Getting Past the “But Our Clients Want Custom” Objection: What’s Really Behind Customer Resistance
“We’d love to move toward more standardized offerings, but our clients just won’t go for it.”
— Practice Leader, Consulting Firm
How The Best B2B Services Firms Navigate the MVP
In the journey from providing bespoke professional services to more scalable products and productized services (what we call “productizing”), firms often stumble at a critical juncture: the transition from Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to a standardized, scalable solution. This pivotal moment represents a challenging phase where promising innovations can either succeed or falter.
Ten Key Steps to Standardize and Scale Professional Services
At a macro level, professional services firms are navigating a rapidly evolving landscape. Pricing pressures, expanding down-market to serve smaller clients, advancements in AI and automation, and the need to mitigate labor market exposure are reshaping the industry. For example, in a Q4 2024 Source survey, 58% of clients reported that they are expecting professional service prices to fall (up markedly from 27% in Q3). These shifts are driving firms to rethink how they deliver their services. Standardizing and templatizing the delivery of custom services has become not only a competitive advantage but also a necessity for long-term growth and sustainability.
Great Product, Failed Launch
One Chief Revenue Officer of a B2B services firm that recently failed in their productization efforts shared,
“There was this assumption that we could just hand the new product over to the sales team and they will sell it because ‘it's new, it'll be exciting!’ That's not the way it worked.
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Innovation. Productization. Tech-Enablement. Digitization. AI.
Using Generative AI to Grow Your Professional Services Organization
The CEO of a global HR advisory firm recently told me,
“It is the wild, wild west right now. But I know, with certainty, AI will be a revolutionary change, not an evolutionary change, for professional services firms. This will be a huge change management challenge as we rethink almost everything - how we create value, who we hire, how we make money - really, everything.”
It’s Hard Being a Product Leader in a New-to-Product Organization
Speaking Frankly - It’s Hard Being a Product Leader in a New-to-Product Organization
Building a Culture of Digital Fluency for Innovation and Growth
A few weeks ago I was speaking with a prospective client who had recently sold his consulting firm to a larger, global firm. He wanted help persuading the parent company to invest in growing a niche SaaS product that his team created. He was frustrated by the parent company’s inability to understand why it would be useful to supplement their consulting services with this SaaS product. At one point in the conversation, I asked him to drop a hyperlink into the chat. He said, “I don’t know how to do that.”
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Can Incentives Help You Productize?
One CEO recently shared with me, “We need to restructure our incentive plan. Our consultants are all incented on short-term revenue, which is making it very hard to get traction with our new products that have lower price points but better margins and more revenue visibility.”
