5 Steps to Productize Your B2B Services to Increase Sales

If you are a marketing agency, consulting firm or technology company, you provide your expertise with customized solutions. Have you considered productizing your offerings to make it easier for your customers to buy?

When your services are offered in branded packages, the scope and the fee are all pre-defined. Customers know what they are buying and have the power to choose what they want to buy.

We talked to a Chicago database and CRM consulting firm, Anthem Marketing Solutions, about their success with the productized services strategy.

Why did you decide to productize your services?

“We decided to productize some of our services and approaches for two reasons,” said Christopher Carroll, their COO. “To differentiate our business from the competition and to aid our business development efforts. It's much easier to market a branded solution than it is to sell a broad menu of capabilities. This is our 'tip of the spear' strategy, whereby we lead with a turnkey product that's accompanied with a specific set of steps, objectives and outcomes. Once the tool's been deployed and the client relationship is solidified, we may introduce additional services to aid the client.”

What impact has it had on sales?

“From a business development perspective, it has resulted in more leads, more qualified conversations with prospective clients, more new projects, and stickier relationships.”

Here are five steps to productize your company’s offerings from The Shattuck Group, a company that supports the growth of professional services firms.

1. Look at your past 18 months of client activity to see trends in project scope.
2. Break these up into 3-5 service levels by deliverables.
3. Develop brief case studies and the sale tools you need for business development (including naming/branding the service levels).
4. Get feedback from current clients on your new service packages.
5. Take new productized service offerings to market, track responses and adjust as needed.

Has your company had success productizing your services? Have you taken a look at this option and decided not to do this? Share your successes or insights.