Productized Consulting Guide With Tips & Examples

Calls, proposals, invoices—the life of a consulting business owner often revolves around administrative tasks instead of focusing on completing projects. Even when you finally hook a client and deliver, the project scope changes, you underestimated the budget, and you are hit by sky-high client expectations.

If you haven’t thought about the productizing process for your consulting business, now is the time. It will allow you to automate your tasks, spend less time in calls, and more on delivering services.

What is productized consulting?

Productized consulting refers to the process of transforming traditional consulting services into standardized, repeatable products. Instead of offering custom solutions for each client, consultants develop pre-defined packages that address common business challenges. These packages typically include a clear scope of work, fixed pricing, and defined deliverables, making the consulting process more structured and predictable.

Benefits for consultants

1. Improved client experience

   1. Consistency: Productized consulting ensures that clients receive a consistent level of service, as the offerings are standardized. This consistency builds trust and reliability.

   2. Clear expectations: With pre-defined packages, clients know exactly what they will receive, reducing uncertainty and managing expectations effectively.

2. Predictable profit margins

   1. Fixed pricing: By offering fixed-price packages, consultants can better predict their revenue streams. This predictability allows for more effective financial planning and resource allocation.

   2. Efficient resource management: Standardized offerings enable consultants to allocate resources more efficiently, optimizing their time and efforts.

3. Simplified marketing & sales processes

   1. Easier to Market: Productized services are easier to market because they are clearly defined and can be promoted through various channels. This clarity simplifies the messaging and makes it easier for potential clients to understand the value proposition.

   2. Streamlined Sales: The sales process becomes more straightforward as consultants can present pre-defined packages with clear benefits and pricing, reducing the need for extensive custom proposals.
      

Scalability & efficiency benefits

1. Scalability

   1. Repeatable processes: Productized consulting allows for the creation of repeatable processes that can be scaled across multiple clients. This scalability enables you to serve a larger number of clients without compromising quality.

   2. Growth opportunities: By standardizing services, you can focus on growth strategies, such as expanding your client base or developing new productized offerings.

2. Efficiency

   1. Reduced customization: With pre-defined packages, you spend less time on customization and more time on delivering value. This efficiency leads to faster project completion and higher client satisfaction.

   2. Automation: Many aspects of productized consulting can be automated, further enhancing efficiency. For example, the new client onboarding process, project management, and reporting can be streamlined using technology.

Developing a productized service concept

When considering transitioning your consulting business to a productized model, it’s essential to identify a specific consulting niche.

A niche is a specialized market segment with unique needs and challenges. By focusing on a niche, you can customize your services to meet the specific demands of your target audience, set yourself apart from competitors, and develop expertise in a particular area.

• Market research: Conduct thorough market research to identify market gaps. Look for industries or customer segments that are underserved or have unique problems your consulting services can address.

• Analyze your expertise: Evaluate your skills, experience, and areas of expertise. Identify the types of problems you are best equipped to solve and the industries where your knowledge can provide the most value.

• Customer feedback: Engage with potential customers to understand their pain points and needs. Surveys, interviews, and focus groups can offer valuable insights into what your target audience seeks.

• Competitor analysis: Study your competitors to identify where they fall short. Look for opportunities to differentiate your services by offering unique solutions or better value.

• Trend analysis: Stay updated with industry trends and emerging technologies. Identifying trends early can help you position your services as innovative and forward-thinking.

Determining the service structure

Once you’ve identified your niche, it’s time to define the structure of your productized service. Consider the following elements:

• Service scope : What specific problems will your service solve? Be concise and clear about what is included.

• Deliverables: What tangible products or results can customers expect?

• Pricing model: What type of pricing strategy will you use for this service? Will it be fixed-price, hourly, or subscription-based?

For example, if you’re launching a productized service in digital marketing, your scope might look like this:

• Name: Digital Marketing Strategy Development Package

• Scope: Develop a comprehensive digital marketing strategy tailored to [target audience]

• Deliverables:

  • 3-hour strategic planning session

  • written report outlining key recommendations

  • presentation slides summarizing findings

  • fixed pricing of $2,500

Refining the productized service offer

Refining your productized service offering is an ongoing process that involves continuous improvement and adaptation based on feedback and market changes.

1. Gather feedback: Regularly collect feedback from clients to understand their satisfaction levels and areas for improvement. Use surveys, reviews, and direct conversations to gather insights.

2. Iterate and improve: Use the feedback to make iterative improvements to your service. This could involve refining processes, adding new features, or enhancing the quality of deliverables.

3. Monitor market trends: Stay updated with market trends and industry developments. Adapt your service offerings to meet evolving customer needs and stay ahead of the competition.

4. Measure performance: Establish key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the success of your productized service. Track metrics such as client satisfaction, retention rates, and revenue growth to assess performance and identify areas for improvement.

By carefully crafting each element of your productized service concept, you can differentiate yourself from competitors while delivering exceptional results to your clients.

