Commercialize: How to Monetize, Sell, and Market Productized Offerings in Professional Services
About The Book:
More and more professional services firms are “productizing” their services to grow and scale. But successfully marketing and selling standardized services or products is very different from marketing and selling traditional professional services.
Commercialize, a follow-on book to Productize, explores why commercializing new ideas is the most significant stall point when B2B services organizations productize. The book then outlines how the most successful firms commercialize packaged services and new products and get to revenue impact fast and efficiently.
What makes Commercialize unique is its emphasis on the particular context of B2B professional services companies. There is much written about the recipe for launching new products, but a complete dearth of information on how leaders should commercialize new solutions in a legacy services company.
Commercialize includes real-life case studies and stories featuring professional services leaders who have successfully led their organizations to create more scalable services and products.
In this book, you'll learn:
- Why successful commercialization is much more than marketing campaigns and training your sellers
- How to select the best target market segments for your new offering
- How to design pricing and packaging to maximize short and long-term revenue
- How to successfully go to market with solutions that include both customized services and more scalable products
- How to establish a product sales team with the right skills, incentives, and support to succeed
- How to build a marketing engine that generates enough leads to achieve targets for productized offerings
- How to design solutions and products that are naturally renewable
- How to orient the organization around lifetime customer value rather than near-term revenue
- How to manage the inherent misalignment that may exist with legacy services selling motions.
Commercialize is designed to be a practical playbook for any leader of a professional services business who wants to successfully accelerate growth.
Commercialize draws on the decades of experience that Eisha Armstrong, Jason Boldt, and Sean Gillispie have in successfully commercializing productized services. They know what works and what doesn't and are passionate about making sure organizations learn from each other and avoid reinventing the wheel.
Praise for Commercialize
“All too often, companies misdiagnose the poor performance of scalable, packaged services as a “product” or “sales” problem. Commercialize makes it very clear that it is actually a strategy problem—and provides a clear blueprint for surmounting it.”
- Tom Monahan, Chief Executive Officer, Heidrick & Struggles
“Every professional services leader aspires to bring more consistent, predictable growth to their firms. One of the most powerful ways to do that is to introduce productized offerings to the firm's revenue mix—but pulling this off successfully is far easier said than done. Too often, firms pour valuable resources into developing compelling products for their clients only to see them stumble out of the gates because the sales motion required for products is misaligned with the firm's legacy go-to-market approach. In this excellent follow-on book to Productize and Fearless, Eisha Armstrong provides the definitive road map firm leaders need to avoid this painful outcome and put their organizations on a path to sustainable, predictable revenue."
- Matthew Dixon, Founding Partner of DCM Insights and Wall Street Journal-bestselling co-author of The Activator Advantage, The Challenger Sale and The JOLT Effect.
“Eisha Armstrong’s first book Productize was a game changer for many professional services firms to help them move from pure services to more packaged offers that can drive growth at scale. Commercialize provides a perfect follow-up addition to tackle the equally difficult challenge of engineering a commercial strategy and structure that allows you to take packaged service offerings to market. Great packaged products and services are only half the battle. This book provides you with the commercial game plan to win the second part of that battle.”
- Christoffer Ellehuus, Chief Executive Officer, MindGym
“Selling products is a tempting but tricky endeavor for professional services firms used to positioning the expertise locked inside their people's heads. Commercialize offers firm leaders a compelling roadmap to scale high-margin products, born out of years of careful observation and insightful course correction, spelled out in detailed fashion by Armstrong.”
- Ted McKenna, Co-author of The JOLT Effect: How High Performers Overcome Customer Indecision
“Two chapters into this book, I texted my co-founder telling him to drop everything and read it. The authors' insights are spot-on, offering tremendous value in navigating the complexities of productization. This is a must-read for any service business looking to evolve."
- Alexander Yastrebenetsky, Chief Executive Officer, InfoTrust
“I've seen dozens of consultancies attempt to build and sell products, but the vast majority fail. Commercialize is an invaluable resource for any professional services firm seeking to avoid failure. Armstrong, Boldt, and Gillispie have masterfully distilled years of experience and countless case studies into a practical, actionable guide. Their insights on market understanding, pricing strategies, and building effective go-to-market capabilities are profound and practical. The authors' approach is refreshingly honest, acknowledging the challenges and pitfalls that many firms face when transitioning from services to products. They offer clear, step-by-step advice for each stage of the commercialization process, from initial concept to scaling a mature product. What sets this book apart is its deep understanding of the unique cultural and operational challenges that service firms face when productizing. The authors don't just tell you what to do; they show you how to overcome internal resistance, align incentives, and foster the mindset shifts necessary for success. Commercialize is more than just a book; it's a roadmap for transformation that will help professional services firms thrive in an increasingly product-driven world."
- Joe O’Mahoney, Professor of Consulting, Cardiff University and Author of Growth: Building a Consultancy in the Digital Age
About the Authors:
Eisha Armstrong is the executive chairman and cofounder of Vecteris, where she works with B2B services companies around the globe on new product strategy and commercialization. She has 25+ years of experience developing, launching and managing new data and information service products. Prior to cofounding Vecteris, Eisha held senior product leadership positions both with E.W. Scripps, the diversified media company, and with CEB (now Gartner), the world’s largest membership-based corporate performance research and advisory company. Eisha earned her MBA at the Harvard Business School and her Bachelor of Arts in both women’s studies and economics at the University of Kansas. She is also a certified yoga teacher, and she believes that teaching yoga makes her a better leader.
Jason Boldt is Vecteris's chief growth officer. He has over a decade of experience building, launching, and scaling B2B information services and SaaS products. He spent a decade at CEB, now Gartner, where he oversaw new business and product launches, led international expansion, and served as an advisor to C-suite clients. Most recently, he was a commercial leader at WorkBoard, a high-growth Series D B2B SaaS company. Jason has a dual MBA from Columbia Business School and London Business School and a BS in financial economics from Centre College.
Sean Gillispie is a product coach at Vecteris, where he works with B2B services organizations to successfully launch new product offerings. He has over 20 years of experience delivering innovative products as a strategic product leader, entrepreneur, and management consultant. Prior to Vecteris, Sean held senior product management and strategy positions for several B2B SaaS organizations, including as VP of Product at Employee Navigator, Head of Product at CultureIQ, Director of Product at CEB Workforce Surveys & Analytics, and Director of Strategic Programs at Social Solutions. Sean co-founded and successfully sold Stratasense, which delivered ground-braking in-site PV solar testing solutions. Sean holds an MBA from Babson College, and a BA in Computer Science from Williams College.