How to Productize a Service: From Custom Chaos to Repeatable Revenue

The pitch for productized services is straightforward: package what you do, set a fixed price, and stop writing custom proposals for every lead. Predictable revenue, scalable delivery, maybe even a business that doesn’t fall apart when you take a week off.

Most agency owners who try it either quit halfway through or end up with something that still requires them on every client call.

The concept is simple. The implementation is where things go sideways.

I’ve watched agencies attempt productization by slapping prices on their existing services and hoping clients would self-select into packages. That approach usually ends with confused prospects, scope creep on every project, and founders wondering why they bothered.

Here’s what the agencies that actually succeed do differently.

Start with one service, not your entire menu

The first mistake is trying to productize everything at once. Agency owners look at their service offerings and think they need to package all of it—content, SEO, paid ads, web design—into neat little boxes with fixed prices.

That’s a recipe for overwhelm and half-finished systems.

Lyrik Fryer, co-founder of Workplay Branding, scaled to seven figures by doing the opposite. As she shared on the Small But Mighty Agency podcast:

That means starting with one service—specifically, the 20% of what you do that solves 80% of your clients’ problems.

Look at your last 20 projects. Which service did clients request most often? Which one have you delivered successfully enough times that you could describe the process in your sleep? Which outcome can you achieve through a repeatable system rather than custom problem-solving every time? If you need inspiration, these productized service examples show what different agencies have packaged.

That’s your starting point.

Not your most profitable service. Not your most impressive service. The one you’ve done so many times that the delivery is almost boring.

Boring is good. Boring means predictable. Predictable means you can systematize it, price it accurately, and eventually hand it off to someone else.

Once that first service runs without your constant involvement, you can productize the next one. But if you try to do three or four at once, you’ll end up with three or four half-built systems and the same chaos you started with.

Calculate your true costs before setting prices

Most agencies price their productized services based on what competitors charge or what feels right. Both approaches lead to the same problem: you either underprice and kill your margins, or overprice and wonder why nobody’s buying.

The fix is unglamorous but necessary. Break down every deliverable into its actual time components.

Dav Nash, head of marketing at the productized link building agency Fat Joe, walks through a typical example on episode 7 of The Agency Engine Room podcast:

Most agencies significantly underestimate how long things actually take. Here’s what the breakdown might look like for a content deliverable:

Add your target margin—usually 30–50%—and now you have a price based on reality instead of guesswork.

This requires time tracking, which most agency owners resist. You’re not monitoring productivity—you’re gathering data to price accurately.

You don’t need to track time forever. A few weeks of data on your most common deliverables gives you enough to price accurately. Skip this step and you’re just guessing.

Validate before you build

There’s a pattern I see constantly: agency owner spends weeks building out a productized service, creates the landing page, sets up the intake forms, maybe even hires someone for delivery. Then launches to crickets.

The service made perfect sense in their head. Turns out nobody wanted to buy it at that price point. Or the market wanted a slightly different version of the thing. Or there was a deal-breaker objection they never considered.

The fix is simple but requires some ego suppression. Talk to 10–15 people who match your ideal client profile before you build anything.

Not to sell them. To learn.

Describe what you’re thinking about offering. Ask what they’d expect it to include. Ask what they’d expect to pay. Ask what would make them say no. Listen more than you talk.

You’re testing three things:

1. Is this problem painful enough that people will pay to solve it?

2. Does your price point match what the market expects?

3. Are there objections you haven’t thought of?

If you’re getting lukewarm responses, the issue might not be your pitch, but your service fit.

A few conversations will save you from building something nobody wants. You might learn your price is too high. Or too low—which is its own problem. You might discover that everyone wants a feature you hadn’t planned to include, or that something you thought was a selling point is actually a turnoff.

Hire for delivery before you have clients

This is where most agency owners get productization backwards.

The standard plan looks reasonable: deliver the service yourself first, figure out what works, then hire someone to take over once you’re profitable enough to afford it.

That plan is a trap.

Jake Jorgovan, who built Lead Cookie into a successful productized LinkedIn outreach agency, calls this the Master Splinter problem. In the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Master Splinter knew everything but couldn’t transfer that knowledge to his team. They’d go out, make decisions based on what seemed right, and come back having screwed everything up. Splinter would facepalm.

The same thing happens when founders deliver their own productized service. You solve problems on the fly using your expertise; you make judgment calls without documenting them; you add personal touches that clients come to expect. The service works because of you, not because of the system.

Then you hire someone to replace you and it falls apart. Not because they’re incompetent—because your clients were actually buying your expertise wrapped in a productized package.

Jake Jorgovan learned this the hard way at Lead Cookie:

The solution feels counterintuitive: hire someone to deliver the service from day one. You build the systems, handle sales, create the frameworks. Someone else does the actual work.

Russ Perry, founder of Design Pickle, did this. He hired a designer and project manager on day one. He never touched the design work himself. The service was built to run without him from the start.

Brian Casel did the same with Audience Ops, a productized content service. He never wrote a single blog post for clients. Writers handled delivery from the beginning.

This approach is scarier. You’re hiring before you have revenue. But the alternative—building a business that depends on your personal delivery—isn’t really a productized service. It’s freelancing with better marketing.

If you genuinely can’t afford to hire from day one, at least document everything obsessively from your first client. Record your process, note every decision you make, write down the questions clients ask. You’re building the training manual in real-time so extraction is possible later. It’s harder than hiring first, but it’s not impossible—just know you’re choosing the slower path.

Sell outcomes, not deliverables

Most agencies describe their productized services in terms of what they’ll do. Four blog posts per month. Ten hours of design work. Weekly social media management.