3 examples of productized consulting services that are successful

Enough theory, let’s look at a few consultants who’ve successfully tapped into productization. These three listed below are not included in our existing post with productized service examples.

Conversion tracking setup

If you’ve ever had to deal with Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager, you’ll probably wish there was someone who’d set everything up for you. And there is!

Jonathon from measurely.io helps you migrate from GA3 to GA4, set up Facebook pixels, and more. His target group are SaaS owners and freelancers who’d rather spend time on their product/service than reading tracking setup documentation.

Landing page feedback

Ollie from roastmylandingpage.com has bundled his years of experience into a simple productized consulting service: he’ll record a video of your landing page and give you tips on how to improve it. Simple, right?

After launching his service a few months ago, he’s made adjustments to his own landing page, adding client testimonials to it, a sample roast video, and more. As you can see, there’s always room for improvement, especially when it comes to landing pages.

Google Business Profile optimization

Bradley from Local Fury leverages his experience of working over 14 years in the SEO industry. With his team of highly skilled experts, he’s now helping business owners to rank higher in search results.

Compared to similar service providers, Local Fury doesn’t manage Google Business Profiles, but creates engagement signals instead. This boosts the profile, allowing it to rank higher in search results.

Validating your productized consulting offer

Prior to launching your productized service, it’s important to validate the concept to ensure it aligns with the needs and expectations of your target audience.

1. Surveys & polls: Use online surveys or polls to gather quantitative data on market demand, preferences, and pain points. SPP’s contact forms are perfect for the job.

2. Competitor analysis: Analyze existing competitors to identify gaps in the market and understand what works well and what doesn’t. This can help you differentiate your service.

3. Pilot [rograms: Offer a pilot version of your service to a small group of clients. This can provide valuable insights into the service’s effectiveness, and offer data for improvement.

4. Focus groups: Organize focus groups with potential clients to discuss your service concept in detail. This qualitative feedback can help you understand client needs and perceptions more deeply.

5. Landing pages: Create a landing page describing your service and offer pre-orders or waitlist sign-ups. This can gauge interest and collect email addresses for future marketing efforts.

Strategies for engaging with potential clients

Engaging with potential clients during the validation phase is essential for gathering meaningful feedback. Let’s look at a few specific strategies:

1. One-on-one interviews: Conduct in-depth interviews with potential clients to understand their needs, pain points, and willingness to pay for your service. Ask open-ended questions to encourage detailed responses.

2. Feedback forms: Send feedback forms to clients who participate in your pilot programs. Make sure the forms are easy to fill out and cover all aspects of the service.

3. Social media engagement: Use social media platforms such as Reddit to share your service concept and engage with your audience. Encourage comments, shares, and direct messages to gather feedback.

4. Email campaigns: Send targeted email campaigns to potential clients, asking for their input on your service concept. Offer incentives, such as discounts or early access, to encourage participation.

Examples of questions and metrics for validation

To assess the viability of your productized service concept, use the following questions and metrics during the validation process:

• Questions for potential clients

  • What are your biggest challenges in [specific area]?

  • How do you currently address these challenges?

  • What features would you find most valuable in a service like ours?

  • How much would you be willing to pay for this service?

  • What would make you choose our service over competitors?

• Metrics to track

  • Conversion rates: Track the number of visitors to your landing page who sign up for pre-orders or the waitlist.

  • Customer acquisition cost (CAC): Calculate the cost of acquiring a new client to ensure it is sustainable.

  • Net promoter score (NPS): Measure client satisfaction and likelihood to recommend your service to others.

  • Engagement metrics: Monitor social media engagement, email open rates, and click-through rates to gauge interest.

  • Feedback scores: Analyze feedback forms and interviews to identify common themes and areas for improvement.

Using these methods, strategies, and metrics, consultants can effectively validate their productized service concepts before launching them to the market, ensuring a higher likelihood of success and client satisfaction.

Marketing your productized service

Let’s talk about Ollie’s landing page roast again, because he’s very transparent with his strategy. As he mentions in a blog post, he’s not just launched the service and waited for clients to magically find him. Instead, he’s invested a few thousand British Pounds into ads.

For ads to be successful, you need to create service packages that are crystal clear. Clients shouldn’t have any questions when they see their service. Instead, the value should be obvious.

In Ollie’s case, there’s a clear service promise of what you’ll receive, and how it will help you:

It’s your turn to productize your consultancy

I hope this information on the productized consulting approach was helpful and has kick-started some ideas you want to put into practice. Start by analyzing your current services, find out which have a high profit margin, and how you could bundle them. Next, launch your service, advertise it with ads, and make constant adjustments to your service, messaging, and add social proof to it. Experiment with upsells and add your leads to a newsletter, so you can nurture them into paying clients.

The best part is that software for productized services, such as Service Provider Pro, allows you to easily productize your consulting engagements without having to hire a developer who creates a custom solution for you.