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.
Too many organizations treat customer feedback as a one-time checkpoint—something you do before launching a product, or when something goes wrong.
But Voice of the Customer (VoC) isn’t just a nice-to-have. When embedded systemically and supercharged with new AI capabilities, it becomes a strategic engine for innovation, retention, and scalable growth.
If I had a dollar for every time a leadership team asked, “How much should we budget for innovation?” I’d be able to self-fund most clients’ pilot products.
But here’s the thing: how much you budget is far less important than how you decide what gets budgeted and where the dollars go.
"We spent 18 months perfecting the offer. By the time we launched, a competitor had beat us to market—with a worse product—but they now own the space."
— CEO, Training & Development Company
Productization continues to be a key strategy for B2B services firms looking to scale more effectively, improve margins, and deliver consistent value. But what does the path to successful productization actually look like? To find out, we surveyed leaders across professional services firms—from CEOs to product and innovation heads—and shared the findings in our latest webinar.
“We’d love to move toward more standardized offerings, but our clients just won’t go for it.”
— Practice Leader, Consulting Firm
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.
"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.