Before You Productize: What Every Services Firm Needs in Place
Productization isn't a silver bullet. But for professional services firms looking to scale impact and revenue, it can be transformative—if you're truly ready for it.
Most companies fail at productization not because of market conditions, but because they never truly committed to the journey. The good news? You don’t need to overhaul everything to get started. But you do need to start with two essential truths.
Truth #1: You Need to Commit—Even Just a Little
Let’s be clear: we’re not asking you to burn the ships or abandon your core business. Productization can start as a test. But it does require intentional commitment—specifically, dedicating some resources and setting measurable goals.
Our 2025 Productization Benchmark Survey found that organizations that assigned even a single dedicated resource—like a fractional product lead or internal champion—were 36% more likely to meet or exceed their productization goals than those that tried to “fit it in” on the side.
Success isn’t about going big; it’s about going focused. Commit time, assign a lead, and set some early organizational metrics. That’s your signal to the team: this matters.
Truth #2: You Need to Stay Curious and Be Ready to Pivot
The second essential condition? A willingness to learn and iterate. In our experience, the firms that move fastest and learn the most are the ones who treat productization as a hypothesis—not a mandate.
That means:
- Testing ideas quickly with real users
- Listening closely to the market response
- Pivoting away from assumptions when needed
In fact, companies that prioritize rapid testing are 4× more likely to hit their product goals. Learn more in In Productization, Speed Wins.
One Vecteris client—a multinational management consulting firm—started with a hypothesis: that their internal onboarding training could become a scalable product. Their MVP wasn’t perfect, but by listening to early users and iterating rapidly, they shaped a product that created new revenue without disrupting their core services.
Traits That Make the Journey Easier
If you’ve got commitment and curiosity, you’re ready to begin. But we have identified three characteristics that increase success:
- Scrappiness: Starting small and simple creates faster wins.
- Lean Thinking: Applying build–measure–learn principles avoids sunk-cost traps.
- Customer Co-Creation: Involving clients from the beginning leads to smarter decisions and builds buy-in. For a step-by-step approach, see Building a Playbook for Productization.
Firms that embraced these traits—especially customer co-creation—saw a ~15% lift in successful product launches compared to those who developed in isolation.
You Don’t Need to Be “All In.” You Just Need to Begin.
Productization works best not when it’s perfect, but when it’s persistent.
Start with a modest resource commitment. Pair it with a mindset of learning, adjusting, and moving forward. That’s how scalable products are born.
And here’s what you don’t need to begin:
You don’t need a polished product. You don’t even need a product idea. What you do need is a commitment to exploring how your existing expertise can solve urgent and expensive problems for more people, more efficiently. Starting with a product-ready solution often leads to overbuilding and undervalidating.
Instead, begin with curiosity. Engage clients to uncover patterns in their needs. Experiment with small, testable solutions. This mindset—not a perfect product—is what sets successful productization efforts in motion.
Wondering if Your Firm’s Ready to Productize?
We’ve helped dozens of professional services firms take the first (and next) steps on their productization journey. If you’re curious where to begin—or how to move forward—we’re here to help you figure it out: