The Handbook: The Operations Podcast

How to Scale Smarter: Productizing Value with Brian Kessman

• Harv Nagra • Season 1 • Episode 37

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When businesses talk about “productizing,” they often picture cookie-cutter scopes and rigid templates. But according to Brian Kessman, that’s missing the point.

Brian is the founder of Lodestar Consulting, and he’s spent 25 years helping agencies and consultancies scale without burning out teams or eroding margins. His approach isn’t about productizing services – it’s about productizing value.

In this episode of The Handbook: The Operations Podcast, Brian and Harv dig into what that really means, and how it can transform both your client relationships and your bottom line.

Here’s what we cover:

  • The difference between productizing services (deliverables) vs. productizing value (outcomes)
  • Why improving operations alone won’t fix a business model that’s not designed to scale
  • How to spot patterns in your expertise and codify them into structured solutions
  • Why productization doesn’t kill creativity – it actually creates more space for it
  • Smarter ways to think about pricing, from fixed fees to value-based models

Brian also shares case studies from consultancies and agencies that have reframed their offers around outcomes – unlocking higher margins, more predictable delivery, and stronger authority with clients.

If you’ve ever felt stuck between reinventing the wheel on every project or being forced into commoditized work, this episode is for you.


Additional Resources:

 👉🏽 Follow Brian Kessman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/briankessman/ 

💡 Check out Lodestar Agency Consulting: https://www.lodestaragencyconsulting.com/ 

👨🏽 Follow Harv on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harvnagra/ 

📈 Measure your business maturity and find out how to get to the next level: https://www.scoro.com/business-maturity-quiz/ 

📬 Stay up to date with regular ops insights. Subscribe to The Handbook: The Operations Newsletter: https://www.scoro.com/podcast/#handbook 

➡️ This podcast is brought to you by Scoro, where you can manage your projects, resources and finances in a single system. Sign up for a free trial or a demo at https://scoro.com/demo – and for the VIP treatment, tell them Harv sent you. 

Brian Kessman:

What's the difference between productizing services and productizing value? Productizing services, think of it as packaging the activities and deliverables again, that you already

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Brian Kessman:

That makes you much easier to compare to other firms, to your competitive set, and it leads to pricing pressure in that way. When you productize value, it's really structuring your thinking, your ip, your frameworks into these repeatable solutions that lead to outcomes.

Harv Nagra:

This podcast is brought to you by Scoro. There's dozens of project management systems out there, but not all of them are built for the same thing. Here's how I see it. Level one tools like Asana, Trello, and Basecamp. Great for task management and collaboration. Easy to use, but they stop at project delivery. Level two, think clickup, teamwork and monday.com. These are more like toolkits. You can mix and match modules to replace a few third party tools, but they're not built for full automation, especially when it comes to financial workflows and reporting. Level three, professional services, automation platforms like Scoro. This is like an operating system for your business. A single platform that connects budgets, timelines, resource plans, delivery, billing, and reporting all in one place with automation baked in from the start. When you're maturing as a business, it's not about adding more and more tools or trying painfully to get them to talk to one another. It's about streamlining your business with a system designed for scaling. That's why I brought in Scoro at my last workplace. Go to Scoro.com/demo to book a call and find out how Scoro can help fuel your next chapter. And for the VIP treatment, tell them Harv sent you. Now let's get to the podcast. Hi all. Welcome back to the Handbook the Operations Podcast. I'm Harv Nagra. we've all heard the advice that you should productize your services and yes, it makes sense. You build something repeatable that gets executed like clockwork and you increase your profit margins. But I'm gonna be honest, I've always struggled with how you actually do this. At my past workplace, we explored the idea more than once, but we always hit the same wall. Clients were used to bespoke everything. That's what they expected when they came to us. Our team always felt like tailor made solutions were required. And it felt like there were scope changes with every email. the big questions were always, how do you actually design something that gets standardized? How do you get your clients to buy into it? And that's exactly what we're gonna dig into today. Our guest today is Brian Kessman. He's the founder and principal consultant of Lodestar Consulting. Brian works with agencies and consultancies from mid-size independents to multinational networks to help them attract the right clients, grow high margin revenue, and multiply value without adding headcount. Brian doesn't just help service businesses productize their services. He helps them productize their value, clarifying what they do best, who they do it for, and how to deliver it in a way that's scalable, profitable, and strategic. Spoiler. The conversation today isn't gonna be about building rigid templates or predefined scopes. It's gonna be about building a value model that makes your expertise scalable, so you're not constantly reinventing the wheel, burning out your team, or leaving margin on the table. So if you've ever felt caught between custom chaos and commoditized work, this one's gonna be for you. Let's get into it. Brian, welcome to the podcast. We have so much to cover today. I, I feel like I've written 99 questions, so I'm gonna dive straight in. when most people, myself included, think about productization, we picture packaging up services and deliverables, right? but you talk about productizing value. can you talk us through where that perspective came from and what led you to approaching it that way?

