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Productize: The Ultimate Guide to Turning Professional Services into Scalable Products
More and more traditional professional services firms are turning to "productization" as a strategy to grow, improve valuations, and to fend off new digital-first competitors. However, many of them will fail and waste a lot of money in the process.
Productize first outlines the "Seven Deadly Productization Mistakes" made when pursuing a product strategy, then provides the blueprint for overcoming each of these missteps. It is designed to be a practical playbook for any leader of a professional services business who wants to successfully accelerate growth. For companies that deliver highly customized services, new product development and commercialization are often outside of their core skills, processes, and mindsets.
Productizing services typically requires organizations to think differently about how they work and how they create value for their customers. This change does not come easily. Productize includes real-life case studies and stories featuring professional services leaders who have successfully led their organizations to create more scalable services and products. It also includes more than two dozen tools and templates to help your team implement the tactics so you don't have to start from scratch.
Productize draws on the 25+ years of experience that Eisha Armstrong has in successfully creating, launching and growing productized services. Eisha knows what works and what doesn't and she is passionate about making sure organizations learn from each other and avoid reinventing the wheel.
Productize first outlines the "Seven Deadly Productization Mistakes" made when pursuing a product strategy, then provides the blueprint for overcoming each of these missteps. It is designed to be a practical playbook for any leader of a professional services business who wants to successfully accelerate growth. For companies that deliver highly customized services, new product development and commercialization are often outside of their core skills, processes, and mindsets.
Productizing services typically requires organizations to think differently about how they work and how they create value for their customers. This change does not come easily. Productize includes real-life case studies and stories featuring professional services leaders who have successfully led their organizations to create more scalable services and products. It also includes more than two dozen tools and templates to help your team implement the tactics so you don't have to start from scratch.
Productize draws on the 25+ years of experience that Eisha Armstrong has in successfully creating, launching and growing productized services. Eisha knows what works and what doesn't and she is passionate about making sure organizations learn from each other and avoid reinventing the wheel.
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Published November 14, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
April 27, 2022
This book would be useful if you were the CEO of a services firm with a revenue of seven figures or more and little to no business education. However, if you’re a small service business a lot of what’s in this book will be a big stretch. And regardless of how big your company might be, if you’ve read much of anything about management, innovation, or entrepreneurship you will already be very familiar with all the concepts in this book. I feel like an enormous proportion of this book is Armstrong reciting the concepts of a handful of bestselling business books—which I’d bet most people buying this book have already ready.
September 7, 2024
Good if you need some ideas and a "where to start" point but felt like a blog post that couldn't get fleshed out.
July 30, 2024
This book is useful when thinking about productizing professional services. It will not give you specific ideas related to your business or define what your customers will find valuable. This is a playbook for executing a product idea a business is evaluating.
I was hoping to find more information about what revenue mixes and successful adoption across product lines look like. Still, after reading, I recognize this book is primarily a lead generation for Vecteris's services (author owns this company). That's not a bad thing at all, and I think it shows this process works. However, as a standalone book, I don't think this will make you independently able to productize alongside professional services.
I was hoping to find more information about what revenue mixes and successful adoption across product lines look like. Still, after reading, I recognize this book is primarily a lead generation for Vecteris's services (author owns this company). That's not a bad thing at all, and I think it shows this process works. However, as a standalone book, I don't think this will make you independently able to productize alongside professional services.
December 12, 2022
3.5. As many of these books are, it’s primarily a marketing piece to get you to buy their services, but there is nonetheless loads of good information within its pages. At the very least, it gets the wheels turning.
October 17, 2022
This book could have been a blog
October 20, 2022
https://takuti.me/note/the-productize...
A clear handbook about how a good product development lifecycle should be, and the book will potentially be my new go-to book when I teach someone about the essence of product management. There are too many “best practices” on the topic, and the existing resources can be too informative to digest thanks to the set of author’s great experiences and quotes from successful people.
What I like about the Productize book is a strong emphasis on creating a product *with* customers. Here, setting a proper tone (alignment) at a cross-functional organization level is a prerequisite. For me, some techniques like creating persona pose over-abstraction of a picture of an end-user and hence aren’t necessarily part of the book though. The other rarely-discussed topics covered by the book include (i) prioritizing urgent & expensive problems rather than frequently cited problems and (ii) considering cannibalization as a tool to identify a seed of disruptive innovation.
Meanwhile, I’d like to cast one question: Should every labor-intensive service be productized? An implicit assumption behind the book is that financial growth is our ultimate objective, and productization (& scaling it up as a subscription service) is the way to maximizing it, which I personally cannot empathize with; nothing is wrong about the author, and it is simply a wide-spreading symptom the modern capitalistic world itself has shown.
