The service was productised in January. Every delivery is still bespoke.

Fixing the price is the easy half of productising a service: the margin arrives only when the work behind the price stops being renegotiated on every job.

By Steve 5 min read
Abstract bridge artwork for The service was productised in January. Every delivery is still bespoke.

A consultancy, agency or specialist services firm decides to productise. Three named packages replace the old proposal template, each with a fixed price and a fixed deliverable. The website is rewritten, the sales conversation gets shorter, close rates improve. Six months later, gross margin is flat. On some engagements it is worse than it was under time and materials. The usual diagnosis is that the prices were set too low. Sometimes that is true. More often the firm has productised the price and left the delivery exactly as it was:…

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