Service Offering: What You Actually Sell vs. What You Think You Sell

Sei-Wook Kim (00:05.389) Today we're talking about service offering. Not your services page, not your capabilities list, but the structure of how a client actually engages with you. We'll break down the anatomy of a strong service offering, how relationships actually expand over time, and how to diagnose whether yours is working. Peter Kang (00:24.594) All right, so typically when a prospect says yes, the question is, what are they exactly buying? And for an agency that's offering these services, what does month one look like? What does it look like in month 12? From my experience, most agencies can't answer that clearly. They might describe what they're capable of, but not really the shape of the engagement. So today we're going to dive into that and talk about this — basically a deep dive into what service offering actually means. Let's kick it off there. We talked about this shape. So what do we mean by that? Sei-Wook Kim (01:03.277) Yeah, so service offering really is the path of a client relationship that is being designed. It isn't the list of capabilities or the services that an agency provides, or even what your team can technically do, but it's really about what happens when somebody hires you and really thinking about what that client is buying. Positioning answers who you're servicing, who you're for. Ecosystem answers where you're known, but really the service offering answers what is the client actually buying. Peter Kang (01:46.851) Yeah, and to go into why most agencies get this wrong — and we've been guilty of this as well across our agencies — the easiest thing is to just default to listing services. So you go, hey, we do branding, we do web design, we do SEO, we do paid media, we do content, and we just have this menu that we think is what everyone does, so why not us too? But there are definitely problems inherent with this. If you haven't gone deeper than that, you're in a reactive state where every proposal you're building from scratch and you're going to scope the detail. If you've stopped at the menu piece and just listed that, and that's the extent of your service offering, there's just not enough design to really make it effective. From there, partners, for example, others that might refer you new business, might not be able to really describe what you do — they'll say, yeah, these guys, they make some websites. And then the pricing, which we'll talk about later as well, becomes wildly inconsistent because you just have this menu and then on a case-by-case basis you're always struggling to price things. Sei-Wook Kim (03:02.262) Yeah, and there's a lot of downstream impact of that. A lot of these — again, we're guilty of — is you have these long sales cycles where it takes a really long time to close a deal. When you're working on something, if the journey isn't clear, there could be scope creep pretty easily along the way. And then if a client doesn't know what happens after an engagement, there could be churn after just working on one project together. Peter Kang (03:33.199) Yeah, that last point is very important. We'll talk about that more in this overall arc, but I distantly remember in our early days we'd just be so excited — relieved, even — that they decided to do one project with us that we were almost afraid to ask about the next engagement, for fear of, what if they don't like it, what if we mess up on this one, what if they get annoyed if we talk about something else in the future. But as we've learned, clients are always going to have problems, and if someone can come to them with solutions and thinking about those problems on their behalf, that's always valuable. Sei-Wook Kim (04:12.812) Yeah, awesome. So let's talk about the structure of a good service offering. Really it's four core pieces. The first is having an entry offer, a core offer, clear expansion paths, and then additional services that you can provide. So it's not a catalog or menu of services, but it's really thinking about that arc of that client relationship — how someone starts working with you, how you go deeper with that client, and over time, how does the value that you're providing compound. Peter Kang (04:51.426) Yeah, so let's go into number one, the entry offer, which we should think about as the front door. The entry offer is answering one question to start: what is the first thing someone buys from you? And the follow-up would be, how do you create something that is easy to buy and immediately high value? It's not just about having some small bite-size thing that's really low price to buy — that could be an important factor — but you need to really think about some other aspects of what a good entry offer has. That is definitely a bounded scope, something that is well-defined. There's a clear deliverable aspect to it so you know when it ends. And then there should be a natural segue into the deeper work, some of the other phases, whether it's the core offer or some of the expanded work. Common examples we've seen: audits, diagnostics, a sprint, an initial sprint, or some kind of a pilot or prototyping engagement. Creativity really does matter here. You need to think about what's easy to buy and also immediately high value to a client, because audits, to some degree, have been overused across agencies. Sometimes — and we've had this — clients hear the word audit and they're like, no, no, no, I've been pitched dozens