To avoid the loss of humanity in tech, I hope to see an intermediate solution between in-person services and full-fledged products. In fact, the Productize book does highlight such a gradient with their Innovation Ladder that consists of (1) customized services, (2) productized services, (3) products, and (4) product as a service, depending on the use of human power vs. technology. However, the book gives no concrete guidance on how to climb up the ladder step-by-step, even though my experience at start-up companies tells me that different organizations & business models have distinct sweet spots on the ladder.
Overall, the content is basically a collection of generic product management techniques, and none of them seems to be specific to the enhancement of an existing offering that is still in the middle of the Innovation Ladder.
A clear handbook about how a good product development lifecycle should be, and the book will potentially be my new go-to book when I teach someone about the essence of product management. There are too many “best practices” on the topic, and the existing resources can be too informative to digest thanks to the set of author’s great experiences and quotes from successful people.
What I like about the Productize book is a strong emphasis on creating a product *with* customers. Here, setting a proper tone (alignment) at a cross-functional organization level is a prerequisite. For me, some techniques like creating persona pose over-abstraction of a picture of an end-user and hence aren’t necessarily part of the book though. The other rarely-discussed topics covered by the book include (i) prioritizing urgent & expensive problems rather than frequently cited problems and (ii) considering cannibalization as a tool to identify a seed of disruptive innovation.
Meanwhile, I’d like to cast one question: Should every labor-intensive service be productized? An implicit assumption behind the book is that financial growth is our ultimate objective, and productization (& scaling it up as a subscription service) is the way to maximizing it, which I personally cannot empathize with; nothing is wrong about the author, and it is simply a wide-spreading symptom the modern capitalistic world itself has shown.
To avoid the loss of humanity in tech, I hope to see an intermediate solution between in-person services and full-fledged products. In fact, the Productize book does highlight such a gradient with their Innovation Ladder that consists of (1) customized services, (2) productized services, (3) products, and (4) product as a service, depending on the use of human power vs. technology. However, the book gives no concrete guidance on how to climb up the ladder step-by-step, even though my experience at start-up companies tells me that different organizations & business models have distinct sweet spots on the ladder.
Overall, the content is basically a collection of generic product management techniques, and none of them seems to be specific to the enhancement of an existing offering that is still in the middle of the Innovation Ladder.
June 26, 2023
О ЧЕМ КНИГА:
Автор показывает, как создавать продукты в компаниях по оказанию профессиональных услуг. Армстронг выбрала метод от противного, с указанием 7 ключевых ошибок, которые совершают компании, внедряя продуктовый подход и как этого избежать. Она разбила процесс создания продукта на семь блоков и собрала и систематизировала различные инструменты для реализации каждого из них.
ГЛАВНАЯ МЫСЛЬ КНИГИ:
Успех и масштабирование компании в сфере услуг, если она продает только сервис и обходится без продукта, прямо пропорционален умению нанимать и обучать качественных сотрудников. Чтобы сделать свой бизнес более устойчивым и прибыльным, компании должны создавать продукты и совмещать их продажу с продажей профессиональных услуг(рабочих часов своих сотрудников).
ЗАЧЕМ ЧИТАТЬ ЭТУ КНИГУ?
Чтобы научиться создавать продукты, на базе услуг, оказываемых вашим бизнесом и суметь перестроить под это компанию и её процессы.
МЫСЛИ И ВЫВОДЫ ИЗ КНИГИ:
Инновационность бизнеса можно измерять с помощью следующих метрик и KPI:
1. Количество идей новых продуктов, которые мы протестировали в течение года.
2. Количество новых клиентов, которых мы получили за счет внедрения новых продуктов.
3. Доля продуктовой и сервисной выручки в компании.
- Продукты в консалтинге должны решать только срочные и большие проблемы для значимого сегмента клиентов. Если такой проблемы нет или целевой сегмент маленький, то продукт создавать не стоит.
- В2B рынок по моделям потребления уже давно стал похож на В2C. Крупные компании теперь спокойно покупают продукты по подписке и в том числе готовы покупать консалтинг через подписную модель.
- Внедрение изменений всегда в 10 раз тяжелее, чем вы ожидаете. Поэтому сначала всем сотрудникам надо продать стратегию изменений и её плюсы.
- Три принципа создания инновационного продукта:
1. Думай по крупному, но начинай с малого. Think Big, Start Small
2. Атакуй только срочную и большую проблему клиента.
3. Не бойся неопределённости.
ЧТО Я БУДУ ПРИМЕНЯТЬ:
- Правило Think Big, Start Small
- Одностраничный стратегический обзор нового продукта
ЕЩЕ НА ЭТУ ТЕМУ:
Синди Альварес "Как создать продукт, который купят: Метод Lean Customer Development"
Автор показывает, как создавать продукты в компаниях по оказанию профессиональных услуг. Армстронг выбрала метод от противного, с указанием 7 ключевых ошибок, которые совершают компании, внедряя продуктовый подход и как этого избежать. Она разбила процесс создания продукта на семь блоков и собрала и систематизировала различные инструменты для реализации каждого из них.
ГЛАВНАЯ МЫСЛЬ КНИГИ:
Успех и масштабирование компании в сфере услуг, если она продает только сервис и обходится без продукта, прямо пропорционален умению нанимать и обучать качественных сотрудников. Чтобы сделать свой бизнес более устойчивым и прибыльным, компании должны создавать продукты и совмещать их продажу с продажей профессиональных услуг(рабочих часов своих сотрудников).
ЗАЧЕМ ЧИТАТЬ ЭТУ КНИГУ?
Чтобы научиться создавать продукты, на базе услуг, оказываемых вашим бизнесом и суметь перестроить под это компанию и её процессы.
МЫСЛИ И ВЫВОДЫ ИЗ КНИГИ:
Инновационность бизнеса можно измерять с помощью следующих метрик и KPI:
1. Количество идей новых продуктов, которые мы протестировали в течение года.
2. Количество новых клиентов, которых мы получили за счет внедрения новых продуктов.
3. Доля продуктовой и сервисной выручки в компании.
- Продукты в консалтинге должны решать только срочные и большие проблемы для значимого сегмента клиентов. Если такой проблемы нет или целевой сегмент маленький, то продукт создавать не стоит.
- В2B рынок по моделям потребления уже давно стал похож на В2C. Крупные компании теперь спокойно покупают продукты по подписке и в том числе готовы покупать консалтинг через подписную модель.
- Внедрение изменений всегда в 10 раз тяжелее, чем вы ожидаете. Поэтому сначала всем сотрудникам надо продать стратегию изменений и её плюсы.
- Три принципа создания инновационного продукта:
1. Думай по крупному, но начинай с малого. Think Big, Start Small
2. Атакуй только срочную и большую проблему клиента.
3. Не бойся неопределённости.
ЧТО Я БУДУ ПРИМЕНЯТЬ:
- Правило Think Big, Start Small
- Одностраничный стратегический обзор нового продукта
ЕЩЕ НА ЭТУ ТЕМУ:
Синди Альварес "Как создать продукт, который купят: Метод Lean Customer Development"
July 21, 2025
What could have been a great book, dissolves into random advice.
This is what a blog post stretched into a book looks like.
The author has two original thoughts
1. The innovation ladder - which is a real insight about various stages of converting services into products.
2. The 8 mistakes of productizing of services.
The book runs out of steam after the first two chapters. After that the author stretches the book for over 8 chapters. All of which is just random advice spun off on the 8 mistakes.
Each mistake is discussed at length over the course of books across various chapters.
The book is extremely disappointing overall.
A better book that talks about converting services to products albeit from personal experience is from the founder of MOZ -
LOST AND FOUNDER by Rand Fishkin.
I would still need to read the other two books written by the author, COMMERCIALIZE and FEARLESS by the same author, ARMSTRONG.
I am assuming that the author wants to spread her insights across books, she does not want to give away all her insights in a single book.
This is what I have understood, with the pulp fiction writing style.
May be if I read all the books she might have sprinkled a few insights in each book like seasoning.
The knowledge density or insight density of the book is very low i.e. you get a single original insight for 100 pages or so.
With this in mind I would still need those insights, if they are original thoughts.
One other way is to throw the book to chatgpt and extract the insights but I would rather give the benefit of the doubt to he author and expect that she would do a better job in the other books.
This is what a blog post stretched into a book looks like.
The author has two original thoughts
1. The innovation ladder - which is a real insight about various stages of converting services into products.
2. The 8 mistakes of productizing of services.
The book runs out of steam after the first two chapters. After that the author stretches the book for over 8 chapters. All of which is just random advice spun off on the 8 mistakes.
Each mistake is discussed at length over the course of books across various chapters.
The book is extremely disappointing overall.
A better book that talks about converting services to products albeit from personal experience is from the founder of MOZ -
LOST AND FOUNDER by Rand Fishkin.
I would still need to read the other two books written by the author, COMMERCIALIZE and FEARLESS by the same author, ARMSTRONG.
I am assuming that the author wants to spread her insights across books, she does not want to give away all her insights in a single book.
This is what I have understood, with the pulp fiction writing style.
May be if I read all the books she might have sprinkled a few insights in each book like seasoning.
The knowledge density or insight density of the book is very low i.e. you get a single original insight for 100 pages or so.
With this in mind I would still need those insights, if they are original thoughts.
One other way is to throw the book to chatgpt and extract the insights but I would rather give the benefit of the doubt to he author and expect that she would do a better job in the other books.
