Can SMEs Productise Services to Help Increase Sales? (Part 2)

In the last post we asked the question Can Businesses Productise Services to Help Increase Sales? and we briefly covered the difference between a product and service, what constitutes a successful service, the challenges of scaling a services business and introducing the idea of productising services to scale/grow a service business. In this post we continue with this productisation theme and highlight at a high level what service productisation means and how it can help scale/grow a service business.

There are a number of things that service oriented businesses can do to help the service delivery process with future prospects before scaling issues kick in, firstly:

• Get references from satisfied clients - this will add positive testimony to the services you are offering and will communicate positive outcomes that other businesses have achieved using your services.
• Develop client case studies - These should summarise the clients problem, challenges or opportunity, your recommendations and the outcomes from the approach adopted. Depending upon the number of target audiences you have, these will help prospective clients see that you have delivered your services to businesses similar to theirs which in turn will help make them more comfortable with your proposed services offering.
• Gather service feedback - ask clients if the promise and delivery were matched, ask prospects who did not use your service why - find out how could you improve things.

These are simple first steps that help your business build up its’ credentials and this is invaluable part of the service productising process.

The harder part comes next, but once this is completed you will wonder how you ever managed without it before. Next, you have to productise the services that you offer. While this may differ slightly from business to business, the principles are essentially the same whether your business is an IT, IFA, Legal, Cleaning, Surveying, Courier, Accountancy etc. service business. Put simply, you have to map out and document how things get done in a way that captures the vision and ethos that the founder(s) have for the business. This needs to cover both strategy and tactics i.e. vision/direction and deliverables. The good news is that you are probably already doing many things right, but in order to scale you have to document your winning ways, process and communication - good and bad - so that others within your business have an agreed point of reference and clear set of methodologies that can be followed in a professional and consistent way. This is essentially cloning the founder(s) knowledge, skills and experience by documenting what is in your/their head(s).

The following example albeit quite simple in nature may help bring some context to this point of view. Imagine you are given a model aeroplane to build but there are no clear instructions. The majority of people will eventually succeed in building the model plane but will take different approaches. Some of these approaches may take longer than others, result in some parts not being used, impact the quality of the finished result or even cause the project to fail to be completed and the user to become dissatisfied. However, by providing a set of clear documented instructions the user will be guided through a “how to build a model aeroplane” journey that will result in correct assembly of the model aeroplane every time. While the above DIY model example is probably too simplistic compared to a real service businesses processes, it aims to highlight the point that with documented process/instructions the journey undertaken provides a greater likelihood of consistent, professional deliverables and results.

In some respects productising your business services is really just building and recording a repeatable service model by clearly mapping out and documenting your service delivery processes. This allows you to also document who does what and when and what communication is required at various stage of the delivery cycle. This represents the closest thing to cloning the founder(s) skills, knowledge, experience and approach which will help ensure that any vision, ethos, processes and methods that are successful and valued by clients can be transferred to, and deployed by, other team members in a professional, consistent and engaging manner.

Put simply it is like creating a set of information and instructions that will enable your team to deliver your services consistently every time i.e. it creates the right balance/mix of people, process and communication that enables you to scale your service business while maintaining quality of service and delivery.