Heroes and Sidekicks

Thoughts on productizing services

There’s a bug going around and it definitely hammered casa de Ground Control so I missed last week. This week I’ll try something new. Short, action packed, and going out on a Monday.

Here we go.

PRODUCTIZING SERVICES

Most progress in a bootstrapped service business is incremental - hard won individual sales, slowly building a reputation and referrals, hiring staff one at a time to build capacity and earn more… brick by brick.

It’s rare to find something that flips a switch.

Here’s one of those things: redesigning your services into products.

The term “productizing services” is probably a little overused so let’s just look at it for a second.

You’re taking a lot of stuff you do and instead of selling it as “here’s what I can do”, you sell it as “here’s what you get”. Your customer probably doesn’t care what you do. They care what they get. Which makes it sound like it’s about the name - but there’s more.

Here’s what it’s doing:

1. Positioning your services as the value a customer gets instead of the work you do. That’s just better sales. More likely to convert.

2. Shortening your sales cycle and pitch process because you don’t need to create a custom bundle of things you do. You’ve already built a combo meal around an outcome someone wants. Faster sales.

3. Price is now anchored in value, not effort. If I’m buying work, I pay for the effort and my frame of reference is money for time. If I’m buying an outcome, my reference is the benefit to me vs the cost to me. I perceive more value in an outcome than work. Paying $250 for a problem to be solved, even if it only took an hour, sounds like a way better deal than paying someone $250/hr.

Easier, faster, and worth more.

But let’s take it one step further.

Don’t just build a menu of “products”. Be intentional about the ecosystem and customer experience of your whole offering.

Understand what people come for, what people value, and what brings people back. Where someone is in their experience should be one of the most important considerations when designing a product. Rather than build a lot of products for various customers, build a lot of products for a single customer at various points of their experience.

Start with a Hero product that addresses the most common pain point that is actively shopped for. This is your introduction. Make it easy, approachable, and affordable - aim for “can’t say no”. Then build additional products, sidekicks if you will, that either enhance that or take over after it’s done. Lastly, figure out what is a constant struggle that you can solve for over and over again and build something to address that.

What they came for > what made it valuable > what brought them back

Restaurants rarely have lines around the block because of their deep, accommodating menu. It’s because they’ve got one thing everyone can’t get enough of. And then added fries and a drink.

Productizing services isn’t just about creating a bundle with a clever name. It’s about being intentional and thinking about things from a customer perspective rather than how you deliver it.

To summarize:

• Frame your services around the value to them

• Make it simple to understand what they get and how much it costs

• Orient them around the impact more than the effort

• Build an easy onramp to the full experience you offer

• Become essential to them there on out

Applying this well can take everything you’re already doing right now -your leads, your current customers- and give it a bump right away. You’ll get so much more out of it. Then brick by brick you’ll go about improving it.

Let me know what you thought of this one and the format. I’ll keep experimenting until we find the best way to deliver the most value over and over again.

Chase…would you like fries with that…Spenst

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