Brian Kessman:

Yeah, sure. Happy to. So, uh, let me start with some background. My first agency job was back in 1999 and I spent the better part of the last 25 years, either inside or advising creative and strategic agencies, everything from full service firms, digital brand, innovation consultancies, and what I kept seeing over. And over, even in the most talented shops, was the same bottleneck. That even though they had strong client relationships, smart people, great creative, the business model just didn't scale. And so agencies were reinventing the wheel for every engagement, and as a result, burning out teams and also leaving a lot of value on the table. And so often, despite all of that expertise that they had within their walls, they were still getting pressured on price and especially more so now, which I know we're gonna, we're gonna talk about. but that's why, I started to help firms productize their value. And quickly, what I mean about that is. It's not turning creativity into a template or becoming a software company in that way, it's helping agencies reimagine how they deliver their expertise to structure it in ways that are focused, scalable, defensible and aligned with the outcomes that clients care about most because it's not about putting a firm's existing services into a box or a bundle or selling it as a package. It's about redesigning the agency value model, how they create and capture value. And the same applies for professional services and consulting firms.

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Brian Kessman:

what we want to do is package or create and capture value in a way that makes your best thinking repeatable.

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Brian Kessman:

and easier to buy without diluting. What actually makes you great. And, and we'll unpack, what makes, productizing value versus services later. So I won't, I won't continue to go on.

Harv Nagra:

Absolutely. we'll get into that in a few moments, but before we dive in, I, I wanted to ask, when an agency or consultancy wants to scale, I mean, I can imagine this from my own experience, but what starts to break in how they deliver client work? And why do you think improving operations alone isn't enough to fix this problem?

Brian Kessman:

Well, when an agency starts to grow, we usually see the first cracks, in delivery on the delivery side of the house. And things start to slow down. margins start to thin out, and we see a lot of senior leaders getting pulled into the fray, into the weeds. And so from the outside, it looks like it's really a process or operations issue,

Harv Nagra:

Yep.

Brian Kessman:

of the time the root cause is actually deeper than that. And, and it goes back to the business model. It just wasn't designed to scale. And so fixing operations alone. Is a bit like if you think of reorganizing your kitchen when the real issue that you're experiencing is that you're cooking a different meal from scratch every single night, right? And

Harv Nagra:

Hmm.

Brian Kessman:

productization changes that menu and it gives you a way to standardize about 80% that doesn't need to be constantly reinvented. And so what that does in the business is it creates the space for the team to do the work in the best way possible. It gives the structure and the clarity needed to really focus that 20% on actually requires creative thinking and problem solving. And so in today's environment, when you think about AI and automation accelerating everything,

Harv Nagra:

Yeah.

Brian Kessman:

the shift isn't just possible, right? It's really essential. And so it's the strategic value, the human judgment shaped by experience. The ability to navigate client nuance and make sense of complex challenges. That's what AI can't replace. And so that's where your people really need to be spending more time and productization is what helps make that possible.

Harv Nagra:

I love that. we're gonna get to that question about the nuance between productizing value versus services, but my question at the moment is, do you think there's, a right service line for an a, uh agency or consultancy to look at productization? what are your thoughts on that?

Brian Kessman:

It's a really great question. I'm glad you bring it up. I've done this work with a wide range of firms, pr, brand, media, creative and more. And, and it's really about the principles of productization'cause they hold up across the board. it's because what we're doing when we say productizing value, it's not tied to a specific service or discipline.

Harv Nagra:

Yeah.

Brian Kessman:

turning your intellectual capital. Your ability to solve real world problems, your unique ways of working and your market knowledge into structured solutions that clients can easily understand and buy because they're very client-centric. They're described and and built around your client's terms, and it's really a strategy decision because it forces such clarity about what you do best and who you do it for, and how you create those outcomes. And so it aligns your positioning and your pricing and your delivery. That's what makes it so powerful, not

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Brian Kessman:

operations or specific type of service, but for strengthening the entire business model and for professional service firms as a whole. it's a really critical shift.

Harv Nagra:

So Brian, a lot of businesses listening to this, might feel that their strength is being custom, and I was stuck in that kind of mindset myself, but are there any risks to that that they might not be seeing if they don't evolve beyond that custom work?

Brian Kessman:

Well, yeah, absolutely. Because when most of your work is custom, very few things are scalable.

Harv Nagra:

Yep.

Brian Kessman:

but let me address that, that view, that custom work is so important because I do hear a lot of agencies say. Every client is different. So every scope needs to be custom. There's no other way around it.

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Brian Kessman:

And that thinking sounds very client-centric, but in reality, the mindset often comes from a lack of focus, not client diversity. And so let me unpack that a little bit. What we consistently find is that most agencies are far more specialized than they actually realize. They just haven't taken the time or they're too close to it, to see the patterns in how they deliver value. The same types of problems, the same strategic frameworks, the same outcomes over and over. They're doing it, but it feels like everything is custom, because it's buried in service-based thinking rather than expert based thinking. And they don't see the repeatability through that

Harv Nagra:

Hmm.

Brian Kessman:

And so that means they also haven't had the chance to then codify or monetize, what their value or what their expertise is truly worth. And so when the positioning,'cause that's what we're talking about, when the positioning is vague, clients then come to the firm and they'll dictate the work,

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Brian Kessman:

up reacting to requests instead of actually leading and you try to lead, but clients still view you as a service provider instead of the expert. And

Harv Nagra:

Right.