Clients don’t actually want those things. They want what those things produce.

Dav Nash has a test for this. He asks agency teams a simple question about their deliverables:

If your team can’t articulate why they’re doing something beyond “it’s what we promised,” you have a deliverables problem.

The shift looks like this:

This matters because clients understand value better than process. “We’ll educate your customers and bring in leads” lands harder than “we’ll write blogs and run ads.”

Outcome framing also justifies premium pricing. Deliverables invite comparison shopping. Outcomes invite a conversation about what results are worth.

And your team actually knows why they’re doing what they’re doing. That clarity changes how they approach the work.

Structure your packages

There’s no single right way to package a productized service, but three structures cover most situations.

• Tiered packages work when clients have meaningfully different needs. A basic tier for smaller budgets, a standard tier that becomes your anchor, a premium tier for clients who want more. Most buyers pick the middle option, which is why you design that one first.

• Gateway offers work when your main service requires significant commitment. A $2,500 audit or strategy session gives prospects a low-risk way to experience your work. The ones who get value become candidates for your $15,000+ implementation. You’re not discounting—you’re creating a logical first step.

• Recurring plus add-ons work when clients have a consistent baseline need with occasional extras. The base subscription covers the standard deliverables. Add-ons let them scale up for launches, campaigns, or busy seasons without renegotiating the whole arrangement.

Audrey Kwan, who’s spent over 20 years in agency life, puts it simply:

The structure matters less than the clarity. Clients should understand exactly what they’re getting, what it costs, and what’s not included. If your packages require a 30-minute explanation, they’re too complicated.

Build systems before you scale

Once you have paying clients, the temptation is to chase more of them. Resist that for a minute.

The agencies that scale productized services smoothly are the ones that systematize delivery before adding volume. The ones that scale painfully are the ones that pile on clients while their operations are still held together with duct tape and founder availability. Our scaling framework breaks this down in detail.

Four systems matter most, and here’s what they actually look like:

1. Onboarding: Client pays → welcome email fires automatically → intake form collects everything you need → project appears in your delivery queue. No manual steps, no “let me send you a few questions” emails. The key is collecting payment before asking for project details—if you ask for too much before they’ve paid, you risk losing the lead. Once they’re in the system, filling out an intake form is an easy next step.

2. Delivery workflow: A documented sequence your team follows without asking you questions. Task 1 triggers task 2. Deliverables route to the right person. Status updates happen in one place. If a new hire can’t follow the process without shadowing you for a week, it’s not a system yet.

3. Client communication: Clients check their portal for updates instead of emailing you. They see what’s in progress, what’s delivered, what’s next. Predictable communication builds trust and cuts your support load in half.

4. Billing: Recurring services charge automatically. Failed payments trigger follow-up sequences. You stop chasing invoices or remembering who’s due for renewal.

And don’t overlook the legal foundation. Your Terms of Service need to match how productized services actually work—standardized terms, clear revision limits, and payment policies that protect both sides.

In general, the goal is removing yourself from the operational middle. Clients self-serve where possible. Payments happen without your involvement. Your team sees what needs doing without you assigning tasks manually.

Personalized Demo

Looking to make sure SPP.co is right for you? Get on a call with our customer success team.

Book a Demo

If you’re answering the same client question more than twice a week, that’s a missing system. Document the answer, put it somewhere clients can find it, and move on.

Transition existing clients carefully

If you’re productizing an existing agency rather than starting fresh, you have legacy clients to deal with. Some will adapt to your new model easily. Some will resist. A few won’t fit at all.

The mistake is trying to force everyone into the new structure at once. The better approach is gradual and transparent.

Dav Nash describes how this conversation can go:

“Hey clients, understand you’ve had a bit of a rough time at the moment. Maybe you’re not particularly clear on what we’re doing for you, what the results are going to be. Well, to let you know, we’re just changing everything. These are the things we’re changing and why.”

Most clients respond well to honesty about operational improvements. They’ve probably felt the friction of your old process too.

That said, not every client should transition. Some relationships are better ended than forced into a model that doesn’t serve them. If a client needs heavy customization that defeats the purpose of productization, it might be time to refer them elsewhere.

This is its own project with its own timeline. We’ve written a separate guide on transitioning existing clients to a productized model that covers the full process.

The unsexy truth about productization

None of this is complicated. It’s just tedious.

Tracking time on deliverables isn’t hard. Talking to prospects before building isn’t hard. Hiring for delivery instead of doing it yourself isn’t hard—it’s just uncomfortable.

As Dav Nash puts it:

The agencies that successfully productize are the ones that treat it as an operations project, not a marketing exercise. They do the boring groundwork—cost calculations, validation conversations, system documentation—before they build the landing page. They also anticipate what breaks instead of learning those lessons the expensive way.

Start with one service. Know your real costs. Validate before building. Hire for delivery early. Sell outcomes. Build systems before scaling.

Do those things and productization actually works. Skip them and you end up with a fancier version of the same chaos you started with.

Frequently asked questions

What to do this week

Pick one service—the one you’ve delivered enough times that you could do it in your sleep. Track time on the next three projects. Talk to five past clients about what they valued most and what frustrated them.

That’s it. No landing pages, no new tools, no hiring decisions yet.

Productization works when it’s built on real data about how your agency actually operates. Start there, and the rest gets easier.

Deian Isac

Head of Agency Success

With 4+ years at SPP.co and 8+ years in content production, Deian combines practical agency expertise with content strategy leadership. He’s built essential agency tools, conducted dozens of case studies, and leads product demos for agency owners. As Content Lead, Deian transforms his firsthand knowledge of agency operations into actionable resources that help service businesses streamline and scale effectively.