“We’d love to move toward more standardized offerings, but our clients just won’t go for it.”
— Practice Leader, Consulting Firm
When B2B services firms start shifting from customized services to more scalable, standardized solutions, one objection surfaces over and over again:
“Our clients won’t go for it.”
But here’s the thing: That resistance? It’s often more perceived than real.
In fact, in our work helping B2B services firms commercialize scalable offerings, we’ve found that delivery teams often overestimate how wedded clients are to bespoke solutions. Sometimes, the stronger resistance is internal—coming from teams who may subconsciously fear losing relevance, status, or control in a world that’s more productized.
This doesn’t mean client resistance to more standardized services or products isn’t real. It is. But it’s rarely as insurmountable as it seems. When we dig deeper, we often discover that what looks like resistance is actually confusion, misalignment, or simply lack of exposure to the value of a more standardized approach.
Let’s unpack how to address this resistance—real or perceived—with strategies that move both clients and internal staff forward.
1. Recognize When the Resistance is a Mirror
In our book Fearless: How to Transform a Services Culture and Successfully Productize, we talk about how fear inside your organization—fear of losing client intimacy, fear of being replaced by a more productized approach—can get projected outward.
For example, one firm we worked with had a seasoned delivery team who swore up and down that their Fortune 100 clients would never adopt a standardized diagnostics tool. But when we conducted interviews with those same clients, many said, “If it saves us time and still gets us insights, we’re open to it.”
In other words, the resistance wasn’t coming from the clients. It was coming from the delivery team’s assumptions.
Before assuming your clients won’t adopt a more standardized approach, spend time understanding where resistance really lives—externally, or internally. You might be surprised by what you find. For more, check out Ten Key Steps to Standardize and Scale Professional Services.
2. Standard Doesn’t Mean “Less Than”—It Means “Refined”
A lot of resistance comes from the belief that more standardized offerings are inherently less valuable. But standardized services are refined, tested, and repeatable—and that’s exactly what many buyers want.
One Vecteris client repositioned their standardized performance improvement framework not as the “base model,” but as the result of 15 years of client engagements. It became the “Accelerated Results Blueprint.” That framing changed the conversation—suddenly, standard wasn't seen as generic; it was elite and proven.
Think of it like a Michelin-starred tasting menu. You don’t customize every dish—you trust the chef. And because it’s been perfected, you’re guaranteed an exceptional experience.
3. Offer a "Custom-Enough" Experience
In Commercialize: How to Monetize, Sell, and Market Productized Offerings in B2B Professional Services, we tell the story of a compliance advisory firm that moved to a standardized assessment platform but layered on customized implementation services. This hybrid model gave clients just enough of a personal touch to feel tailored, without dragging the business back into one-off work.
We call this “custom-enough”—a powerful in-between that maintains the efficiency of standardization while addressing client-specific nuances.
A tip for doing this well is to have different packages to provide flexibility. Instead of a fully bespoke engagement, offer pre-defined tiers or modules. It gives clients the feeling of choice—without the chaos of fully custom delivery. You can read more about this in 3 Shifts to Make When Selling Standardized Services vs. Custom.
4. Use Scarcity and Exclusivity to Flip the Script
Some clients will always want custom—but that doesn’t mean you have to make it your norm. As we share in Fearless, one way to de-incentivize custom work is to treat it as exclusive, not default.
A leadership development firm we worked with began limiting custom engagements to strategic accounts and pricing them at a premium. They also tracked the full cost of custom delivery—something they hadn’t done before—and used that data to justify higher prices.
The result? Fewer clients asked for custom, and more opted into the standardized offer, which was framed as faster, more predictable, and proven to drive outcomes.
Scarcity creates value. Make your standard offering the default and your custom work the rare exception.
5. Let Them Try Before They Buy
Pilot programs, limited-scope trials, and phased rollouts can all reduce the perception of risk when introducing a new, standardized offer.
When migrating to more standardized solutions or products, it is often important to reduce friction at the first point of purchase. One client used a “90-Day Sprint” model to introduce clients to their new standardized analytics solution. Their clients appreciated the low-risk entry point and the rapid results. And—importantly—the internal team gained confidence that clients would adopt the new approach if given a chance to see it in action.
6. Change the Buying Criteria, Not Just the Product
Ultimately, clients will continue to ask for customized solutions if their buying criteria are still based on inputs and deliverables. If you want to reduce resistance, you have to change the buying conversation from “what will you do for us?” to “what outcomes will we receive?”
One client in the financial services consulting space made this leap by introducing outcome-based pricing for their standardized offer. Instead of pricing by hours and scope, they priced based on expected business results. Not only did this align incentives, but it helped clients see the value of the standardized approach more clearly. When you change how clients measure value, you change what they’re willing to buy. For more on this, see Four Critical Inputs for Pricing Your Productized Offerings.
Standardized offerings often feel risky to internal teams and clients because they represent a shift in power, process, and pricing. But most resistance isn't a hard no—it’s a hesitant, maybe.
Your job as a leader is to help both your clients and your internal teams get comfortable with the new model. That takes clear framing, smart packaging, and a little patience.
So, the next time you hear “our clients won’t go for it,” ask: Have we asked them? Or are we projecting our own fears?
Because chances are, your clients are more ready to evolve than you think.
Looking to operationalize these ideas? Don’t miss our post on Building a Playbook for Productization—it’s packed with tools and frameworks to help you make standardized delivery a repeatable success.
Want help mapping out your path from custom to scalable? We specialize in helping B2B firms commercialize their IP without losing client trust.
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