💡 Product Circle ⭕ Chat - Commercialize: Turning Services Into Scalable Revenue with Eisha Tierney Armstrong
At 💡 Product Circle ⭕ Chat 46 with Eisha Armstrong, we unpacked why B2B services firms are racing to productise and what it really takes to commercialise offerings, with the added pressure of AI.
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👋I’m Irene Liakos. A product management, change, AI and growth expert with over 2 decades of experience growing product profitably across Telco, Banking, Fintech, AI, Data, Travel, Ecommerce and more. I teach, coach and advise product managers and business leaders. Reach out to me if your products aren’t delivering the value you need. You can contact me at irene@phronesisadvisory.com
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Let’s get back to Eisha’s talk.
"Product-led growth is not for every product, as more complex, higher contract value products benefit from a sales-led appraoch." - Eisha Tierney Armstrong
This 💡Product Circle⭕ Chat was run on the 5 June 2025 at 8.30am (AEST) with Eisha Tierney Armstrong.
Recording below👇🏼
But first a summary…
Selling Hours is Out. Scaling Smart is In.
Why service businesses are racing to productise—and what it really takes
🔥 Highlights from Product Circle Chat 46 with Eisha Tierney Armstrong
Let’s be real—if you’re still selling time in 2025, your business model might already be on borrowed time.
AI is coming for your margins. Your top salesperson might be polishing their LinkedIn profile. And your clients? They’re starting to expect product-level clarity, speed, and repeatability… from your services.
That’s why more and more B2B service firms are knocking on Eisha Tierney Armstrong’s door. As the co-founder of Vecteris and author of the book every founder should be reading, Commercialize, Eisha is helping firms escape the bespoke-service trap and build businesses that scale.
At Product Circle Chat we unpacked why productising is now a strategic imperative, what it actually involves (spoiler: not just pricing tweaks), and how to make the leap without torching your team.
🚨 So… Why Now?
"You're going to get a much higher valuation if you've got more scalable revenue. The margins on products, are way way higher than the margins on services. If you've got recurring revenue, that's going to increase your valuation" – Eisha Tierney Armstrong
Here’s what’s driving the urgency:
🤖 AI is eating your lunch (and probably offering your service at half the cost)
💼 When your relationship-based salesperson leaves—so does the revenue
🔄 Custom work doesn’t scale. Period.
📈 Valuation pressures—especially for owners eyeing an exit—mean recurring revenue isn’t just nice to have, it’s deal-defining
In short?
Leaders are realising that productising isn’t just a clever idea. It’s survival.
This is exactly why professional services firms are turning to productization:
✅ To scale profitably
✅ To create recurring revenue
✅ To build a business that’s sellable, sustainable, and strategic
🧩 What It Really Takes
Productising services sounds easy… until you try it.
The core problem Eisha identified resonated deeply: many brilliant product ideas from service firms fail to scale beyond initial customers.
Why?
Because, as she eloquently put it, "it's a completely different set of go to market motions". This isn't just about a new product launch; it's a "business model transformation".
🔑 The 5 Capabilities You Need to Successfully Commercialise Productised Services
Eisha’s research, drawn from her work with Vecteris and the insights in her book Commercialize, uncovered five essential capabilities that make or break the journey from services to scalable productised offerings.
1. Market Understanding: Choose Your Market, Wisely (and Narrowly!) 🎯
Service firms often cast a wide net, customising for every client.
But for products? Eisha stressed the need for a "market mindset," where you "narrow right" to find segments with enough in common to serve scalably.
Forget being a generic jack-of-all-trades.
This goes beyond generic customer research. For productised services to succeed, you need:
Deep knowledge of the problem-solution fit
Clarity on the jobs-to-be-done
Sharp insight into buyer and user personas, their needs, and how those evolve
Most services firms skip this or assume they already know. But Eisha noted that many failed commercialisation efforts trace back to weak or shallow market insight.
Know what’s repeatable and valuable.
2. Pricing & Packaging: Monetize Like a Product Pro, Not a Time-Teller 💰
This was a real eye-opener.
Service firms typically price based on effort (what does Eisha cost me? And then they multiply my number by 3, and that is my hourly rate).
