Selling custom before productizing your consulting services
Productizing out of your own head rarely sells. Sell custom proposals first and let the options people keep choosing become your products.
Kevin C. Whelan
Before you go pouring concrete on your productized consulting services, it helps to actually validate demand for your services using real-world clients and custom proposals.
It all comes down to the sales conversations.
There are three main things you want to cover during your sales conversations: objectives, measurement, and the value of the outcomes. (Credit to Alan Weiss for teaching me this.)
Once you’re clear on these things, you can begin to create a few options that will help them get there.
The options people consistently choose are the ones worth productizing. Any time I have tried to productize out of my head, I’ve had difficulting selling the service.
Why? Because it’s too theoretical to make up services from your head. Something about selling custom solutions to people’s actual problems makes them grounded in reality.
The language you use to describe the service, the scope you choose, and the prices you offer are all tied to real people’s needs and value equations.
So before you productize, sell custom.
Keep things general on your services pages. Sell custom proposals first. See what sells more than once with little to no adjustments.
Let real people design your productized services for you.