Brian Kessman:

be incredibly strategic, right? But without structured solutions or a clear point of view, you become the one that's taking orders and then that starts to erode your authority and your pricing power, differentiation, scalability. So it is a a really big challenge. And so when we move to productizing value. It shifts the dynamic completely because it's not about making every client fit the same mold as some might think. It's actually about clearly defining your way of solving high value problems, which can take shape in your intellectual property, your thinking, your process. And so now you can guide that relationship with confidence. And so yes, it is a mindset shift that requires breaking old habits, and that's the hardest thing for most firms to do. Is to see the business differently and to break their old ways of doing things. But it's a very practical one to make for the business and the way that we do it in our work with clients, we still balance flexibility for clients with repeatability for the agency because we still need to do that.

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Brian Kessman:

you're still tailoring for the client's unique context, but now you're doing it from a structured foundation, right? One that shows clients, you've done this before.

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Brian Kessman:

That you have a proven path to the outcomes that they care about, and what they're doing is they're paying you for your expertise rather than order taking or services or capabilities. Right?

Harv Nagra:

Right.

Brian Kessman:

for any experimentation or invention that we see a lot when work is custom.

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Brian Kessman:

that's really when everything starts to change, right? Your pricing, the margins, your role in the room with your clients, because you're not being hired for timer effort. It's for the value that only your firm can create.

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm. We're gonna get into some interesting case studies shortly as well, but let's, talk about what this means, what productization really means. what comes to mind? going back to my own. Preconceived notions is templates really rigid scopes, cookie cutter delivery. That's what I think about. So what am I getting wrong? And going back to that first question, where we started this, chat today, is that distinction between productizing services and productizing value and what the difference is. can you talk to us about that?

Brian Kessman:

Yeah, so there's usually a really big misconception that productization is about those templates and rigid scopes, cookie cutter offerings, all of that, But when people hear, what it's really about, at least our approach, it's very different. And so, the initial reaction is that, we didn't design a creative agency for that cookie cutter delivery. It's the exact opposite, right? But, when we do productize value, what we're doing is we're building structured, outcome focused ideal solutions that solve a clearly defined business problem. Just to clarify, we start by. Defining that business, that high value business problem that our clients need us to solve, that we have unique experience to actually do that. then we don't deliver the same services we always have. We rethink the ideal solution to that, then, then we can design our, solution that captures that value. So really, you're not limiting creativity. What we're doing is we're focusing it. And so the structure gives your team that space to go deeper where it really matters. Because we build in the necessary time for strategic thinking and concepting into the solution. And those are two places that are usually taxed heavily when there's limited budget or limited hours, right?

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Brian Kessman:

so since the client actually bought the solution, not hours, and we built in that time to the solution, well then it's protected. Nobody's, the client doesn't care about the time. They care about the outcome. They care about the value. And so finally, firms can work in the way that they need to. there, there's a really great example I think would be helpful here. this, my colleague Tim Williams also often shares this. He brings up, Frank Ghery, the architect behind some of the most, imaginative buildings in the world. If you think,

Harv Nagra:

Hmm.

Brian Kessman:

Googleheim, Bilbo, in Spain and then Walt Disney Concert Hall in la, you'd think he's probably the last person to use a repeatable process that it's gonna restrict his creativity. He's actually really well known for having a very rigorous, well-defined process, and that's actually what allows him to do truly original work. It's the structure that actually frees the imagination in his case. It's not the other way

Harv Nagra:

Mm.

Brian Kessman:

but let me get to the actual question. What's the difference between productizing services and productizing value?

Harv Nagra:

Yep.

Brian Kessman:

so productizing services, think of it as packaging the activities and deliverables again, that you already

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Brian Kessman:

That makes you much easier to compare to other firms, to your competitive set, and it leads to pricing pressure in that way. When you productize value, as I said before, it's really structuring your thinking, your ip, your frameworks into these repeatable solutions that lead to outcomes. And so we push firms to think beyond those existing services, to innovate in the ways that clients actually need and where the firm is completely capable of doing that work, but they just haven't looked at the scenario and the way that we teach from the point of a problem or an outcome. And that's when you can start leading with your unique solutions and the impact you deliver, not tasks.

Harv Nagra:

Mm

Brian Kessman:

the result is your experience or your expertise is much more visible to your clients in that way. And the client has a lot of clarity around what they're actually buying. It's easier to buy, certainly easier to price based on value and harder to commoditize.

Harv Nagra:

mm.

Brian Kessman:

we talked about the benefit of creating the space for strategy and creativity, all of that. There's just a long list of benefits that go along with this. So it's, it's not at all about reducing creativity. In fact, the entire model is all about creativity, right?

Harv Nagra:

Mm.

Brian Kessman:

innovatively about how you solve these problems, really anchoring it in something that's much more powerful, which is the value again, that only your firm can create.

Harv Nagra:

So Brian, let's say you're an ops leader or a COO listening to this and you've been tasked or asked to make the business more productized. where do you start thinking about value and not just deliverables and get this process off the ground?

Brian Kessman:

Yeah, great question. Well, let me, let me start by saying where the biggest trap is that most do start and

Harv Nagra:

Okay.

Brian Kessman:

avoid. I think the biggest trap that I see is when we start with deliverables or services in mind.

