Course Navigation:
- Lesson 1: One Size Fits All?
- Lesson 2: Ditching Custom Proposals
- Lesson 3: Hiring & Delegation
- Lesson 4: 10x'ing Your Hourly Rate
Is a Productized Service “One Size Fits All” Solution?
Hey! Brian Casel here from Productize & Scale. Welcome to my crash course on how to Productize Your Service.
In this first video, I want to answer this question I heard from a reader, his name is Henry and he’s a architectural consultant.
He said:
“I’d love to utilize the Productized Service model and grow my business, but I just don’t see how it could work for me. Every project I work on is completely different from the next. ‘One size fits all’ just wouldn’t work in my situation.”
Well, as it turns out, Henry is absolutely right about one thing. “One size fits all” wouldn’t work his situation. It wouldn’t work for anyone else’s situation either—Not if you want to Productize and scale up your business.
Let’s break down that phrase—“One size fits all”—into 2 parts:
Start with the first part, “One size.” Now that’s goal, right? Get your service to essentially be offered in one size, or perhaps one size with just a few configureable options. Just like any other product, a Productized Service should be simple, pre-packaged, pre-defined, in one shape and size (more/less).
OK—Now what should we do that 2nd part, the “…fits all” part?
Well that’s where Henry, and all the other people who ask this question get tripped up.
You can’t offer one size and expect it to fit everyone.
If you try and serve anyone and everyone — like most freelancers and agencies do — Then you’ll always have to custom tailor every project to every client’s unique set of needs.
That prevents you from being able to:
- Create systems and processes, which will enable you to hire people to handle those processes in an organized, predictable way.
- Proactively market and sell your service. If you serve everyone, then you’re stuck relying solely on personal referrals, which come and go.
I’m going to dive deeper into that question of “how to sell your service” in the next video.
But for now, I want you to take this away:
The key to Productizing your service is identifying that one, most ideal customer for your business, then identifying a key problem that you’re most qualified to solve for them, and then designing your best possible solution for them.
Once you’re armed with that focus, that will form the basis for how you build systems, and how you market, sell and grow your business.
See? Yes, even your business can be Productized. It’s all about strategic, intentional, focus.
Alright! Stay tuned for the next video where I’ll show you how to ditch writing those long custom proposals for good.