But with products, it’s all about "value based pricing" and understanding "what's the value of this product" to the customer. When you’re bundling products with services, it gets "really, really tricky," especially considering the vastly different procurement processes for software versus services.
This is the capability that changes the most when shifting from services to productised offerings.
What’s needed:
Moving away from hourly/project-based billing
Introducing tiered offerings, modules, or value-based pricing
Understanding how buyers evaluate and compare your product
“When you sell time, you price effort. When you sell a product, you price outcomes.”
Many firms overcomplicate or underprice their first productised offerings. Eisha advises starting simple, then testing and iterating pricing with actual customers.
Pricing is a "hypothesis" – get it out there and iterate!.
3. Marketing That Doesn't Depend on one person's charm😉
If you’ve ever worked in a services based business, this will feel close to home.
Service marketing often relies on key individuals and their networks. But that's "not very scalable" and has real single person risks.
Eisha emphasised the need for "completely different marketing capabilities" focused on the product's value and an "Omni channel" approach.
Move over, individual thought leadership; scalable lead generation is the new rockstar!
She noted that many service firms are "good at brand building" but "not at lead. Gen.".
Translate “We do everything” into “Here’s our product. Here’s what it solves.”
Productised services need to be marketed more like a product launch than a relationship-led pitch.
This means:
Clarifying positioning and messaging
Articulating value clearly and repeatedly
Making the offering findable, understandable, and buyable
“Services firms often don’t have a repeatable marketing engine—because they never needed one before.”
Now they do.
4. Sales: Ditch the Doer-Sellers for Product Powerhouses 💼
This was, as Eisha put it, "such an acute pain point". Many service firms use "doer-sellers" – partners who sell and deliver.
But selling a product requires "value based selling," engaging with diverse decision-makers (hello, CTOs!), and addressing concerns like cybersecurity.
Traditional services sales rely on relationships, reputation, and custom solutions. Productised services? They require:
A clear sales process
Tools and assets to communicate value quickly
Less dependency on senior salespeople (aka founders or partners doing all the selling)
“You can’t scale if every sale needs a senior consultant to tailor the pitch live.”
Eisha’s advice? Systematise. Productise the sales process, too.
Support your team with playbooks that sell solutions, not just expertise.
5. Renewals: Customer Success - Not Just a Buzzword (Seriously! 🤯)
This is where many services firms fall short—they don’t plan for renewals.
For subscription-based offerings, customer success, retention, and reducing churn are non-negotiable for "healthy customer lifetime value".
Eisha noted that when she asks about customer success, "A lot of times we get the question. And I kid you, not, what is customer success?". We need to shift from "immediate revenue" to focusing on multi-year revenue and incentivising retention.
Productised offerings, especially if sold as subscriptions or licences, must:
Include a customer success function
Monitor usage and satisfaction
Drive retention and upsell
“If it’s truly productised, it should be designed to be used again—and again.”
Renewals don’t happen by accident. They’re built into the product and the post-sale experience.
Selling Services v. Selling Products
One of the most interesting insights from the chat was the clear distinction between how you sell services, how you sell products, and the emerging necessity of doing both.
🛠️ The Services Sales Approach
In traditional services firms, the product is the people.
Sales is relationship-led, reputation-fuelled, and trust is built one customised solution at a time.
Think: the seasoned consultant who listens deeply, diagnoses a unique challenge, and crafts a bespoke solution.
Demand often flows through referrals.
The sellers? Often the same experts who do the work—doer-sellers.
📦 The Product Sales Approach
Selling a product is a different beast.
Here, the promise isn’t your people—it’s your repeatable, scalable solution.
The focus shifts from custom delivery to addressing widespread pain points with a defined value proposition.
Deals are standardised, marketing-led, and ROI-driven.
You need dedicated product sellers, not delivery teams pitching on the side.
Trust is built through clarity, consistency, and confidence in the product’s ability to solve the problem without reinvention.
But what if you don’t want to choose between services or products? That’s where Hybrid Selling comes in—and Eisha nailed it.
