Service Revolution

0:02Hello show, that's right, it's just me. I got a topic I want to talk about. You know, this is a topic that I've maybe haven't talked so directly about. But in a lot of ways, it's been a big part of my work. It's something that I've talked about for years, but I want to hit it head on today. And that's if you are a service provider, I want to talk about the idea of productizing your service. So what do I mean by that? What I mean is creating service offerings that you can describe, explain, price, deliver almost as though they were a product. I have for years delivered something we call strategy first.

0:43And it is essentially our approach to developing strategy. So it is a service that we offer to business owners. And we have dialed that in so thoroughly. Frankly, it was actually the genesis of duct tape marketing, of me creating the approach to duct tape marketing, was that I was a little frustrated going out and essentially delivering my marketing services in not a one-off fashion, but in a custom fashion almost. Whatever somebody needed, that's what we designed a proposal around. That's what we delivered. That's how I priced it. And a lot of agencies do that. You can build a nice business doing that.

1:23But I was frustrated because I just felt like I was working more and making less as I grew that. So I created this productized approach. I called it a marketing system. And we, you know, all the way down to exactly what happens when a client signs on to, you know, every, all the way through the way they're onboarded, everything we deliver in the final is really packaged up in a way that, that I can call it a product. That's why, you know, we gave it a brand name. So that's the idea behind a productized service. Now, I used an example of marketing. Frankly, accounting can have productized services.

1:59Legal services can be productized. Any kind of consulting can, and in my view, should be productized. There are some, I think, some glaring benefits to why you might want to do this. First one I started talking about is scalability. It is very difficult to scale an offering that is made up every time, that is new for every customer, that is, and here's my favorite word, bespoke. It's very difficult to scale that because in a lot of ways, it takes the enormous experience and let's call it brainpower, you know, of the person who can be that nimble and deliver, you know, every single time. Now, there's probably a place out there in the world for completely customized versions of service delivery.

2:48And in fact, we do it in the right circumstances. But for the most part, if you want to scale a service business, you have to create something that is very easy to message, that is very easy to explain. And frankly, when it comes to scale, it's easy to actually delegate and hire people and to train people how to deliver that package. And that's much harder to do if essentially everybody's making it up every single time they go out and work with a new client. So to me, that scalability is probably the leading benefit of doing this. I already mentioned this a little bit, but the sales process gets so much simpler.

3:33instead of, okay, what do you need? Okay, we'll put together a proposal. Okay, we'll refine their proposal. We'll make it fit to the budget that you have. When you're able to walk in and say, here's what I'm gonna do. Here's what you're gonna do. Here are the results we hope to get from this approach. And by the way, here's what it costs. Shortens the sales cycle, which to me is a great thing. You get a yes or a no, but it also makes it very easy for you to explain exactly what somebody's getting. I mean, that's one of the most valuable things you can have in a selling situation is something that's very simple to explain.

4:09Somebody can get it. They can see on one sheet of paper, you know, here's what we're going to do. It also will lead to much higher profit margins. And one of the reasons for that is that when you're constantly having to figure out how to serve a client, have to write proposals, how to create whatever the deliverable calls for based on the scope of their proposal, there's a lot of learning that goes into that. And if you can create a repeatable process, you will get better at delivering value because you've done it before. you will get faster at delivering value because you've done it many times now.

4:54And consequently, those two things alone will lead to much higher profitability. But the final piece that I think a lot of people underestimate is when you've got something that you can actually show somebody, here's a proven process to get you results. It is very simple to explain to them exactly what they're going to get. You can also charge a premium. So you've got really that profitability working two ways for you. You can generally charge more for a name branded service offering that you can now deliver very affordably or much quicker. Or you can delegate the work to people that are at a much less experience than you.

5:37It just leads to a much more profitable. And here's the final reason to do it. And frankly, if all those other reasons weren't enough, the final benefit or reason for doing this is that it's a better customer experience. I know that everybody, I mean, everybody we talk to, it's like, no, I want something that is tailored just to my needs. Well, on the surface, that sounds really great. But wouldn't you rather have something that I've actually worked on for years and refined and evolved and seen what works and seen what doesn't work? I can deliver, you can deliver much greater value by having a proven process.

6:18Now, it takes time to prove that, to refine it. I mean, we've been doing this for 25 years and it's evolved, you know, every single year for us as well. So to me, the product itself, because we have focused on here's what you get, here's what it costs, has gotten much, much better. Now, are there challenges in productizing. You know, some of what you'll run up against is just what I mentioned. You know, people want a custom approach. They don't want cookie cutter. You know, they feel like if it's not created just for them, that there's something less. And so it really becomes important for you to not only create that productized approach, but be able to communicate very effectively the value what's in it for them.

7:03I think when people start to realize that by creating a repeatable system, you give people not only the option of getting a better end service, but you also get far better at delivering it. There's just so much more value in it for them. So I think that the messaging really has to be about that is a lot of times people focus on, well, we can deliver this better or we just get, you know, we've got this down so that we can, you know, we have a very, you know, fulfillment engine that is very productized and it's very systemized. But the key, of course, is helping that buyer, that customer, that client understand why that is so much more valuable to them.

7:45So how do you get started doing something like this? Because one of the challenges I think a lot of people have in productizing, if you will, is that they're serving such a diverse market. It's very hard to actually create one or two or three, you know, things, packages, products, if you will, for all the services that they might be able to offer. So it does help if you can narrow your focus, first off. So I'm not necessarily saying a niche. Maybe it is for you. But at the very least, you know, who are the top 20 % of your customers? What do they need today? What are the problems that you're solving for them?

8:22Could you actually create or think in terms of creating a package just for them? You've got to standardize the offering. It's not enough to just say, oh, this is this and it costs this. You've got to work on even the promotional materials need to standardize. You know, here's what you get. Here's here are the benefits of this. Here's why this approach works. So you just even creating marketing materials for it, you have to standardize. But then you have to start writing SOPs. you have to actually map out whether you call it a fulfillment engine or whatever you call it, you have to map out when this happens, then this happens.

9:00So at the global level, you have to at least have the little boxes and arrows that point to that. But then each one of those boxes, particularly critical steps, you need to maybe create an entire training process or SOP around. And I know that this can sound like, well, it is time consuming. And it sounds like it because it is. But ultimately, if you spend several weeks even creating this repeatable system that then can serve you for years and that you can delegate, you can scale your business and you can be more profitable, probably the best couple of weeks that you ever spent in terms of working on your business.

9:39After you productize it, then it's field testing. I mean, you can sit in a lab all day long and create what you think is the most brilliant approach to delivering your services in a productized manner, just go out there and start doing it. Start telling people, this is what, maybe give them option A, B, and C, but this is what I'm gonna do, this is what you're gonna do, here are the results we hope to get, and here's what it costs, do you want it or not? And start fulfilling it. You're not going to refine this thing until you've done it dozens of times. And that just takes, it takes practice, it takes experimenting, it takes trial and error, It takes listening to the feedback that you get from your customers.

10:16It takes really evaluating. Are you getting them the result? Are you getting them a better result than they could have gotten somewhere else? So how do you market this productized service? Well, if you think about it, it is the same as marketing a product in a lot of ways. People have to understand what it is. They have to understand what's in it for them. It has to address a problem that they're trying to solve. I mean, those are all things that really any good marketing does. But I think it's probably important for you if you're going to productize. It's very important for you to, I think, it's very helpful if you give things a name.

10:52Give it a brand. Create collateral around it that shows somebody exactly what they are going to get. And then focus a great deal of your marketing. It's the same for any professional services. on trust building, on explaining not just the components, not just selling the components. In fact, in some ways, the productized approach doesn't really even become an issue until somebody starts saying, how will this work for me? And then you're able to give them the very specific way it could work for them. But all of your marketing education, even though you have a productized approach, is going to be around educating on the problems that this productized approach solves.

11:31I always make the joke that I sell a marketing strategy. Nobody ever wakes up and says, I'm gonna go buy some marketing strategy today. But they do wake up and wonder why they're competing on price. They do wake up and wonder why they can't fill their pipeline. They do wake up and wonder why their competitors are always ranking ahead of them in search engines. And to a large degree, those are all problems that an effective marketing strategy can solve. So even though we're productizing the service offerings as a way to scale, as a way to be more profitable, as a way to more easily help people understand the value they're getting, we still have to build trust.

12:11We still have to create a customer journey that turns us into a trusted advisor. And the productized approach happens just to be a delivery mechanism for how we get them the results and how we communicate the results and, frankly, how we differentiate. So many people are, you know, in the marketing world, I'm sure in your whatever service world that you are in, so many people are just selling the idea of the week, are selling the tactic of the week, are going to clients and saying, what do you need? Sure, we can do that. And so this proven, process-driven way to deliver value in a way that's very easy to understand is also a great difference in the world of service offerings.

12:53all right that's it for today always love to hear your comments and feedback and if you're on one of those services like iTunes or Spotify make sure that you give us a review a glowing review of course but we hope you like the show and hopefully we'll run into you one of these days out there on the road