Commercialize: How to Monetize, Sell, and Market Productized Offerings in B2B Professional Services
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About The Book:
In the last six years, we have talked to hundreds of executives and product leaders about transforming their B2B services organizations to pursue a productization strategy (standardizing and often tech-enabling their services to scale). The stories you’ll read in this book came out of those conversations and also from a focused set of qualitative interviews we conducted in 2023 to test our hypotheses.
Marketing and selling customized services differs greatly from the go-to-market motions required to market and sell standardized services or products successfully. The individuals developing and executing the go-to-market strategy for new productized services are often new to the organization or, forgive the term, ‘wired differently’ from everyone else. One product leader, responsible for the launch of her firm’s first productized service shared with us:
“Being one of the product-minded people at my firm is lonely and often thankless. It is a combination of exhaustion, a lack of support, and deeper issues of mistrust coupled with high workload, a lack of autonomy, and this unspoken experience with others questioning your expertise.”
As we’ll explore, there are no tried and true playbooks for successful commercialization of products or productized services in an organization that is purpose-built to sell customized services. The individuals who develop and execute the go-to-market strategy for productized services are forging new ground and often make mistakes along the way. If you are struggling to market and sell your organization’s new solutions and products, we want you to know you are not alone.
In this book, you will learn from other leaders’ successes, struggles, and failure stories to help your organization learn how to successfully go-to-market with your new solutions and products.
By the end of the book, you’ll be able to answer questions like:
- How do I know if our product concept is ready for commercialization?
- How long will it take to successfully commercialize a new product?
- What different marketing tactics should I use to generate leads for my product?
- What sales channels are best for my product?
- How do I build a sales process for my product?
- What is the best go-to-market strategy if my products are bundled with existing services?
We are grateful to all the leaders who have so generously shared their experiences with us. We hope that you will see your own experiences reflected in those we share, and they will give you the wisdom and courage you need to successfully commercialize your offerings and launch boldly.
-Eisha Armstrong, Jason Boldt, and Sean Gillispie
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.