of audits at this point, I don't want another audit. So it's very important to think a little bit broader. Sei-Wook Kim (06:30.182) Yeah, it's interesting. Thinking about one of our agencies, Vaulted Oak — their core offer is a quarterly maintenance package. For them, an entry offer could be, if something is broken on a client site, we'll do a small entry project, maybe bound by time or specific deliverables: we'll fix this thing, you'll get a taste of what it's like to work with us. It's really just the full methodology that they would go through in the quarterly package, bite-sized for that one initial project. Peter Kang (07:08.301) Yeah, and that's been incredibly effective for them. What they need to do is continually market to folks and be top of mind so that when someone runs into a problem, they're the first call. They do that really well with partners — hey, my client's having this really annoying problem with their website that's preventing them from doing this campaign or whatever, can you guys go in and fix it? And that's been a really good way for them to level up and sell their core offer. Sei-Wook Kim (07:38.759) Yeah. A couple of important things with the entry offer: if it's too large, it's a challenge, because you want it to be easy to purchase. If it's a long project or a large budget, there could also be a long sales cycle just to land the entry offer. So really thinking about what is bite-sized and easy to purchase. Or it could be too disconnected from what you're trying to lead into next. If you do a free workshop for clients, that may get them a taste of what it's like to work with you, but if it doesn't naturally flow into the next engagement you want to work with them on, there's that disconnect. And really, it's also looking at your referral partners — can they define what it is you provide in that entry offer? Can they explain it in one sentence? That's one test you can use. Peter Kang (08:47.665) Yeah, and the entry offer is a really fertile ground to test out different formats. Some of these are paid — you could figure out, hey, is it a $10K audit, is it a $25K sprint? Or it could be free. Your entry offer could be free, but you have to be smart about structuring it in a way that the expense of it isn't a crazy drag on you. The bounded scope is really important for something that's free. But it's also something that quickly qualifies a buyer and makes it very apparent that someone is serious about working with you and likely to buy a core offer. Those are some important things to know. Sei-Wook Kim (09:47.78) Yeah, and that's one important nuance — for certain clients, they may have procurement teams and processes, RFP requirements, that prevent them from signing an engagement easily. Maybe they just want to buy the core offer. If you put steps in that make it difficult to even get to that point, or a price tag that they can't get budget for, having some kind of free offer or free way to engage them that shows what it's like to work with you could be another way into the core offer. Peter Kang (10:25.365) Yeah, and just another one we've seen commonly is a free offer to help them write their RFP. In that way, you're helping them create a more effective way to outline requirements and the process, and that's a great way to show how you work. At the same time, you're stacking the cards in your favor, because if you're writing the RFP, you're likely going to know the answers that are going to move the client. I think that's one other way. Sei-Wook Kim (10:56.456) Cool. All right, so let's talk about the core offer. The core offer really is what you're known for — the work that defines the reputation you have as an agency. If you think about a client you've worked with, can they describe what you did for them in one sentence? A vague core offer is, "they helped us with marketing" — no clear specificity there. But if it's more specific, like, "they helped us migrate to Shopify and rebuild our product discovery experience" — that's a clear, tangible description of what you provided to that client. Peter Kang (11:45.378) Yeah, some other examples might be like, "they grew our Amazon channel," which is a good one and something we look for across a couple of our agencies. And when you're able to do this with the core offer, the delivery is repeatable, the client proof is compounding, and then sales conversations are going to get easier and conversions are going to go up. The core offer is, at the end of the day, a reflection of the expertise you've built up. It's about building frameworks, building up your pattern library, documenting methodology. The more you do this, the stronger your core offering, and from there your reputation grows and you can market it better — all the things that help an agency have that strong central offering. Sei-Wook Kim (13:12.551) Yeah, a lot of agencies probably have a sense of their core offering, but then moving to what happens next after that and thinking about the expansion paths — how do you intentionally design how your relationship with that client grows? A lot of agencies, and we're guilty of this in the example you gave earlier, treat it like luck. It's like, we'll deliver the project, it's amazing, I hope the client is happy, and I hope they come back and ask for more work. But if you're a healthier agency and really thinking ahead, you've got to think about what's next. After the core project, what is the problem that the client always