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What is Productized Consulting?

Let's say you own a design agency, and a client hires you to revamp their landing page. You discuss pricing, deliver excellent work, and they're thrilled with the results.

Soon, another client messages you with the same need, and maybe the first client introduced you to a friend who also wants a landing page redesign.

What's happening? 

You've repeatedly provided the same service to different clients with similar needs. When this happens often, you can sell that service as a ready-made product.  

Productized consulting is when you package your expertise into a standardized service with fixed pricing, clear deliverables, and a defined process. 

Rather than create custom proposals for each client, you offer them pre-designed service packages that clients can purchase “off the shelf”, like when they buy a product online. Your clients pick a service, pay for it, and you deliver. There's no negotiation or long proposal. 

Here’s an example from Spicy Margarita: 

4 Steps to Build Your Productized Consulting Service

Productizing creative agency consulting services takes more than slapping a price on a service and hoping clients understand your message. Here's how to properly build productized services that attract  clients: 

1. Find the Services you offer repeatedly. 

The truth is you can't productize every service you offer. Some of these services are deeply customized to satisfy your client's needs. You should find projects that your team has done again and again in a similar process for different clients. These projects should also have predictable outcomes to show clients that you have established expectations when it comes to results. 

How do you do this?

Audit all your previous work with clients, and look for these patterns in the services you provide repeatedly: 

• Services you've delivered successfully multiple times with consistent results.
• Offerings that generate higher profit margins compared to your other services.
• Projects that consistently receives positive client feedback and testimonials
• Services that address common problems for your target market. 

You'll find that parts of your creative process, rather than the entire custom projects can be productized. You should be careful not to productize services that need a high level of customization, like multiphase campaigns or strategic initiatives where you'll need client-specific knowledge to move forward in the project. 

Abd Raaz, an SEO specialist, advises that: 

2. Define the scope and deliverables of your services.

For each productized service you create;

• Develop an exhaustive, itemized list of what's included and what's not.
• Break down what the client will receive. For example, rather than writing social media strategy, write that they'll get a “12-page social media strategy document including audience analysis, content pillars, posting schedule, and engagement guidelines.”
• Establish how you'll handle requests outside the scope firmly.  
• Document your internal workflow and delivery process to ensure consistency. 

Unclear deliverables are the primary cause of scope creep, client dissatisfaction, and profit margin erosion. When a client purchases your productized service, they should know precisely what they'll receive and when they'll receive it. 

Most successful productized services use a "what's included/what's not included" format in their service descriptions. 

For example; 

A UX audit package might include:

• 5-page heatmap analysis of your top pages
• Detailed user journey assessment
• Mobile responsiveness review
• Prioritized list of 10 actionable improvements
• 30-minute presentation of findings

Explicitly not included:

• Implementation of recommendations
• Copywriting or content creation
• Custom design work
• User interviews or testing

This approach allows clients to self-qualify and understand what they are purchasing. Anything else, and you'd have a jumbled and unclear onboarding process. 

Our client, FlowSpark, had a similar issue. They needed a scalable way to sell their services without confusing their teams and their clients. So rather than offer custom projects, they productized their offerings, and with ManyRequests, they found an easy way for clients to browse these offerings and check out directly through their website. 

With ManyRequests' checkout forms, FlowSpark could create recurring services and linked checkout forms on their website. 

This meant that their prospective clients could immediately sign up and send their requests. If you press “Get Started”, it takes you to their checkout page to choose a subscription type and pay. 

ManyRequests also integrates with Stripe, which means that your clients can pay directly through the platform. 

Andy Dao, CEO of FlowSpark, says: 

“We like the ability of selling hourly-based packs through ManyRequests. Clients can see their usage and top up more hours as they go.”

3. Create Tiered Pricing Packages

Tiered pricing creates low-risk entry points for new clients. Research has shown that when clients are presented with three options, they'll go for the middle tier. It's called a compromise effect. 

This way, they can start where it's comfortable, and as they work with your agency, they're more likely to upgrade to higher tiers or even ask for custom solutions. 

Here's how to do that: 

• Develop two to four different package levels (make sure there's a distinct difference between each, so clients don't feel at a loss choosing a higher tier.)
• Name your tiers intuitively so clients understand their positioning. (For example, Starter, Professional, Premium)
• Increase the value systematically as the tiers progress. You can add more deliverables, a faster delivery time, or more team members assigned to each project. 
• Then, set your pricing based on the value you deliver on each tier. Now, pricing isn't a definite decision. You'll consider so many factors, like how much you pay your team, software subscriptions, and profit. 
• Make sure each tier is profitable. Ensure you are not running at a loss after you've paid all expenditures and that your tiers are complete on their own to satisfy your clients. 

Here's an example of a tiered pricing system for a brand identity package:

4. Develop Your Internal Process

Before you sell your services, do these: 

• Document your workflow for each productized service. Have a step-by-step process for everything; even if you have slight changes, it should be within your team's capacity. 
• Create templates for each deliverable component. This makes it easier for your team to carry out repeated tasks. 
• Build checklists for quality assurance. 
• Establish each team member's responsibility. Let it be clear who does what in every step. 
• Plan for client onboarding. 

ManyRequests provides a comprehensive solution to manage your internal processes. The platform offers creative agencies:

• A service catalog feature to build and display your productized services. 

You can create a link to your catalog to add to your website and social media platforms, so prospective clients can check out your services before reaching out. 

• A branded client portal to give your clients a white-labeled experience with your domain, colors, fonts, and logos. 

• Automated intake forms to collect the information you need from clients to start each project efficiently.

• A project management dashboard to track all client requests and project progress. 

Through the dashboard, you can assign new requests to your team and add project details like the deadline and priority levels. 

The assigned team member can change the status as the task progresses. ManyRequests notifies you and the client of these status changes, so you can keep them in the loop. 

• Integrated billing with Stripe to simplify your billing and payment process. 

You can do all of these on one platform. Sign up for a 14-day free trial (no credit card needed).

Benefits of Productized Consulting for Agencies 

Productized services improve how your agency handles clients and their needs. These are some benefits of productized consulting for creative agencies: 

• Your revenue streams are predictable. 

Productized services create consistent, forecastable cash flow with fixed pricing packages. This means you know how much the agency earns for each service, which helps you plan for growth and invest in resources. It's different from the usual feast-to-famine work cycle that's become the norm for creatives. 

• Streamlined operations.

It's easier to refine your process when you deliver the same service again and again. Your team can improve their skills when they handle similar projects repeatedly. If they use a project management system like ManyRequests, they can create templates and workflows to use for clients who purchase your services. 

• You avoid scope creep.

Scope creep is when clients expect you to do more work than agreed, like extra reviews and designs. Productized services define what's included in each package before work begins, which helps establish boundaries. 

When clients ask for additions, you can refer to the package and offer the extra work as a separate service. ManyRequests has an Add-on feature to help you charge for extra work separately. 

• Faster sales process.

Productized services cut the line on custom proposals and negotiations that can go on for weeks. Clients can compare their options, make decisions faster, and your team can spend more time on the project. 

• Easier client onboarding.

With standardized services, you can create systematic onboarding processes that collect the necessary information. 

ManyRequests simplifies this process with customizable requests forms for clients. 

When a client purchases your productized service, ManyRequests automatically guides them through a series of questions that you need to begin the project (brand assets, website credentials, target audience information, preferences, anything). 

You can customize these questions to fit the services you're rendering, and this makes onboarding easier on both the agency and the clients. 

Conclusion 

Productized consulting increases your chances of higher profitability and customer satisfaction. This is why you should carefully create standardized services that promise (and deliver) value. If you need help organizing and improving your productized offerings, try ManyRequests for 14-days to see how it improves your packaging. 

FAQs

What is productized consulting?

Productized consulting is when consultants package their expertise into standardized services offering with a fixed pricing, project scope, and deliverables. 

What is product development consulting?

Product development consulting helps businesses design, develop, and launch new products or services.

How to build productized services?

To build your productized services; 

• Research your clients’ needs to find repeatable problems. 
• Create solutions with fixed deliverables.
• Develop a standard workflow for each service. 
• Create tiered pricing for each plan and assign features to each tier. 
• Build efficient delivery systems. 

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Originally Published: June 20, 2021

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