When I say “Productized Service” to you, what do you think of?
- A product, like a book or video course, based off of a consulting service
- A service with a pre-defined scope of work
It could very well be either, honestly. Let’s, instead, talk about ‘Packaged Services.’
Packaged Services
Packaged services are service offerings that you create that have a predefined scope of work attached to them. Essentially, it’s a service offering you sell where you’ve decided on and published:
- The scope of work
- The deliverables
- The timeframe
- The price (optionally)
With a packaged service, you’re eliminating the proposal from the equation. You are defining a packaged offering that you are making available to prospects at a predetermined price.
Ever take your car in for an oil change? That’s a great example of a packaged service. You know:
- The scope of work (change my oil)
- The deliverables (new oil, report on car
- The timeframe (Pick the car up in 2 hours)
- The price ($30)
Hourly rate doesn’t factor into it. The price is set ahead of time.
How is this different from a productized service?
So, the term Productized Consulting is used to refer to two different things:
- Turning your knowledge from consulting into a book, course, or other type of product
- Standardizing your offerings and selling them as a prepackaged service similar to an educational product (Draft Revise, Website Rescues, etc.)
Packaged services as defined service offerings
When you package up your service offering, you’re defining what the client will receive in terms of deliverables. You’re defining what you’ll do, what the price will be, and what the scope of work will be.
You’re selling a package. Like buying a Disney Vacation or a cruise, the client doesn’t need to negotiate every detail, they can just say “That one sounds like what we need.” and purchase it. No proposal needed.
Why the distinction?
Multiple times, freelancers and consultants have asked me about ‘productizing their consulting’ and it wasn’t clear if we were going to talk about:
- Turning their consulting knowledge into a product that they sell and deliver
- Defining and selling a standardized package for a new consulting service
Which is it? There’s a need for two different terms to refer to these two different concepts.
Packaged Services
I think the concept of productizing a service makes excellent sense for taking your service offering and turning it into a ‘do it yourself’ product for prospects and clients to buy.
But when we talk about selling a no-proposal service where we’ve defined:
- The scope of work
- The deliverables
- The timeframe
- The price (optionally)
I think it’s better to talk about packaged services.
You’ve defined a package and you’re making it available for sale. Separately, you may have a productized service, where you’ve turned the service into a ‘Do It Yourself’ product.
With a productized service, you’re creating a product – book, training, software, etc. – based off of the service.
With a packaged service, you’re defining a white-glove, done-for-you, no-proposal service for your clients.