has next? Thinking through that allows you to design the natural expansion. So if you build a website — for example, for our Webflow agency, you'll do a Webflow website, and then you can do a CRO engagement that leads to a program of developing landing pages and other ongoing services where there's a natural evolution after you launch. Or even for a Shopify agency, you'll build a Shopify website, but there needs to be some kind of ongoing optimization, and then after some success there might be other channels to expand to, different regions, and so on. Peter Kang (14:47.576) Yeah, this reminds me of the episode we did on account management versus project management and the importance of thinking about these engagements as accounts rather than discrete projects. This underscores the importance of service offering because without it — think about it: if your account managers have no idea what more you can do for clients, or if you just haven't defined what the additional services are, you're likely to be reactive. You might hear, oh yeah, the client is asking if we could do this, can we do it? It's kind of up in the air. But if you take the time to design the expansion path, that becomes part of the expertise. If you're a branding agency or creative firm and you do a rebrand, having done this before, you know there's going to be some degree of additional ongoing governance — hey, let's help them with the rollout of the branding to their brick-and-mortar locations, let's help them create the guidelines or the initial creative for all the ads they're going to run with this new branding. Having that foresight and being able to structure those engagements, and going to the client and saying, hey, this is how we've typically added value to our other clients, and I think this is something you really need — let's work together to define that scope, roadmap it together, and build on this relationship — the more you can do that proactively, the more you've got this predefined map, the better chance you're going to have of growing it into something more than that initial project. Sei-Wook Kim (16:51.874) Yeah, it's another way to demonstrate your expertise in that specific area. Sometimes a client might engage you for a specific project and they haven't done the work to think through what happens next, or they may not have gone through an engagement like that before and they don't know the natural progression. But your expertise — you've done this many times — means you know what's going to happen next, so you're helping guide the client along the way. I think that's another key part. Peter Kang (17:21.244) Yeah, the fourth piece is the additional services. We talk about this as the supporting layer. If you think about expansion paths as the expected progression from the core offering, then additional services are more like the situational work — stuff that may come up but isn't guaranteed, and really depends on the client's specific needs. The reason we like to separate these out is that when you're training your account team or mapping a client's growth path with your agency, these become a bit more optional, and it also sets the expectation with clients: you may or may not need these things, or in your situation, hey, you definitely need this, so this is an additional service you might want to consider. Some common examples, especially across our agencies: whether it's on Shopify or Amazon, as we're doing the core offer of managing the channel or building a Shopify site, content comes up a lot. Sometimes clients are like, hey, we have a studio, we can give you all the assets, but some are like, hey, we need help — whether it's retouching, animating, X, Y, Z things. Can you guys help? Those are situations where the additional services really come in. Sei-Wook Kim (18:55.073) Yeah, and for this, it doesn't have to be a reactive thing where the client mentions they don't have photography for their products. You can surface it early on and say, here are some additional things that either we can provide internally or we have partners we can bring in to help. At least you're aware of all the different areas where that typically comes up. But it's not a requirement that they need to work with you for that particular area. Peter Kang (19:21.585) Yeah, exactly. So those are the four areas of service offering to think through. And underlying all of this is the pricing logic — what are we charging for these services, and how should we think about pricing as it relates to them? Pricing is a very important signal, and at the end of the day, pricing is what reveals what you really sell. Sei-Wook Kim (19:57.825) Yeah, and pricing is a deep topic we could probably do a full podcast on. Just thinking about a few rough models: one is execution pricing, where you're selling hours or tasks, specific deliverables. One is expertise pricing, where you're selling outcomes and value. And the third is transformation pricing, where you're pricing the business impact. Really just thinking through that — for a lot of our agencies it depends on what you're selling, but oftentimes you think you're pricing on expertise and outcomes, but you're actually selling execution. If your proposal has hours or deliverables as line items, that's really execution. Peter Kang (20:51.546) Yeah, the thing about execution is it's very tangible for the client — they can see, okay, you guys say you're going to do this, it's going to take this much