How to Sell Your Services on Online
Updated September2021
eCommerce doesn’t have to just be for physical products; if services are your business you should definitely think about how to make it easier for your clients to book with you or buy from you online. Luckily, Squarespace makes it easy with lots of built-in features that are made for way more than t-shirts and art prints. If you’ve been thinking about “productizing” your services it’s definitely time to actually jump on this idea because it’s for sure not just a trend.
The concept here is simple: take service-based work that’s difficult to conceptualize and convert it into a defined product with a price tag. There are a few great reasons to consider this approach:
It can help you define a niche. A lot of business owners are afraid of niching down their services. Maybe this is you. You’re afraid of saying no to work and the idea that you might not appeal to everyone is a little scary. I get it! I went through this phase as well and as it turns out, saying yes to anything and everything will do nothing but buy you a one-way ticket to burnout.
It allows you to create systems and processes that are repeatable and scalable. This allows you to work smarter, not harder. Never again feel like you’re reinventing the wheel with each new client you take on. The objection many service-based biz owners have to productization is that they feel that their offering is just “too custom” to define. If this is truly the case, you should probably be charging a lot more for your work! Productization doesn’t mean that your work isn’t personal to each of your clients, it just means that the process you take them through remains (generally) the same. You can document it, define it, rinse and repeat it.
It helps your clients or customers know exactly what they’re getting. People outside your industry or organization are not always in the best position to understand exactly what it is you do. What they know is that they have a problem and (hopefully) your services are the key to solving it. Defining your services as “packages” or products helps define the value that you offer in terms your target demographic can understand and buy into.
Productization in 3 Easy Steps
Define - The first step may require you to open up a Google sheet and making a master list of every.single.thing. you do as part of your core service(s). Account for every hour you put in, all the menial tasks that you do that you normally don’t really get paid for. Document everything.
Refine - Group like with like. Maybe your signature offering could really become two different products? Maybe you realize that what you were billing as three different services is actually one base product with some additional add-ons? Seeing the details of the work you do in this way will also help you discover your niche. Is there a way you could organize the work into a deliverable that your target demographic could identity with best? Again, think about the value you offer and the problem your service solves for your client.
Do the Math - The best part about productization is that you really only have to do the math once! There are a few pricing methodologies you could use but my favorite is tallying up the number of hours a typical project takes you, giving your calendar an honest look, and figuring just how many projects you could reasonably do in a month. I say this because you know what amount of money you need to bring home on the first of the month and you know how much time you want to work each week. The rest is just easy math. The bonus here is that this gives you a hard sales target to shoot for each month - just like tracking inventory!
Tools to Make It Happen
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Service Products
If You Sell…
Consultations
Signature Service Packages
Events
Workshops
Meetings
Group Classes
Service Subscriptions
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Squarespace Scheduling
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Squarespace Member Areas
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