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Brian Kessman:

really where the real leverage is. It's the same thing you've always done, right? More of the same. So instead, what we want to do is start with the outcomes your clients care about most. I refer to these as, the high value outcomes or the high value problems they need to be solved. And then

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Brian Kessman:

what do we do better than anyone else to consistently help them get there?'cause that's your value. And. That's what you wanna start to structure as your solutions.

Harv Nagra:

Mm

Brian Kessman:

so we're not systematizing deliverables. You're codifying and scaling your expertise, your ways of

Harv Nagra:

mm.

Brian Kessman:

The strategic edge that, you have in the space. We're just owning that and really building solutions around that.

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Brian Kessman:

then everything starts to change. It really impacts how you scope, how you sell, how you price, how you deliver. If you really push the rest of the change throughout the organization, then it really transforms the operating model, the business model, the revenue model. So it puts firms in a, in a, in a great place.

Harv Nagra:

You know what, just so I can visualize this a little bit more, I'm gonna ask you about, a really great story you posted on LinkedIn recently about a large consultancy. So I'm gonna just talk us through that a little bit. You were saying that this business was over a thousand people,$150 million in annual revenue. That completely, completely changed how they packaged and priced their services. you'd written that before the shift they were presenting fixed fees, but still building budgets around time. And even though they were were scoping familiar work. It was taking them over a week to get these kind of budgets together. And like a lot of businesses listening to this podcast, they were probably giving away their strategic thinking for free, or at best pricing it as effort. So can you walk us through what they changed and what the impact was?

Brian Kessman:

Yeah, absolutely. So it's, it's, it's everything we've been talking about and it's, it's really rethinking their value model,

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Brian Kessman:

the first thing we had to do was sharpen their positioning strategy, their business strategy so that we can shift from selling hours to selling outcomes. In other words, we had to define who is truly their best client. what are the problems they're uniquely qualified to solve? What's unique about how they do that work? if we're gonna sell outcomes, we have to then move into the next stage, which is designing the solutions that produce those outcomes. But it has to be based on, again, the right fit client, what's unique about the problems you solve? We need to identify those problems. And then how do they do it? so then we moved into designing the actual solution set for this firm. And it wasn't just about looking at their strategy or their advisory services, which as you said, they were giving away, or pricing in the same way as, delivery work.

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Brian Kessman:

it wasn't also focusing on just the design services, which was most at risk of commoditization and from AI and in-house teams. Instead, it was solving a problem that combined the two types of services together, and we designed that solution. And then once we had that solution framed around the value that we know is most important to these best fit clients.

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Brian Kessman:

then we were able to teach their teams internally how to speak to that value because it is a different way of thinking and speaking and responding to common questions that are usually gonna be around hours. so we need to teach staff also how to reroute those questions about traditional time-based billing to value.

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Brian Kessman:

we did that, we rolled it out and, the firm was concerned How are we gonna sell this to the same clients we've been selling, these offerings to for years. But what had actually happened is that they sold it back at a 66% higher price point

Harv Nagra:

Wow.

Brian Kessman:

modeled differently. It was framed differently. and there was no pushback from the clients at all.

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Brian Kessman:

as a result, they started to, they were forecasting last time we spoke, they were forecasting about 600,000 to 1.5 million in new income just from this one shift,

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Brian Kessman:

No new team members, no new services, just what they've already done framed differently for their client's, highest value interests. That was just a pilot. So they're just getting started across their

Harv Nagra:

Hmm.

Brian Kessman:

different business units. And so you can imagine the impact this will have on that organization.

Harv Nagra:

let's say. clients are always interested in selling something, and that's what they want to do, right? Ultimately, they wanna make money for selling a product or service of their own. So when they come to a creative agency, instead of saying, we're gonna give you this strategy, this website, and this campaign, can you help me understand what that offer would then look like?

Brian Kessman:

So I think this relates to what I was saying just before, where it's not really about a specific service line, right? It's more about unifying the organization, right?

Harv Nagra:

Mm.

Brian Kessman:

but it's common for firms to, to think this way, that, well, what can we productize from strategy or from creative? because the org is typically structured around functional departments.

Harv Nagra:

Yeah.

Brian Kessman:

but you're missing a bigger opportunity if you think that way, because productizing value, again, it doesn't start with the service, it starts with your expertise. And real expertise doesn't live in just one silo. And so what we see over and over is most valuable solutions. The ones clients will pay a premium for cut across strategy and design advisory and more. But those capabilities really get trapped in the separate departments. And so that's the old way of working. So productizing value, we can break down those walls and design more integrated outcome focused solutions to reflect how your firm actually delivers impact. to

Harv Nagra:

Mm.

Brian Kessman:

a clear example of that.

Harv Nagra:

Yeah.

Brian Kessman:

you help a client reposition their brand to a new target market. That would

Harv Nagra:

Yep.

Brian Kessman:

solution that you might offer.

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Brian Kessman:

but through that work, you might also uncover gaps in their go-to-market

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Brian Kessman:

So that leads to another solution you can offer, which is developing a new category, narrative or offering structure for them. That then leads to new internal training needs or shifts in their sales enablement process, any of those things. So

Harv Nagra:

Hmm.

Brian Kessman:

you're not just doing any sort of comms, you're actually shaping business transformation. And so I give you this example because in, in for, for what I'm describing here, this particular situation. The firm would've decided to focus in this area. And so they

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Brian Kessman:

created repeatable solutions to each of the problems that I mentioned. They're not waiting for the next one to say, how do we design this custom scope?

Harv Nagra:

Yeah.

Brian Kessman:

experts in this space. They already have those solutions waiting and, and as you do that, you have this ecosystem of offerings and each solution starts to build more trust and creates new momentum for your clients. And

Harv Nagra:

Hmm.

Brian Kessman:

always wanna move forward with you. We're not, it's not a retainer, but it is revenue continuity in a project based model, without having to look for any sort of retainer or a OR relationship.

Harv Nagra:

Hmm.

Brian Kessman:

just one example of some things that we have productized for firms in the past. It's usually more at the strategic level, and if there is execution work, it's baked into to the delivery of that overall solution.

Harv Nagra:

Hey all, just taking a quick break to ask whether you've heard of Operations Nation. It's the global community for ops leaders of all stripes, they've got a buzzing slack space. I know that because I'm a member myself, A COO course and an annual conference that's coming up on the 20th and 21st of October in London. Go to operations nation.com to learn more and use code. SCORO for£30 pounds off conference tickets. Now, back to the episode. So Brian, with the agencies and consultancies that you work with, does productization then sit alongside bespoke work, or does it replace that completely?

Brian Kessman:

No, it can absolutely coexist. it's not about moving from one extreme to the next. Some agencies that I work with do start with a hybrid model, and it's a good way for some agencies to start. Others do go all in though. but if you do start with more of a hybrid model, it does allow you to still keep that space for that custom work. but if you're doing that, then you should at least be charging a premium for that custom work. It shouldn't be the default. But, but once agencies do see the early results, they do start to shift the rest of, of their model in, into, into the productized offerings.

Harv Nagra:

Excellent. Okay. And, what about pricing and how does that work? Like if you're building this more structured, work, what changes in how you price things? you gave the example of what, how bespoke work can be charged more for, but what about when we think about that productized work?

Brian Kessman:

So it's a great question and a really important one I think. Uh, yes, pricing absolutely needs to evolve. A size productization. We don't

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Brian Kessman:

do one without the other. Um, because once you've built more structured outcome driven solutions, you're not selling time or tasks, you're selling the results. And so absolutely pricing has to change. and it does give you the opportunity to look at many different types of pricing strategies and tiered models, value-based pricing. Licensing of your ip, performance-based pricing. So all of those models open up to you. And it could even just be fixed fee and that's fine too. But you're pricing the effectiveness, okay? But as a delivery does get more repeatable and you can start to deliver faster, what I've seen are some agencies make the mistake of saying, well, if we can deliver faster, do we need to charge less?

Harv Nagra:

Yep.

Brian Kessman:

Uh, but in truth, no. I mean, that's more valuable, right? That's, that's part of what you're building is faster time to market

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Brian Kessman:

the solutions that you've now structured gives you the ability to deliver faster. That's a competitive edge, and it's something you should charge more for, not less.

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm. so. thinking about my own team in the past, we had a set of services and deliverables we sold to our clients, but the way we visualize that work was always like, oh, this is unique. the client expects a bespoke version of that thing. so the pricing was gonna have to be very, very granular, granularly adjusted. so how do internal teams respond when you try to introduce this, repeatable approach? do you see resistance? Is there any training required? What's your advice for people wanting to roll this out to get their teams in the right frame of mind?

Brian Kessman:

Another great question. I I, we don't see a lot of resistance, but there's a reason for that. We're working with CEOs and leadership teams primarily who are already seeing the writing on the wall, right? They know that they need to evolve in order to protect their business, but also their people. And certainly if they're going to take advantage of ai, they need this model in place to do that. And once though, the broader team starts to really understand why we're doing this, and we show how it directly addresses many of the largest and most common problems that agencies have struggled with for so long, that that leads to chaos, that leads to burnout. That doesn't leave time for their best thinking. Then they become pretty strong advocates almost right away. And it's usually through the course of we provide a briefing session to illustrate the value and why the market really needs this shift to happen. Many agencies, agency examples, all of that to help them see the value. And, and it just, the feedback we hear is that exciting because of how freeing, it seems like it's gonna be not confining at all. And,

Harv Nagra:

Hmm.

Brian Kessman:

It also, it is just, the response is, it's just so logical. It just makes a lot of sense. I don't know why more firms aren't doing this.

Harv Nagra:

Right.

Brian Kessman:

they dive in and when they actually then start to experience it creates more space for their creativity and for autonomy, that's the shift really starts to take hold pretty

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Brian Kessman:

And, and we love it'cause we start to see them fully own this model and, and, and it just starts to accelerate from there. on the account management side, we do provide tools for that, a conversation guide, an FAQ guide that you can expect to hear from, questions you can expect to hear from procurement. So even

Harv Nagra:

Yeah.

Brian Kessman:

side.

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Brian Kessman:

the creative team side, they start to be able to leverage all of the pattern recognition that they have from all of the past work and from now focusing on a, a defined set of problems that they're gonna solve. and they start to become, they can really hone and scale their expertise in this way.

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Brian Kessman:

so it's for them though, it's not so much training on how to do this, it's just allowing them to do what they do best, just in a better way.

Harv Nagra:

Mm. that Leads me to this next question. You know, ops people were obsessed with tracking time sheets. I'm sure somebody will be wondering, is that still necessary when you have a productized model?

Brian Kessman:

Yeah, well, it's, it's no longer the unit of value anymore in this model. you

Harv Nagra:

Mm.

Brian Kessman:

sheets for pricing, because as we've said, you're not selling effort, you're selling outcomes, and that's the biggest shift. so some tracking can still be helpful, especially early on when we first developed their solutions. So we advise using it to establish their initial baseline delivery costs.

Harv Nagra:

Okay.

Brian Kessman:

use it for internal capacity planning. How many products can they deliver in a, in a given timeframe or solutions, right? Because these are repeatable offerings. And, and for forecasting too. But, But it's not really the backbone of the business model anymore. So there, there's an interesting thing though that we see, which is when the firm says, okay, we have our baseline, estimates of costs to deliver this. We've used time sheets, we know

Harv Nagra:

Cool. Yeah.

Brian Kessman:

when you then invite teams to continue using time sheets voluntarily.

Harv Nagra:

Yeah.

Brian Kessman:

not to monitor, right? Not to measure their productivity.'cause productivity is now measured in the amount of completed solutions or if things are on time or meeting milestones. but we invite them to still use that so that they can understand where their time's actually going

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Brian Kessman:

their bottlenecks are as a team, not as an

Harv Nagra:

Yeah.

Brian Kessman:

and they take ownership of that and the team rallies around it and they fold it into their. of working their regular retrospective reviews or their sprint planning, like all of that, and so that when they own the choice, it's, it's very different.

Harv Nagra:

Brian, when it comes to something that's, productized, going back to that question about client expectations, right? they are suddenly getting used to perhaps your new approach and clients, classic, you know, you see version 48 of a file and like constant changes. How, if you're not tracking time how, how does that stop in this kind of model and how do you manage that? what's different?

Brian Kessman:

First, lemme start by saying it. It's a very common concern, from agencies going through this process.

Harv Nagra:

Yeah.

Brian Kessman:

It also doesn't stop them from doing it because they know there's, there's a way forward. They know other, other agencies are having a lot of success, and so we share the same thing with them, that I'll share with you, which is that our clients find, it's, it's not really as hard as they think.

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Brian Kessman:

was going to be clients truly, they don't care if it's productized. They don't care if it's custom. They don't care if there are time sheets behind it. Because what they care about is, is it gonna solve their problem? Is it

Harv Nagra:

Yeah.

Brian Kessman:

the type of value or the outcome? And that's what they're looking for. And so you show them that focused, proven path to those results and that creates confidence.

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Brian Kessman:

When you start your conversations with clients about outcomes instead of how many hours for strategy or for design, it's a very different type of conversation. So that really sets the stage, for, for framing your value all along, all of your touchpoints with your clients.

Harv Nagra:

Hmm.

Brian Kessman:

really important piece because you can't just change the offering. You have to change how you talk about value throughout all of your different practice areas within the firm.

Harv Nagra:

Right?

Brian Kessman:

of your different, all of the different staff do need to be aware about that, how to do that when they're speaking with clients.

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm. And so what's your advice on controlling the back and forth then in terms of handling client requests, do you have to put your foot down more, or how does that work?

Brian Kessman:

Well, so the in, in how we help agencies put their value forward in, in a

Harv Nagra:

Yeah.

Brian Kessman:

you will be framing everything in that proposal around the problems that it's meant to

Harv Nagra:

Hmm.

Brian Kessman:

and then the outcomes. And in the actual pricing. on the pricing page, we

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Brian Kessman:

three options for clients to choose from. And so I'll give you an example of one of the situations that I think you're describing. If a client says, well, none of these fit or, or I won't choose this option's not for me. I really want this other work, well, they can graduate themselves to that next higher option. Or if the budget's too high, they can go to the lower option. And

Harv Nagra:

Mm.

Brian Kessman:

it goes from a yes no type of situation to which one. and so it helps you can navigate those. you create a lot of different levers for negotiation in that situation.

Harv Nagra:

Right,

Brian Kessman:

you're still providing a way forward. If the client's unhappy with a particular scope option, you can move them to one of the others. What we do find though, let's say mid-project, there's a scope change. typically what we find is this is again, going back to old habits. They'll think in terms of hours and, and billable hours. And so they'll say, for this scope change, we're gonna calculate how many hours it'll take and at what rate, but we need to move away from that. And we need to sell just a, a, either graduate them to the next higher offering if it's so, so far in that direction. Or we can design again, another flat, or fixed fee type of add-on for that type

Harv Nagra:

Yeah.

Brian Kessman:

And the

Harv Nagra:

Hmm.

Brian Kessman:

doing this enough, right, if we, if we've created the solutions to be. Really honed in on your most common and best fit client's problems. And you probably already have this type of add-on waiting. It's in the ecosystem of solutions you've already developed.

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Brian Kessman:

so, so that's how those conversations go. Clients are usually very clear on what they're getting and not getting at the

Harv Nagra:

Yeah.

Brian Kessman:

And so it, it mitigates those discussions.

Harv Nagra:

That really helps me understand how to manage that. And I can see if you're kind of starting to nudge them towards an add-on for whatever that scope change is or the, the number of revisions they expect and stuff like that, that would get them back in line, so to speak fairly quickly, wouldn't it? So they can make the decision,

Brian Kessman:

It's also about, uh, you're not charging for hours. So if it's another

Harv Nagra:

Yeah.