🔁 The Shift to Hybrid Selling
Many firms assume productisation means replacing services with products entirely—but that’s not the reality most businesses are living in. Eisha explained that most companies aren’t shutting down their services. Instead, they’re creating productised solutions or full-fledged products that are sold alongside services.
This isn't about ditching services, but about strategically bundling them based on "customer maturity".
Less mature customers might need more handholding services, while more seasoned clients crave data feeds and sophisticated software.
What truly underlies all these shifts, as both Eisha and attendees pointed out, is culture.
Eisha emphasized that while leaders want quick fixes like new roles and compensation plans, "that's not culture change".
It’s about shifting the entire organization to focus on customer problems and "how our solution, whether it's delivered through services or products, solves these problems.
This isn't just about tweaking your business model; it's about a profound cultural transformation. And, as I hinted, Eisha needs to come back to delve deeper into "Fearless," her book on cultural implications, because the cultural piece is the real challenge.
Hybrid selling means blending:
The custom, diagnostic, relationship-driven approach of professional services
withThe scalable, repeatable value of productised offerings
It is the art of combining the credibility and depth of services with the scalability and precision of products.
You're not just building relationships—you’re solving urgent, expensive customer problems through a carefully blended offering. One that includes services where needed, and products where possible.
The promise?
We’ll solve this for you—your way—with proven tools and tailored expertise.
Hybrid selling lets you scale smart while still navigating complex, high-value deals. It’s consultative, but repeatable. Relationship-driven, but powered by product value.
It’s not just for service-native firms either. Eisha pointed out that even software companies—traditionally product-first—often derive 30% of their revenue from services.
Increasingly, hybrid is becoming the norm, not the exception.
In hybrid selling, the sales conversation changes:
You still start with understanding pain points and context
You still build trust through expertise
But you also come armed with a productised solution that’s repeatable, priced, and packaged
It demands a new level of sophistication in sales and marketing. Teams need to know when to diagnose and tailor, and when to point to the product—and how to combine both for a cohesive solution.
“You’re no longer just pitching your brilliance—you’re commercialising it.”
🚧 Warning: It’s Not Just a Strategy Shift
“The biggest risk isn’t getting the pricing wrong—it’s underestimating the mindset shift.”
This transformation touches everything—your operating model, your sales process, your team culture. And if you think it can be done by simply rebundling services and giving them a shiny name... think again.
You need:
✔️ Coaching
✔️ Culture change
✔️ Buy-in from leadership and delivery teams
✔️ And a plan to manage the emotional side of the shift—from project-based pride to product-led performance
If AI is accelerating the pressure, culture is what will make or break your response.
Time to get fearless. Get commercial. And start building the future of your business.
Watch the video to learn more 👇
Product Circle Chat 46 - Topic
Topic: Commercialize – Turning Services Into Scalable Revenue
Are you stuck in the services trap and struggling to scale? Wondering how to turn your expertise into scalable, recurring revenue?
Whether you’re just starting your productisation journey or ready to level up, this session with Eisha Armstrong was packed with real-world insights, data, and actionable frameworks to help you break free from the project-to-project grind and build scalable growth.
Product Circle Chat 46 - Video
Product Circle Chat 46 - Speaker
Eisha Tierney Armstrong is a leading voice on transforming professional services into scalable, profitable businesses. As the co-founder of Vecteris and author of the highly acclaimed book Commercialize: How to Monetize, Sell, and Market Productized Offerings in B2B Professional Services, she’s helped countless organisations escape the limitations of custom services and unlock new growth through productization.
With a career spanning strategy consulting and hands-on leadership, Eisha knows exactly why so many firms struggle to scale—and more importantly, what to do about it. Her work blends data-driven insights with real-world experience, making her a trusted advisor to firms looking to rethink their business models, pricing strategies, and go-to-market approaches.
Eisha has an MBA from the Harvard Business School and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Kansas. Eisha serves on the boards of both for-profit and nonprofit organizations. Based in Cincinnati with her family, she has a passion for yoga, travel and the outdoors. She is a certified yoga teacher and in 2022, she summited Mt. Kilimanjaro alongside her 16-year-old child.
You can follow Eisha on Linkedin here.
Product Circle Chat - Q&A
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