time, which translates to this price. But then there's negotiation that can happen and clients can nitpick: does that particular task need to take that much time? There are pros and cons to that. For example, Vaulted Oak, which we talked about before, is very much about execution pricing because they sell buckets of hours and they've stuck to that. They have hourly rates that scale with the number of hours clients buy — the more hours you buy, the lower the hourly cost — so they're incentivizing larger bucket purchases. The interesting thing is, if you manage that correctly, it's fine. There is a degree of expertise required even in that execution, because if you sell hours but in the client's mind you're being inefficient with those hours, they're going to feel like they're not getting value and that's going to increase the risk of churn. You want to balance the hours with the know-how — this problem, we've seen it before, we're going to do it quickly and show the client a lot of value in the hours they bought. The moment that gets out of whack, you're at risk. And going down the line of other pricing methods, there's obviously the fixed price, fixed scope method — the standard of, if you're selling a website design project it's $50K all inclusive, or you're selling a brand sprint, everything is inclusive. Clients tend to like that because there's a cap on what they're spending, they know exactly what they're getting, and they're able to commit to a budget before they begin. But on the agency side, you have to assume some of that risk, and if you wrote the scope a little loosely there might be disagreements on what's in or out of scope, change orders, and other fallout. So anyway, that's another method. And then there's complexity-based pricing, where pricing is tied to variables that make the work harder — maybe more employees, business model complexity, different number of locations. With that you price it on a per-whatever basis. Ultimately you want to be very strategic about picking the one that maps best to your service offering so that for the client it's very clear. Sei-Wook Kim (24:19.86) Yeah, and the thing about pricing is it doesn't need to be one or the other. It could be a combination. Your core offer could be a fixed price, priced on the value of the business impact. But then for an additional service where you're doing photos, you're pricing it as a deliverable — per photo or per product, here's the price. So it's a combination of fixed or deliverable-based versus value-based pricing. As long as it's clear to the client and they know, all right, here are the things where if the scope goes up the price goes up, and it doesn't feel arbitrary where they're asking why is this priced this way and that priced that way — if there's that confusion, that's the entry point for negotiation: can we drop the price here, can we do it a different way? Peter Kang (25:18.254) Yeah, and to your point, it's fine to have different pricing methodologies for different services. But if you have different ways of pricing the same thing — for example, if you have a core offer but you talk about it in terms of hours and at the same time there's a fixed fee component and then you talk about some kind of outcome-based thing — first of all, that's going to cause massive confusion for the client, and then they're going to use those against each other: well, you said this for the outcome thing, but it's only taking this much time to execute it, and they're going to try to correlate those things. So it's really important to, on a per-service basis, stick to that methodology. Sei-Wook Kim (26:06.068) Yeah, sure. Cool. So let's wrap it all up with service offering and how it connects to everything else. Inside the foundation layer of an agency, the service offering connects to the website — your website should show the full engagement journey, not just a list of services. Your referral partners, other agencies and service providers, need to understand both your core offering and your entry offer, how people can work with you. From a proof standpoint, all of your case studies should map to that offer and that full journey. And then from a pipeline and new business perspective, it should really help you figure out what deals are a good fit or not — what do you say yes or no to? If all of those things play together, then growth can really scale consistently. Otherwise there'll be some conflict and growth becomes really inconsistent. Peter Kang (27:13.566) Cool. And in closing, maybe we could end with a few questions to pressure-test your service offering as it stands today. Can you describe your entry offer in one sentence? Can your referral partner describe it? After your core engagement, what problem always appears next — that's the service expansion. Does your pricing logic match the value you're delivering? And lastly, does your website show the relationship journey or just list the menu of services? If any of these feel fuzzy, you probably have work to do. We know some of our agencies still have work to do on the service offering front — that means it's always evolving, and it's something you should always be testing. And of course we have our Foundation app on our Agency Habits website, so foundation.agencyhabits.com — check that out as well. You can get suggestions from our AI-powered app on the service offering angle. Thanks again for joining us. Till next time, have a good one. Sei-Wook Kim (28:25.182) Thanks.