Having been a part of several teams and a few companies over the years, one gets a good look at what products and services look like once they have gone to market. In some cases, one the product has gone to market, the actual company service steps into place. This could be an emphasis on customer support, timeliness to responding to problems, or even agility in information architecture making it easier to prevent high-level issues from reoccurring. And to this view, it’s often wondered if companies are actually being clear in terms of what they are selling?

So here’s the question for those of us who offer specific products and/or services: are we offering the product or service as our unique piece of value, or as the bridge to the thing we actually offer as valuable?

And this is ok if we are doing the latter. A company might be adept in (for example) Tier 1 and Tier 2 technical support. However, in order for them to address that value, they need to become notable for brining in products which make such support a priority and desire. For them to create or manage a product which needs less technical support isn’t to their benefit. In fact, it’s detrimental to their business.

In a similar analogy, a company might have the ability to engineer solutions which reduce administrative burden, but they don’t have the same adeptness towards the technical support artifacts which might come later (triage and privatization, handoff and governance, etc). This is a pure “we create/engineer a product” company who doesn’t have a later stage service element. Therefore, it doesn’t help them to pitch their product to a group who desires a lengthy and continuous training period once the change management process kicks off.

Figure out what it is that you are selling, and isolate how that might or might not be valuable to your intended and indirect markets. Then, focus on what you do that’s most value, and what they might value but need clarity towards. From there, the difference between what you are selling and what folks are being sold is less a question of “did we get what we paid for,” and more of a “we know the outcomes from purchasing this thing.”