Insights on How to Productize Services and Solution Offerings
A collection of news, insights, and best practices for productizing services, conducting market research, developing new products, and commercializing offerings.
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.
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"Our customer support services for our offerings are underperforming because they are always a fire drill. It's impossible to predict how to staff for it. When requests come in, we can't get the budget to proactively do things for our customers that we know will help them and prevent future support calls."
This is the reality for many B2B services firms. Support and managed services teams operate in an unpredictable, reactive model—delivering time-and-materials (T&M) engagements, answering sporadic customer requests, and constantly adjusting staffing to keep up. The result? Underfunded teams, inconsistent service, and a function that remains a cost center instead of a strategic revenue driver.
But there’s a better way.
Choosing the right technology partner is a critical decision that can make or break your product strategy. Whether you're implementing a new SaaS platform, integrating AI capabilities, or modernizing your infrastructure, the process of evaluating technology partners requires a structured and strategic approach.
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.
“Jaime, I can’t figure out Zoom’s new features. It’s hilarious—like I was a product person, but I keep clicking the wrong button and getting kicked out of the meeting.”
I’ve had similar issues recently. But here's the thing, selling a productized service can feel a lot like learning those Zoom features: confusing at first. However, once you get the hang of it, it transforms how you interact with customers. I’ve been in those Zoom sessions, and it’s often the same story for companies transitioning from services to products: You think you know how to sell, but suddenly, you're using the wrong buttons.
Reflecting on a Year of Growth and Innovation at Vecteris
As 2024 comes to a close, we want to take a moment to celebrate the milestones, achievements, and lessons learned from this incredible year. At Vecteris, our mission is to empower CEOs, product leaders, and product managers in B2B professional services to successfully navigate the journey of scaling for growth. We are incredibly proud of the strides you, our customers, have made in launching new and improved offerings, testing with beta products, and even making the tough decision to kill ideas that didn’t align with your vision for growth. Here is a short recap of all you have accomplished.
At the end of each year, we like to take a moment to share a little inspiration from our team. Books have a unique way of shaping our perspectives, sparking creativity, and offering a much-needed escape. So, we asked each team member to share their favorite read from the past year—those stories, ideas, and lessons that resonated most with them.
We have many organizations come to us who are excited to start on their productization journey and see it as an avenue for growth and strength. When starting to work with these customers, I often hear them state the following goal:
“I’d like to create a playbook so we can have a repeatable innovation process at my company.”
When developing a pricing and packaging strategy for new productized offerings, it’s crucial to move beyond traditional cost-plus models and embrace a value-based approach. Many organizations are realizing that launching innovative products requires not only technological changes but also a fundamental shift in how they monetize their offerings. Instead of solely focusing on internal costs and margins, they must consider how customers perceive value, aligning pricing strategies with the unique benefits their products deliver.
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In this post, I’ll explore how to choose target markets and who you sell to in those markets. To learn more, check out my new book, Commercialize: How to Monetize, Sell, and Market Productized Offerings in Professional Services, written with Eisha Armstrong and Sean Gillispie.