May 5, 2021
The next evolution in service business models
In Productize, Eisha Armstrong, and the team at Vecteris, uncover the critical steps for successfully transforming pure business services into scalable and sustainable growth through products. Their book identifies first the mistakes we make and then suggests solutions for overcoming those barriers. In a quite practical step by step manner, Armstrong illustrates the productize pathway and then showcases how best to resolve the people challenges, ring fence for innovation, and focus on solving the right, most valuable business problems. Armstrong's emphasis on co-operation with customers places her approach solidly within current trends toward customer experience and her argument to not fear cannibalization is a shot across the bow of every established professional services firm whose traditional lines of business impede innovation. This a book for any leader who wants to get off the hamster wheel of solutions business models and move toward truly scalable and sustainable business outcomes.
In Productize, Eisha Armstrong, and the team at Vecteris, uncover the critical steps for successfully transforming pure business services into scalable and sustainable growth through products. Their book identifies first the mistakes we make and then suggests solutions for overcoming those barriers. In a quite practical step by step manner, Armstrong illustrates the productize pathway and then showcases how best to resolve the people challenges, ring fence for innovation, and focus on solving the right, most valuable business problems. Armstrong's emphasis on co-operation with customers places her approach solidly within current trends toward customer experience and her argument to not fear cannibalization is a shot across the bow of every established professional services firm whose traditional lines of business impede innovation. This a book for any leader who wants to get off the hamster wheel of solutions business models and move toward truly scalable and sustainable business outcomes.
March 12, 2022
Good, best for mid market to Enterprise
There's useful information here for businesses of all sizes. That said I think that this book is most useful for larger companies. There are still things that small or growing companies can glean from this that are interested in productizing their services or building outright products.
There's useful information here for businesses of all sizes. That said I think that this book is most useful for larger companies. There are still things that small or growing companies can glean from this that are interested in productizing their services or building outright products.
June 11, 2022
Read this for work, as my company is currently on a 'productization' journey. The author does a great job of outlining a framework for professional services firms to create and capture value via recurring revenue to successfully scale their businesses. It's a very niche topic, so would only really recommend to my SBI peers or others working at smaller consulting firms.
July 1, 2023
A great handbook to outline actionable information on product life-cycle management. Very helpful for any 0~1 product. However, what it supplies is only a clear framework, which absorbs a lot from other books. So it's very necessary for the readers to dive into a certain part of the framework which interests you.
January 2, 2024
Few business books fully deliver on their (often dry) title. Productize nails it. An excellent review of relevant considerations for professional service firms considering how and whether to build a product. It is very well-written, includes numerous engaging and relevant examples, and sets forth a clear and helpful analytical pathway. A great resource.
December 4, 2024
As someone who is working in an engineering service company, I am generally interested in how we can "productize" our offers since the service industry, by default, has lower margins.
This book offers a few interesting insights and suggestions, but overall, I found it a bit dull.
Solid 3/5 and moderate ROI since it's a quick read.
This book offers a few interesting insights and suggestions, but overall, I found it a bit dull.
Solid 3/5 and moderate ROI since it's a quick read.
July 30, 2025
Ця книга хороша відправна точка для тих, хто тільки починає думати про продуктовий підхід у сервісному бізнесі.
Хоча більше виглядає як зміксовані нотатки з різних тренінгів, що робить її зручною, але водночас і надто безпечною. Усі поради перевірені, стандартні, і майже не викликають сумніву чи запитань. Книга чудова для структурування того, що ви й так могли знати.
Хоча більше виглядає як зміксовані нотатки з різних тренінгів, що робить її зручною, але водночас і надто безпечною. Усі поради перевірені, стандартні, і майже не викликають сумніву чи запитань. Книга чудова для структурування того, що ви й так могли знати.
February 27, 2022
Actionable insight to productization
Looking for actionable information in your product evolution? Look no further! The book, clear guidance and steps, as well as a toolkit you can use to think outside the box and develop a productization strategy.
Looking for actionable information in your product evolution? Look no further! The book, clear guidance and steps, as well as a toolkit you can use to think outside the box and develop a productization strategy.
April 5, 2023
Good intro to product development with the angle of turning services into products. I was hoping for more guidance on how to identify the right opportunities for which services to productive though.
February 13, 2024
There is some good info in here bu it is obviously an ad book. Further, it doesn't talk about effective ways to productize services in your current portfolio.
February 3, 2025
If you are trying to productize a service this the only book you will ever need
March 23, 2025
Not a lot new here, but the middle chapter on company culture is especially valuable.
November 15, 2025
Informative
This was a good book, covering most if not all aspects of creating and managing a product, including actionable steps.
This was a good book, covering most if not all aspects of creating and managing a product, including actionable steps.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews