The Right Time to Productize Your Services

#15

Hi friend!

We talked about why your business needs products and services a few weeks ago. Today we’re talking about one strategic move that can dramatically change your ability to scale profitably.

Productizing your services.

But when is the right time to make this shift?

And how do you price it?

Let’s dive in.

🤿

The Simple Strategy

How it works.

Productized services take the core, or one step of your customized service and offers it at a fraction of the cost. We talked about JiffyLube and dealerships last week. The “rapid oil change” from JiffyLube is an example of a productized service.

So are most of the offerings on sites like Fiverr. They’e small bundles of services that come together to form a product.

Why?

3 reasons why they’re a game changer:

• Increased Efficiency: More repetitions mean better execution for you. Each cycle refines your delivery, making it smoother and more cost-effective. As you become more consistent, you can look to improve your margins by lowering your expense to run each service.

• Customer Satisfaction: With a focused offering, customers are more likely to appreciate the value, increasing positive feedback. You can quickly show customers how you will got them from point A to B.

• Scalability: Automating and delegating parts of the service reduces costs and increases your capacity to take on more clients. The enemy of scale is variability - when things are different each time you do them. Customized services are great for getting to know a client or delivering something really unique, but they’re variable. Because they change often, it’s incredibly hard to scale.

How to apply it.

When I think about if I or one of my clients should launch a productized service, here are my three rules of thumb. For most instances they work, just adapt them for your business if you need to.

1. Pricing Strategy: I advocate for setting the price of the productized service at about 1/3 of your custom service. It should anchor your custom service as a higher value, but also show itself off as a great deal.

2. Criteria for Launch: If you don’t already have a service, launch one first. Once you’ve had 3-5 happy clients, then think about launching a productized version of that service. Use customer feedback to identify the most valuable aspect of your service. For instance, if customers frequently commend the service for giving them their time back, that’s what you should emphasize in your productized offering.

3. ROI Calculation: Productized services are about quick, valuable hits of help. Your customer is stuck somewhere. Explain how much time and money they might spend figuring things out on their own versus the cost and time savings your service offers. I have a rough idea of how long I think projects would take me. New website? Probably 30 hours, cause I’m not good at it. If I use an internal hourly rate of $200 an hour - anything that makes a really good website (not just the one I cranked out with AI yesterday) for less than $6,000 has my attention.

Productized services are on my mind because I’m about to launch one!

It’ll be a fast, high impact form of my coaching, which helps entrepreneurs see where they can increase profit. It works by analyzing your sales and accounting data. The deliverable is a legit strategic plan with action items that will help increase your profitability. My clients have seen between 200 and 500% growth in profitability with coaching. Can’t wait to offer it different price point!

(Also, I had planned out, priced and tested this productized service. I have 14 years of work experience, an MBA and have worked on product development for ages. I just used the prompt after above and got the SAME EXACT SERVICE I planned out. Same price, same deliverables. USE AI, it’s insanely valuable. I like the ChatGPT4o, but Claude is pretty dope too.)

Conclusion.

If you’re struggling to scale, consider productizing your service. It might be the unlock you need to grow profitably. Can’t wait to see what you come up with!

Catch you next week!

-Nate

Whenever you’re ready, I help bootstrapped entrepreneurs increase their profit in two ways.

1. I help small business leaders unlock profitability in their business using AI. This high-impact course has only what you need in it to increase profitability and win your time back, with strategic frameworks for thinking about AI and practical plans to use it. Extraordinary price to value ratio.

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2. Spots are open for this fall’s coaching cohort. It will run from September - November. This is a structured, 12 week program, with weekly 1-on-1 coaching calls with me. We spend the first 4 weeks resetting the foundation of your business, then clarify your definition of success for 2 weeks and spend the last 6 coaching to make it a reality. One of the most recent entrepreneurs brought her profitability up by 500% during the program.

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