A surprise conclusion after investigating the productized services spectrum

There’s a productized services spectrum.

On one end, sat right next to custom 1:1 services, is something that hovers just above it: the habit or ability to regularize services. This looks like a price, a timeframe, inputs, and outputs all packaged together. Over time, they might all flow nicely within a single sentence uttered during a client call.

Moving closer to the center of the productized services spectrum, your thing-you-do gets written down, put on a web page, mayb given a name.

Go a bit further and perhaps it acquires the polish and patina of a brand. Maybe it even has self-service ecommerce.

But how about all the way over on the other side of the spectrum?

If you travel far enough on the productization spectrum, this truth happens: you have a “product”.

Let’s flip that: all b2b products are actually productized services.

Look at Google: GCP and its B2B offerings are now in the 10s of billion in annual rev. Sure, Google would rather die than provide services to consumer customers, but its business customers get the usual client services treatment:

• strong relationships are built
• deep understanding of customer needs
• help executing on strategy so that needs are met

Everywhere you go, it’s the same story: you’re in the relationships game; forming good ones is a pretty solid product strategy.