💡Product Circle ⭕ Chat - Eisha Tierney Armstrong
💡Product Circle ⭕ Chat 18 with Eisha Tierney Armstrong on 5 Lessons for Productizing Services. Moving from Customised Professional Services to Scalable Products.
Product Circle Chat is runs every second week as a Zoom call that anyone can join to talk all things product, product management and problem solving. Creating value for customers and the business.
“Our fears are completely exaggerated. Rather than what could go wrong, what if we succeed?” - Eisha Tierney Armstrong
This Product Circle Chat was run 10 April 2024 at 8am (Sydney Australia time).
Product Circle Chat 18 - Topic
5 Lessons for Productizing Services
Get a FREE digital copy of Eisha’s book Productize: The Ultimate Guide to Turning Professional Services into Products here
✨Evolution of a Productized Service ✨
One of the most pivotal slides Eisha talked through was the ✨Evolution of a Productized Service ✨ that shows the benefits (low to high) and the use of technology (low to high) of each approach.
We know the end game benefit to moving from Customised Services to Products as a Service - but it's never an overnight process.
To make it sustainable, there are multiple stages before getting to a Products as a Service (self service model) and realising the benefits in the business.
Benefits:
✨ Easier to Scale (with repeatability)
✨ Higher gross margins (greater profit to reinvest in innovation and mitigate future disruption)
✨ Revenue visibility (to know what's most to least profitable, attribute revenue/company value to the product/activity)
✨ Company valuations (even Marty Cagan in his book Transformed shows many examples of companies 10X their valuation by moving to a Product model)
✨ Can be sold by a profesional sales force (repeatable revenue)
For me, the highlight is that this transformation is never an overnight process. There is tech build, yes, but there is also the culture change (and fear of change).
Having spend many years in these conversations around how to capture the value of productising or automating the product with tech without risking the business - I know this can only work as a gradual change.
Starting with Why (thanks Simon Sinek) knowing the job to be done / solving the right problem for the business (thanks Clayton Christensen) and ensuring leaders are on board and championing this change.
Then looking at ways to mitigate the risk with a step change approach. A picture is worth a thousand word and the image below captures it perfectly for me.
✨5 Lessons for Productizing Services✨
1. Dream Big, Start Small (perfection isn't’ all it’s cracked up to be)
Going big without testing along the way, without market feedback, increases risk of failure. Let’s first test demand for the data in spreadsheet form before we heavily invest in building a detailed dashboard.
2. Co-Create with Your Customers (Perfection isn't all it’s cracked up to be)
Like Lego
Transparency increases Trust. Asking for input, increases Loyalty.
3. Always Solve an Urgent & Expensive Problem
For an Attractive Market Segment
There must be a large enough market that is willing to pay to make it worthwhile
4. Judge Products as Products (Not as You Judge Services)
5. Skate to Where the Puck will Be
Product Circle Chat 18 - Video
Product Circle Chat 18 - Speakers
Product Circle Chat 18 on 10 April 2024 was presented by Eisha Armstrong.
Eisha Armstrong is the Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Vecteris, dedicated to helping B2B companies transform their customized services into more scalable products, a strategy that often takes them way out of their comfort zones. Prior to co-founding Vecteris, Eisha held senior product leadership roles at the E.W. Scripps Company and at CEB, now Gartner, the world's largest membership-based corporate performance research and advisory company.
Eisha authored the best-selling book Productize: The Ultimate Guide to Turning Professional Services into Products and Fearless: How to Transform a Services Culture and Successfully Productize.
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.
Get a FREE digital copy of her book Productize: The Ultimate Guide to Turning Professional Services into Products here
Product Circle Chat - Q&A
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