Considering adding a digital product to your high-touch service business? Watch this first.

As a high-touch service provider, have you considered adding a digital course to your lineup of offerings?

If so, where did that impulse come from? Were you strategically plotting how to better serve your clients by reaching more people inside their companies? Or, were you perhaps reacting to the barrage of online marketing telling you that you “MUST” have a digital course to compete in today’s market?

There are plenty of exciting reasons to consider adding digital products to your high-touch services:

• Efficient delivery of your expert content to your ideal clients
• The ability to serve more people inside an organization, scaling your offerings to have more impact and make more money
• More easily share your thought leadership with a broader audience, leading to larger deal sizes with more exciting clients

Even so, you should thoroughly and thoughtfully consider whether adding digital products to your robust, high-touch service business is the right thing to do. Otherwise, you may wind up wasting lots of time and money creating digital offers that your clients don’t want.

I invite you to check out this brief clip of me riffing on this topic from a recent Sales Roundtable. What you may not know about me is that I spent several years helping to build 7-figure online course launches — so, while I understand the upside of digital products, I’ve also had a front-row seat for when it goes very wrong for service providers. 

If you are considering digital products to scale your service-based business, I encourage you to spend some time with the following thought prompts:

1. Do I have an audience ready to buy digital products?
If you currently sell services B2B (business-to-business), are your clients already in the habit of buying “digital seats” for training and other info products? If not, you could be looking at a stretch time to get them educated and bought into the idea. This is not a dealbreaker, but it’s important to be realistic in how successful a digital play will be, including how long it will take to develop, sell and deliver.

2. Will I have to switch up my business model to deliver digital products?
If you are accustomed to selling B2B, but you create a digital product that you plan to sell B2C (business-to-consumer), please be aware that this is a big shift — and for many service providers, a big gamble.

For example, if you’re a sales trainer who typically delivers in-person trainings to teams of salespeople by selling to management or HR leaders (B2B), please do not think you will automatically have luck selling a digital course to a salesperson (B2C). In my experience, it doesn’t always work that way, and you can be left pumping tons of money and time into marketing to individuals who are not accustomed to buying their own professional development.

3. Have you done your research and made a plan?
If you feel your audience is ready for a digital product, it’s time to make a comprehensive plan. There are many platforms, courses and other resources for you to tap into as you plot your digital strategy — I urge you to take it slow and be deliberate and strategic, always centering your mission and ideal client. Should you choose to work with a coach or consultant to build your strategy, please be sure they have experience selling to your current audience. Just because someone has had success building online platforms and offers does not mean they understand how to sell to your high-touch audience.

Interested in talking more in depth about this topic and others concerning your business? Join me every month for a free Sales Roundtable where I gather a fabulous group of small business owners to evaluate what’s working, what’s not working and what to do next when it comes to sales. Register here — I’d love to see you there!