Eisha Armstrong - Productize

Praise for Productize

Any leader of a professional services business will recognize the challenge of scaling their business beyond one-time services. Productize is a great blueprint for CEOs of BB professional services firms who are looking to get to the next level of growth by turning IP and services into products that can scale.

Christoffer Ellehuus, President, KF Digital at Korn Ferry

Launch BOLDLY! Eishas wisdom identifies 7 Deadly Productization Mistakes and masterfully offers leaders a simple (yet, not easy) vision & roadmap to sidestep these common mistakes. Eisha goes beyond the productization tools and zeros in on leaderships most challenging role of the Productize journey: stonewalling legacy team & an entrenched culture who are complacent with the current business model. Eisha inspires leaders to be bold and fearless.

-Ray Attiyah, Author of The Fearless Frontline

It is rare to find someone like Eisha who has such extensive experience productizing professional services and teaching other business leaders how to do it themselves. This is not your typical business book where you skim it and wonder why you bought it. Productize is a book you can use with your leadership team to study, discuss and use its tools to bring your growth ideas to life.

-Jeff Spanbauer, CEO of Relevate Health Group

Productize is a must-read for leaders of both product and services companies seeking to create scale and growth in their business. Its a great combination of frameworks and sound advice!

-Simon Frewer, CEO at Challenger

Productize is a must-read for any leader of a services business who wants to scale their organization. Its a powerful playbook for how to create and launch successful products alongside a services business, including relatable case studies and a library of tools for your team to use.

Jennifer McCollum, CEO at Linkage

Scaling any business is challenging, even more so for professional services businesses. Productize is a handbook for creating successful products that complement existing services, allowing your business to grow revenue without adding costs at the same rate and without putting your existing business at risk. As Eisha says, Thats the sweet spot.

-Christy Pretzinger, CEO at WriterGirl

For anyone leading a B2B product initiative whether building new software or productizing services this book is a blueprint that will save you time and resources by guiding you around the many pitfalls that you are likely to encounter.

-Dejan Deuzevik, Product Leader

Product development and roll-out will become the it capability in the coming decade as businesses both scale and compete for mind and wallet share from their customers, and as customers, in turn, look for ease of functionality. Armstrongs book is both practical and insightful and provides a clear roadmap for C-level executives.

- Sampriti Ganguli, CEO at Arabella Advisors

Productize: The Ultimate Guide to Turning Professional Services into Scalable Products

Copyright 2021 by Eisha Armstrong

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be used, reproduced or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the express permission of the publisher.

Published by Vecteris

www.vecteris.com

First Edition

Book Cover Design by ebooklaunch.com

ISBN 978-1-7369296-0-5 (ebook)

ISBN 978-1-7369296-1-2 (paperback)

Printed in the United States of America

THE DEDICATION

To Nicole, for encouraging me to be fearless

Acknowledgments

Thank You!

Eisha and the team at Vecteris want to thank the hundreds of CEOs, executives and Product professionals who have used our services, joined our peer groups or used our tools to support your innovation and growth journeys. Youve helped us live our mission to help organizations design and launch forward-thinking products to positively impact the world.

Business Leaders

Several of these leaders and companies are highlighted throughout the book. Thank you for openly sharing your stories and lessons learned so that we might all benefit, specifically: Ray Attiyah, Christopher Ellehuus, David Evans, Simon Frewer, Brian Joseph, Larry Kavanaugh, Christophe Martel, Jennifer McCollum, Anil Prahlad, Christy Pretzinger, Jim Price, Andrew Stockwell, Conrad Schmidt, and Jeff Spanbauer.

Two executives went way beyond the call of duty to review the galley copy and provide critical feedback, which influenced the key teaching points of the book: Dejan Duzevik, entrepreneur and product leader; and Russell Dumas, product leader and cheerleader. Thank you.

The Team

No book gets completed without a talented team of writers, editors, researchers, marketers and designers. Thank you to writing partner Michaela Rawsthorn, who helped extensively with this book and supports the content marketing efforts at Vecteris; Lauri Hershner who helped draw out the insights from the primary research, edited the downloadable tools and provided extensive editing for the book; Perin Goodman for also editing the downloadable tools and keeping us organized; Nicole Merrill for project management and moral support; Gabrielle Blocher and Jaime Drennan for providing support, encouragement and feedback; Matt Stevens and Jon Riley for being our marketing partners; and Olha Yankina for graphic design.

Family and Friends

Thank you to Nicole Ferry and to Sarah Brown for support, encouragement and accountability. And an incredibly large thank you to Eishas family for their support and patience through the writing of this book, especially during a global pandemic. Thank you to Charlie and Heather for encouraging Eisha to balance writing and play time out in Montana, to David and Calvin for bringing your mom joy and laughter; and to Tim for graciously picking up the slack and for your unwavering belief that Eisha can do anything she sets her mind to.

Introduction

The Productization Imperative

Investing in Exploration

In 2015, Jim Price set his sights on developing new sources of revenue. Jim is the CEO of Empower, a creative media agency with an annual revenue of around $250 million headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio. After attending an executive education program on innovation at Northwestern University, Jim decided to invest in innovation with the goal of creating new revenue streams. I learned, said Jim, that every business needs both fortifiers, who focus on growing the existing business, and explorers, who focus on creating new revenue streams. Jim created Empowers Explorer Program to encourage employees to search the peripheries of Empowers existing business model and identify potential areas of growth.

During the 5-year period, 2015 to 2020, the benefits of this strategy became clear. Jim hired the agencys first Chief Product Officer, and a suite of successful new products was developed that generated recurring revenue. Two of these products include ClearTrade, a programmatic media buying platform, and MediaAgent, a software as a service (SaaS) media planning tool for smaller companies. Empower also utilizes Brand Labs, an in-house think tank designed to leverage internal marketing capabilities to create Empowers own direct-to-consumer brands. Tanon, a leather goods manufacturer, is one such brand.

Under Jims leadership, Empower experienced record-breaking revenue growth in 2016, 2017, and 2018. The successful creation of new revenue streams earned prestigious industry titles, including MediaPost s Media Agency of the Year and most recently, Ad Age s Agency A-List Standout, making Empower the first Cincinnati-based agency to receive national recognition. Empowers evolution from a media buying agency to an organization with a portfolio of services and highly scalable products is inspiring; it is also emblematic of the key steps services organizations need to take in order to create scalable products.