The 8-Step Productized Framework for Success
Consider you’ve successfully sold a service to a client, and now you have to deliver. There’s no way around it. You have to pull together your team and start working to fulfill your promise to the client. If you’re like most agency owners, this is the part you dread the most. Sure, you’ll get it done. But it’s going to be messy, and it’s hard to know if you’ll actually make a profit once the dust settles.
You could lose money on the project or, even worse, disappoint the client. This is where agency management software with a productization framework comes in. It can help you tackle the complexities of delivering a productized service to your client. This guide will explore what a productization framework does and how it can help you grow your productized services.
The 8-Step Productized Framework for Success
1. Carve Out Your Niche
Choosing a niche for your productized service is the best way to attract more qualified leads. A focused niche allows your brand to shine because you can become an industry expert. What could be better than knowing that you’re the expert for one-time speed optimization services? It makes it easy to find potential clients as you know how to speak to them. And it’s easier to bundle your services, set your prices, and sell them. That being said, not everyone is running an established agency. Some are starting fresh, so you might have to do market research first to reach potential customers.
2. Learn About Your Clients’ Needs
If you don’t know what could help your clients, then some research is necessary to find out what they fear, what they want, and what could help make their businesses more competitive in their industries. With the data collected, you can create ideal customer profiles.
Then, look at your past invoices, identify missed opportunities, and eliminate services nobody seems to be going crazy for. You can also use customer experience management software platforms, which offer great tools to better connect with clients and understand their needs. As a service business owner, providing value to your clients is essential; you can’t offer real value without knowing their needs. Your service offering should be a packaged solution to those needs.
3. Differentiate Yourself from the Competition
Earlier, I mentioned that you might have to do market research. The pitfall many productized service providers fall into is this: they see an excellent idea a competing provider has, and copy it. Why would a potential client buy your service over the established one? Maybe you’re cheaper, but competing on price is a race to the bottom. Instead, set yourself apart with unique attributes. For instance, let’s say your service is to create insurance websites.
While that is an exciting niche because you set me apart from regular designers, why should anyone hire you? Leverage your client testimonials and data, and show prospects that your customers have increased conversion by XY%. Another example is someone selling services for book covers (design, typography, etc.). There are countless book cover experts, but only a few have worked with best-selling authors.
4. Review Your Performance Metrics
How long has each of your services been offered? How do your current services contribute to your success? Do any of my services need more sales? What makes these services different from my more successful services? Steps to productize a service: look at revenue by service sold. Build off these metrics to offer productized versions of already successful services.
Revise unsuccessful services to provide a productized version that solves a specific problem—a list of orders with their statuses. Get an overview of all your metrics with our powerful reporting. Track analytics now. It’s also essential to trim the excess services I’m offering. If a service isn’t in demand, there’s no point in distracting clients from the services they need.
5. Check Your Support History
Scan the inbox of your helpdesk software for reasons clients stopped using my services and any objections and problems they experienced. You may find shortcomings in my services or the way they’re delivered. For example, if you notice customers regularly asking for progress updates, consider implementing a self-service portal where they can see the status of their orders in real-time.
6. Ask Your Best Customers for Insight
Who are your favorite customers? The ones responsible for a good chunk of your revenue while requiring minimal handholding along the way; I’m sure you have a few clients like that. Reach out to these clients to find what attracted them to your agency first and gather insights into bringing in more people like them.
7. Talk to Other People in Your Industry
Not everyone in your space is in direct competition with you. You’ll learn a lot about business and your customers just from talking to other service providers they use. It could be through industry forums, Slack groups, or in-person events. By openly sharing ideas and helping others solve their problems, you’ll expose yourself to future opportunities, collaborations, and joint ventures.
8. Test Your Setup & Optimize Your Flow
Last but not least, when everything is set up, run many tests. Invite a client into my portal and ask them to purchase services, go through the order process, and give you feedback. Don’t worry; we have a test mode, so payments aren’t live. With the input, go back to the drawing board until the entire flow is accessible for both existing clients and new prospects. Then, launch your productized service officially and promote it via content marketing, social media, and affiliates.
Benefits of Productized Services
1. Enhanced Scalability: Grow Your Reach, Revenue, and Impact
Productizing your service offers scalability that's often hard to achieve with custom services. By standardizing your offering, you can efficiently serve multiple clients simultaneously, expanding your reach and increasing revenue potential.
2. Consistent Quality: Deliver Reliable Services Clients Can Trust
A key advantage of productization is the assurance of consistent quality. Clients value knowing precisely what they'll receive, which fosters trust and builds a loyal customer base.
3. Streamlined Sales and Marketing: Simplify Your Approach to Selling
Productized services are inherently easier to market and sell. They have a clear value proposition, a defined pricing structure, and a set of tangible benefits. This simplifies sales and marketing efforts, saving time and resources.
4. Predictable Revenue: Achieve Financial Stability with Productization
Subscription-based or fixed-price productized services provide a dependable revenue stream. This financial stability empowers you to make informed long-term decisions and effectively manage your finances.
5. Increased Efficiency: Optimize Operations for Better Client Delivery
Productizing services encourages operational efficiency. You can reduce the time and effort needed to deliver your services by standardizing processes, employing templates, and leveraging automation. This benefits your clients and enables you to handle more projects.
6. Smooth Customer Onboarding: Deliver a Smoother Client Experience
The onboarding process becomes more straightforward with a productized service. You can follow a standardized procedure, resulting in faster project initiation and an improved overall client experience.
7. Mitigation of Scope Creep: Keep Projects on Track with Clear Boundaries
Well-defined productized services often come with clearly delineated boundaries. This significantly reduces the risk of scope creep, ensuring that projects remain on track and are delivered as promised.
8. Expedited Delivery: Offer Clients Quick Turnaround Times
Standardized services can be delivered more swiftly. You can offer quicker turnaround times and a compelling client selling point with refined processes and streamlined workflows.
9. Elevated Profit Margins: Boost Your Bottom Line with Productization
As you become more efficient and standardized, your profit margins may rise. Optimization of costs and pricing becomes feasible, leading to enhanced profitability for your business.
10. Competitive Edge and Market Differentiation: Stand Out from the Competition
A productized service can set you apart from competitors who offer generic, one-size-fits-all services. It becomes your unique selling proposition, enabling you to position yourself as an industry leader in your niche.
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12 Real-Life Examples of Productized Services
1. Design Pickle: The Graphic Design Subscription Service That Keeps on Giving
Design Pickle is a graphic design service that allows clients to submit unlimited requests for a flat monthly fee. With a subscription model like this, you can expect to pay less for design over time as you get more familiar with the process and your designer. The service delivers quick turnaround times, so you can return to business without missing a beat.
2. Bench: Bookkeeping Services with Predictable Pricing
Bench is an online bookkeeping service that helps small businesses keep their finances organized and updated. When you sign up, you’ll be matched with a dedicated bookkeeping team that will take care of your monthly bookkeeping tasks and provide regular financial reports for a reasonable, fixed monthly rate based on your business’s expenses.
3. WP Buffs: WordPress Website Support and Maintenance
WP Buffs specializes in website support and maintenance services for WordPress websites. You can choose from different tiers of plans that include services like website monitoring, automatic backups, updates, security, and more. Each plan clearly defines the deliverables, making it easy to pick a product that fits your needs and budget.
4. ConvertKit: Email Marketing for Creators
ConvertKit is an email marketing platform specifically for creators. It offers packaged pricing plans based on the size of your email list, which gives you access to tools for list building, automation, and segmentation. With ConvertKit, you can easily understand what you’re getting with each pricing tier, making choosing a plan that fits your needs simple.
5. Mailchimp: The Email Marketing Platform That’s Made for Everyone
Mailchimp helps businesses manage their email marketing efforts with customizable templates, automation, analytics, and more. The platform has productized different service levels to fit businesses of all sizes, so you can start with a free version to learn the ropes before moving on to a paid plan that offers more features and flexibility.
6. KickoffLabs: Lead Generation through Landing Pages
KickoffLabs helps businesses generate leads through landing pages and referral marketing campaigns. The platform offers a tiered subscription model with customizable campaign tools. Each subscription level clearly defines the features you’ll get, so you can easily choose the package that fits your goals and budget.
7. Lead Cookie: LinkedIn Lead Generation Services
Lead Cookie specializes in LinkedIn lead generation by offering a single productized package to handle outreach and connection requests. When you sign up, you can expect predictable lead generation using a well-defined process. This eliminates the guesswork for prospective customers and helps them understand what they can expect when they purchase the service.
8. Looka: AI-Powered Logo Design
Looka, formerly Logojoy, uses artificial intelligence to help users create custom logo designs. The productized service allows clients to design logos with minimal time and customization. Users start by entering their company name and industry; they can select styles they like before the AI generates logo options. From there, clients can customize their chosen designs to create a unique logo for their business. Look AI also uses tiered pricing based on file type and usage rights, making it easy for buyers to understand their options.
9. PodcastMotor: Podcast Editing and Publishing Services
PodcastMotor is a productized service that offers podcast editing and publishing as a fixed-fee service. When you sign up, you’ll get a dedicated team of editors that will handle all the post-production work for your podcast so you can focus on creating great content. Their services include editing, show notes, and distribution, making it easy for podcasters to outsource production and get back to what they do best.
10. Video Husky: Unlimited Video Editing Services
Video Husky offers unlimited video editing services with a subscription model. Content creators can get their video editing done predictably and affordably, helping to support YouTube creators and businesses with regular video needs. This productized service breaks down barriers for buyers, helping them to understand what they’re getting before they commit to a plan.
11. Scribe Media: Book Writing and Publishing Services
Scribe Media focuses on writing and publishing books for entrepreneurs and professionals. They use structured packages to help clients achieve their goals, including ghostwriting, editing, and publishing. Scribe’s approach to productized services takes the stress out of writing a book, making it easy for buyers to understand what they’ll get with each package and how the process works.
12. Pilot: Bookkeeping, Tax, and CFO Services for Startups
Pilot is a financial services company offering productized bookkeeping, tax, and CFO services. Their services are geared toward tech startups, with transparent pricing and defined deliverables. For example, clients can choose from different tiers of bookkeeping services, and each tier clearly illustrates the features and deliverables you’ll get to help your startup scale.
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How To Grow Your Productized Service In 5 Simple Steps
1. Use Orchestra
Orchestra is an all-in-one growth toolkit to help you launch your productized service quickly and easily. Built for creative professionals looking to scale, Orchestra lets you seamlessly manage the onboarding and delivery of your new service with a branded, white-labeled client portal, task management capabilities, and real-time analytics, with no coding required—just your Stripe account.
Whether you’re a designer, developer, or copywriter, Orchestra streamlines your workflow, letting you collaborate with clients effortlessly while maintaining a private workspace with your team. You can even add integrations like Slack and webhooks to customize your setup and deliver a wholly branded experience to your clients. Elevate your service with a platform built to grow alongside you. Try Orchestra for free to launch your productized service today.
2. Solve the Problem Manually First
Many agencies can build successful software businesses because they’ve solved the same problem repeatedly and now can create technical systems to solve that problem at scale. For example, my buddy Greg runs AltAgency, which teaches agencies how to launch a productized service from within their agency.
I’ve heard him say you must solve the problem consistently and repeatedly before productizing. Many agencies think their problem is not enough leads, but they have a capacity issue and wouldn’t be able to serve more clients. Learn how to solve a high-value problem consistently with good margins. Then, you can productize your service.
3. Have a Cheat Code on Both Sides of the Market
When I started independently, a coach told me: “Don’t start a business by yourself, and don’t start a two sided business.” I, of course, being the stubborn person I am, did both. But I got lucky with Credo because I had, from the start, a cheat code for both sides of the market: I had people coming to me wanting me to consult with them on SEO or digital marketing. I could tell them I wasn’t taking on new clients but could refer them to someone who was a great fit.
People were appreciative of this. As a former agency marketer who is friends with many agency owners, I could also quickly seed the network's supply side. These cheat codes have come in handy throughout the business's lifespan, but I wish I had a stronger one for the first one. Demand is almost always the most challenging part of scaling in a productized service, so if I had to choose between having an unfair advantage on the demand or supply side, I’d pick the demand side any day.
4. Charge Good Rates
When you’re ready to productize your service so that you can serve more clients, it’s tempting to charge less because “we’re working less.” I’m not going to give you a rant on pricing, but I will say that this is the wrong approach because you’re still in an hourly time-for-money mindset. The best productized services charge for the value they bring by staying just “custom” enough to charge high rates while also leveraging the benefits of a system that has reliable outputs based on reliable inputs.
Charging like this will also let you run your business with a good profit margin, which, as we all know, is extremely important in lean times and allows you to pay yourself well. Good margins let you hire good people, pay yourself well, and weather changes in the competitive landscape. From my experience, a business's operating margins hierarchy goes like this: SaaS – 80-90% margins.
Productized service – 30-70% margins (you want 50%+ minimum to be viable) Agency – 10-40% margins Just like Nathan Barry’s Ladders of Wealth Creation, it’s often best to start at the bottom and work your way up. You can skip a rung if you want, but your life will most likely be unnecessarily more complicated than it would otherwise.
5. Build Technology to Facilitate Delivery
One of my key learnings in running Credo, which I am also applying to EditorNinja, is the importance of building technology to automate or at least systematize as many of your repeated processes as possible as soon as possible. When I started working on Credo, I ran it with a free CRM, a few spreadsheets, and my email inbox.
We still have a CRM, spreadsheets, and email inboxes. We also invested a lot of money in building our Platform to facilitate project creation, matching and introductions, and appointment scheduling. I know Design Pickle has built out its own workflow management software called Jar (keeping with the pickle theme) to facilitate a similar workflow to what EditorNinja will become someday.
The sooner you can build technology that makes it easy to plug people into the processes to run them instead of doing them in many places, the sooner you’ll be able to scale. You don’t even have to build your technology. To run their business, many productized services use project management software like Asana or Basecamp, which has repeatable fields and process sheets. I don’t care which you choose. Just use technology to enable you to scale.
Try Orchestra for Free to Grow Your Productized Service Today
Orchestra is a unique all-in-one business growth toolkit for creatives. It helps agencies and freelancers launch their productized services quickly and efficiently with no coding required. The software provides a white-labeled client portal, task management, real-time analytics, and more to help you create a seamless experience for your clients. You can customize your setup with integrations like Slack and webhooks to elevate your service further. The platform is built to grow alongside you as you expand your productized service.
What Features Does Orchestra Offer?
Orchestra’s features help you set up your productized service and launch it quickly to start generating revenue. Some of the standout features include the client portal. Orchestra’s customizable client portal allows clients to log in and access their projects. You can personalize the portal with your branding and color scheme to create a professional experience.
Task management. The software’s built-in task management tools allow you to create, assign, and track tasks to ensure your productized service runs smoothly with real-time analytics. Orchestra provides detailed insights to help you track your productized service’s performance and make data-driven decisions. No coding is required.
With Orchestra, you don’t need to know how to code to set up your productized service. Simply connect your Stripe account to get started. With these features and more, Orchestra helps you streamline your workflow so you can focus on delivering quality work to your clients.
Who Is Orchestra For?
Orchestra is ideal for creative professionals looking to scale their business with productized services. If you’re a designer, developer, or copywriter, Orchestra can help you organize your operations and deliver a seamless experience to your clients.
How Much Does Orchestra Cost?
Orchestra offers a free plan that lets you manage up to three clients. Once you’re ready to scale, paid plans start at $49 monthly.
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