obligated to cram client work into any open space on your calendar.
Readily scalable
Many service providers out there will likely be looking to build their team. It will be difficult to scale your business without productized services. The moment your business outgrows your own capacity, it’s clear you no longer have the time to quote each project individually.
The solution is to treat your done-for-you services as products that can be easily sold and delivered. It will never be the same as offering a physical product, but your service will still be based on a repeatable process that can be followed by any member of your team. It also includes a project scope that is predetermined with key objectives to hit.
The best way of making sure your team is set up for success is to ensure you test and approve your productized services. This way, your organization will run far more smoothly at each stage of growth.
Reduced scope creep
Chances are you’ve worked with customers who have asked or expected you to go above and beyond the original project scope. This conundrum presents two options - either say no because it is not included in the project scope, or say yes to including it.
Scope creep is often caused by not having clear instructions or boundaries around what is included in your package. Productized services can be the solution to this, as deliverables are clearly defined in the package ahead of time.
Should this happen with a client during a project, all you need to do is remind them of the list of what’s included in the productized service they invested in. You could also offer to work on a new project with them for an additional fee.
HOW PRECURSIVE CAN HELP PRODUCTIZE YOUR SERVICES
Productizing your services may be the answer to your business woes, but it can be a daunting prospect to completely overhaul how you sell your expertise. That’s why we’re here to help.
Precursive is used by many different companies to effectively manage the delivery of their packaged services. Through Precursive, there’s a wide range of processes that we can help you improve.
Up-to-the-minute reporting on KPIs, including revenue, profitability, time to value, and customer health
Track utilization across your entire project teams to ensure all workloads are balanced and ensure each team member’s schedule runs smoothly and efficiently
Track effort for you and your customer to understand where delays occur, target these, and eliminate them to deliver a more complete service
Make sure the correct resource is allocated to a project based on their skills and capacity, so nothing is delayed due to resources in the wrong place
Map out every task, dependency and owner of a project to ensure team collaboration and reduce any crossed wires
To see how Precursive helped productize project templates, managed activities, and aided collaboration with clients, for SaaS company Signicat, click here.
WHAT NEXT?
Want to understand more about how you can productize your service offerings? Our new playbook, How To Productize Services Delivery, is the free, detailed guide to ‘what you need to do. This playbook covers:
Frameworks to design, build and sell services packages
The metrics that are used to monitor success
Sales enablement toolkits and pricing strategies
Visit our Precursive Products page to discover how we can help you deliver a great productized service to your customers. Alternatively, book a demo today to see it in action for yourself.