Brian Kessman:

two other revisions,

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Brian Kessman:

that without a scope change.'cause, you look, you're charging for outcomes and chances are it's, it should be at a premium price.

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Brian Kessman:

and so because it's not about commoditized hours, if you want to make that business decision to give them that extra review, that's fine.

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Brian Kessman:

you're still gonna be well within your, your margins in that case, and it creates a better partnership with your clients.'cause you're not haggling over the hours or the amount of reviews, it's just all leading to the outcome. Again, that's what we're getting towards. So if the reviews will help you produce a better outcome, it's probably in your best interest to actually do the extra review.

Harv Nagra:

Brian, I wonder if you can unpack that a little bit further for me. I am thinking about my own past workplace where we had dozens of products and services that we would mix and match based on the client's requirements, I'm just wondering in this case. is there a consolidated offer, packages and, and stuff like that. So, if you could explain that a little bit more. I think it would really help me and perhaps some of the listeners, visualize what's gonna change in terms of their set of products and services.

Brian Kessman:

I think in most cases we would say you want to really understand the level of outcomes that you're gonna provide, the impact it will have for a business, and it's gonna be different for every business,

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Brian Kessman:

able to price that appropriately. now what you put on your website, you can put the types of problems that you solve. You can put the types of outcomes that you produce, and frankly, this should be folded into your positioning anyway, so that language should already be present. but in terms of the ways to work with you, you might want to put the different types of engagement models.

Harv Nagra:

Hmm.

Brian Kessman:

consulting programs, some other type of a training program, or maybe you even have IP that you can license. I think that makes a lot of sense. But what you want to do is get them to give you a call so that you can have a conversation to really unpack which problem are they having. They may not know how to articulate that, but that's where your job as the expert comes in to map their problems to your pre-configured or structured solutions. And then present back those solutions to their problem on the next call that you build and price based on their specific situation.

Harv Nagra:

on the backend, in, in-house, do you visualize stuff in terms of like gold, silver, bronze, something like that? Can, can you talk about that?

Brian Kessman:

Yeah, so I, I touched on it a little earlier and it is an important piece. Every proposal you put forward, every solution, or if you have programs or products, however you think about it, they should all have somewhere between three, no more than four options. There's some. Pricing tactics behind that. the reason why we do that, but also you want to turn that conversation from a yes no, from one offer

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Brian Kessman:

which one by offering different options and each option you mentioned, gold, silver, bronze, or

Harv Nagra:

Bronze. Yeah.

Brian Kessman:

Yep.

Harv Nagra:

Yeah.

Brian Kessman:

I know that was just an example, but what we say is there should be an overarching value proposition that covers all three of those options based on what your discovery conversation led you to realize, so that that value proposition is for all three of those options. Then each option itself has its own level of value. And so your names should reflect that. So, you could have something like a, a pilot on the lowest end, right? It's just a small pilot project. the middle could be something that's, you can call it the comprehensive package, and then the higher option could be

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Brian Kessman:

But these are communicating the, the level of value or impact that you might get. And there's a number of ways to, to name different tiers. But yes, absolutely you do need to go forward with that for the maximum impact from this model.

Harv Nagra:

Hmm. Okay. my question is around methodologies, on execution, is that gonna change as well? So if you produce a website, you know. Is the way you produce that website gonna change. Can you tell us about that? So really down to the execution level, does your approach change?

Brian Kessman:

so I would say in, in most cases, no. because what we're doing is we're just surfacing what you've already done, just the best ways that you've done it, because it's the most effective ways. As we look at who your best fit clients are, who have been most successful in working with you, why that has been, what are the common patterns across those types of engagements, what can we learn from that and then build the most ideal solution to the defined problem we're solving.

Harv Nagra:

Hmm.

Brian Kessman:

in that way we choose from the way we've executed most successfully in the past. And that

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Brian Kessman:

our, our, our offering. Right?

Harv Nagra:

Mm.

Brian Kessman:

the only thing that might be different, there's two avenues here. One is it might be different because we've perhaps in the past thought of it more in a functional silo. This is the design piece, but rather this is part of a larger solution. so there's other pieces that tie into that. So we might think a little differently about how we might approach design now that we are more tightly integrated into solving this one challenge for our client. The other way it might be different is that it's my job to make sure I'm pushing firms to think out of the box, to think more innovatively about. What they can do differently given the technology that's available to them today. how they talk about value, and this is actually maybe one of the more important parts, is while it may be the same work,

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Brian Kessman:

it is gonna be different. Instead of a kickoff meeting,

Harv Nagra:

Yeah.

Brian Kessman:

in a kickoff meeting, but if you call it a kickoff meeting, it's really inward focused. It's for us to kick off the work with you so that we can get, so it's actually a success workshop, something where you can define what success looks like with your client. Or define what we teach is to define scopes of value rather than scopes of work,

Harv Nagra:

Right.

Brian Kessman:

rather than a presentation to share the review of our research findings. It's an alignment session because now you're capturing the value in the name and it changes the way that firms think about how they execute that sure presentation. No, it's actually alignment. Maybe there's other things that we need to do to strengthen the goal of alignment in that meeting,

Harv Nagra:

Right.

