Insights — Channel Creation & New Revenue Streams — 3 min read
A Menu of Services to Add Around an Existing Product
If you only sell the box, you are leaving the most profitable part of the relationship to someone else. Here is how to reclaim the service layer.
In short
Product businesses can add services such as professional installation, user training, preventative maintenance contracts, remote monitoring, performance audits, and decommissioning. The key is to select services that leverage existing technical expertise and solve a genuine customer friction point throughout the product's lifecycle, rather than just reacting to failures.
Most product-based companies suffer from a 'transactional gap'. They sell a product, and then they don't hear from the customer again until that product fails or needs replacing years later. During that gap, the customer is still using the product, still has needs, and is often paying other people to help them.
Adding a service layer is about filling that gap. It's not about inventing new skills; it's about commercialising the expertise you already have. This 'menu' of services helps you identify which routes to revenue might fit your existing product line.
The Product Lifecycle Service Menu
Look at your product's journey from the customer's perspective. Every stage has a potential service attached to it:
| Stage | Potential Service Channel |
|---|---|
| Pre-Purchase | Application engineering, site surveys, feasibility studies |
| Installation | White-glove delivery, commissioning, integration services |
| Early Use | Operator training, safety certification, optimisation |
| Ongoing Use | Preventative maintenance, consumables replenishment, helpdesk |
| Optimisation | Performance audits, software updates, efficiency reporting |
| End of Life | Decommissioning, ethical disposal, trade-in/refurbishment |
Evaluating the best 'fit'
Evans evaluates potential channels based on three main criteria: margin potential, setup cost, and management attention. A service that requires a 24/7 call centre is a very different beast from an annual site audit. You should prioritise the one that offers the highest 'speed to evidence'—the ability to prove customers will pay for it before you over-invest.
The risk of 'Service Creep'
The danger of adding services is that you start doing everything for everyone. Without a disciplined 'Product-to-Service' route, you can end up as a bespoke consultancy that happens to sell a product. This kills scalability. Every service you add should be as standardised and 'productised' as possible.
How to choose where to start
Look for the 'Necessity' service first. What is the one thing the customer *must* do for the product to work? If you aren't providing that, you are losing a captive market. Often, this is installation or initial setup.
The Channel Creation Programme helps businesses navigate these choices, ensuring the new channel creates economic value rather than just more work. It starts from £1,995 + VAT/month.
Could your business support another route to revenue?
Evans Channel Creation identifies, validates and builds additional revenue channels from capabilities a business already has — B2B to D2C, D2C to B2B, product to service, recurring revenue or partners — and says so plainly when a channel should not be built. Programme from £1,995 + VAT per month over six months.
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