3 things to know about launching new products in your Professional Services firm
As a continuation from my last article, How Technology can be used to Boost Client Engagement, I discussed how finding out what your client really wants could lead you to a vast array of opportunities for offering new products. Essentially bringing in further business and work into your firm in a way your clients will love you for.
There are some guidelines to your products, that you really should consider. Incidentally, these apply to any type of business, and not just to professional services.
For products to be truly valuable to your business, they must be:
Scalable
Leverageable
Teachable
So what do these elements mean? They are often used loosely, but to be clear on what I mean in this context…..
Scalable – you can grow the delivery and production of your services to cater to the clients’ size or market demands. Usually when we talk about scalability we talk about a business model being scalable by having the systems and processes to cope and perform well under increased workload. So can this product slide into a scalable framework? Perhaps some readjusting of businesses processes needs to occur, to make this work long term?
Leverageable – you can leverage your existing resources and/or use people of varying skills and technology to deliver more at better cost.
Teachable – you can teach someone else (or maybe something else soon!) to deliver it for you, and this process can be efficiently repeated.
Now be honest all my professional friends out there, how do your compliance products look compared against this list? You only pass the test if the production of items like tax returns and financials do not require the input of a Partner or Director, except for the final helicopter review for signing.
I think you get the idea.
If you truly want to free up yourselves, then start building based on these three things.