Brian Kessman:

we can start being more creative.

Harv Nagra:

Something that's surprising me a bit, Brian, based on what you're saying, is that your approach doesn't necessarily need to change on the execution. You know, we, we mentioned the word templates above, And again, that is something I think people would think about when having a conversation about productization, but that's not really what you're implying here. So I'm still having this surprise really.

Brian Kessman:

Yeah. So think of it as repeatable frameworks, the way in which you deliver the work, but not the thinking. it all comes down to, and this is one of the hardest parts, if you

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Brian Kessman:

Precisely define a specific problem that you're going to, aim to solve. You

Harv Nagra:

Mm-hmm.

Brian Kessman:

provide the, the ideal solution in that way, and that solution is your framework that you just repeat to do that. But if you're going to provide five website pages, 10 website pages, you might have that carved out in certain tiers, pricing tiers or scope tiers, you might not. Again, there's not a one right way to do this. What we're selling is the outcome.

Harv Nagra:

Mm.

Brian Kessman:

so then it's on the agency to figure out, well, how do we create five versus 10 web pages quicker and better at the same time, so that it really doesn't matter because. What we don't wanna list in our, in our scopes as much as we have in the past, are the activities or the

Harv Nagra:

Hmm.

Brian Kessman:

What we wanna list are the, are, are the, the outcomes, the types of value. so again, right? A, a presentation is more of we're gonna align your executive team, and give them the confidence that they can go forward and enter into a new market opposed to, here's our strategy report.

Harv Nagra:

Okay. Okay.

Brian Kessman:

And that's different. It's facilitation. It's still a strategy report, but now it's facilitation. It might be other exercises, it might be a workshop or a discussion or a retreat. but now that's your standard framework going forward.

Harv Nagra:

Excellent. Really appreciate that clarification, Brian. if people wanna learn more about you, where can they go?

Brian Kessman:

Well, sure. My website's lodestaragencyconsulting.com. L-O-D-E-S-T-A-R, agency Consulting, or connect with me on LinkedIn. I also have a, free online value model assessment that I'll be publishing soon. keep an eye either on the website or my LinkedIn content or just reach out and I could send you the link to that as well.

Harv Nagra:

Excellent. Thank you so much, Brian. really appreciate you being here.

Brian Kessman:

Thank you, Harv. Appreciate it.

Harv Nagra:

So reflecting on this conversation, there were a few big ideas from Brian that really stuck with me. One, that the real value isn't the deliverables. It's in your firm's ability to solve high value problems in a repeatable focused way. Number two, that most agencies and consultancies are already more specialized than they realize. They've just never taken the time to spot the patterns, codify the thinking and structure their expertise. Number three, that productization doesn't mean losing flexibility. It means designing from a stronger foundation. So your team has the space and clarity to do better work. And number four, that pricing isn't just about cost, it's about confidence. When you frame value clearly and offers structured choices, clients will respond better and your margins will thank you for it. all of this really made me reflect on my own experience. I realized that at my last workplace, We were probably halfway there with productization, but didn't quite make the full leap. Regular listeners will know that I'd brought in Scoro into that business. And as part of that rollout, we did a huge amount of work to get our house in order from reviewing our utilization minimum levels and margins, to building dozens of modular quote templates for every product and service we sold. Which made it really easy for account managers to produce quotes that looked consistent using the same language, same structure, and same guardrails to control scope. But I think where we were falling short was how we priced. We were still basing everything on internal hours and not necessarily at a premium. so the risk of overservicing never really went away. and while we had these customizable plug and play quote templates, I don't think we would really fully shifted our thinking from services to solutions. Either. It was still, here are the deliverables to address your problems. Here's what it'll cost and how long they'll take. What it'll cost and how long it'll take. so I think we had further to go in getting our own, head space in that frame of mind. one thing that really surprised me about this conversation with Brian and something that I was really trying to dig into is that his approach to productization isn't necessarily about standardizing execution at least not to the way I was expecting. The focus was more on codifying how you solve problems, not just how you produce the outputs. I think that's the part I was wrestling with in my past workplace, because at the time, the challenge I was trying to solve is how do we stop, starting from scratch every time? How do we make delivery faster and more consistent, so we had a methodology on how things got done, the, the steps that were involved, but we didn't really crack how to deploy that thing really easily and faster without feeling like we were doing, a bespoke deliverable every time. Maybe that's the topic. We'll dig into a future episode, how productization and practical execution intersect. because I think there's more that we need to unpack there. Now coming towards the end. if you're curious about what I was saying about how we use Scoro and how it can help you build a more structured, scalable service model from helping you package offers to pricing consistently and quoting really quickly, drop me a message or go ahead and sign up for a demo call and the team will be happy to talk you through it. And if you wanna learn more about Brian's work, Check out Lodestar Consulting or find him on LinkedIn. We'll put the links in the episode notes. and as always, if you've enjoyed today's episode, please share it with someone that would appreciate the conversation. Join the conversation When you see Brian or I posting about it on LinkedIn, and of course sign up for the handbook newsletter so you get a cheat sheet with all the key takeaways from today's episode in your inbox. The link is in the episode notes as well. That's it for me this week. Thanks very much for joining us.

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