This isn't just annoying. It's costing everyone time, money, and momentum. The friction isn't a bug of agency services—it's embedded in how the model was built. But that model assumed a world that’s changing before our eyes. 

AI changed the math. When execution becomes abundant—when the work that used to require teams and weeks now requires tools and hours—the value shifts from doing the work to knowing which work to do. The labor that justified bespoke engagements (fifty ad variants, twelve landing pages, a multi-channel creative system) is now table stakes, accessible to anyone with a ChatGPT subscription and a Midjourney account. The agencies clinging to bespoke theater aren't protecting a premium anymore. They're competing with their own obsolescence, charging for scarcity that no longer exists.

But that world is gone.

Why Agencies Were Built for Bespoke

The “traditional” agency model made sense when execution required human armies. A brand campaign meant copywriters, art directors, producers, media planners, account coordinators—all coordinating across weeks or months. Every engagement truly was unique because the labor was intensive, specialized, and couldn't be templatized without killing quality.

Customization wasn't performance art. It was necessity. You couldn't productize creative development when it took 12 people and eight weeks to concept, produce, and ship a single campaign. The bespoke model reflected the reality of the work.

But that world is gone.

When Execution Became Abundant

AI didn't just speed up creative work—it commoditized it. What used to require a team of three now requires one strategist and a handful of tools. Midjourney ships visual concepts in minutes. ChatGPT drafts 50 headline variations before your first coffee. Media buying platforms optimize themselves. Execution speed is no longer a competitive moat; it's table stakes.

The implication: when execution is abundant, expertise becomes the differentiator. The things that can be repeated—frameworks, diagnostic processes, delivery models—should be productized. What remains custom is the strategic thinking applied within that structure.

Take brand positioning. The process is repeatable: research competitive landscape, identify audience tensions, test message hypotheses, validate through live signal, deliver positioning statements and a messaging framework. We've run that sprint a 100 times. The structure doesn't change. What changes is the strategic interpretation of the research, the choices about which tensions to surface, the calibration of messages against real market feedback.

Website builds follow the same logic. The process—information architecture, wireframing, design system, component library, QA workflow—is proven and repeatable. The strategy—what to feature, how to guide attention, which CTAs to surface—is entirely custom to the business model and growth stage.

GTM strategies, content playbooks, incrementality tests—all of these have repeatable structures even when the insights and execution are unique. Productizing the framework doesn't templatize the thinking. It just removes the overhead of reinventing the wheel every time someone needs strategic work done.

What SaaS Got Right (That Agencies Resist)

Compare the buying experience.

SaaS model:
You book a demo. The rep walks you through features mapped to your use case. You see transparent pricing—either published or quoted with clear tiers. You make a decision in days, not weeks. Onboarding is predictable: implementation plan, training schedule, success metrics defined upfront. You're buying a proven solution, configured to your needs.

Agency model:
You send an inquiry. The reply: "Let's explore your needs first." You schedule a discovery call. Then another. The agency asks questions you've answered three times. Six weeks later, a proposal arrives. Forty-seven pages of vague language like "strategic recommendations" and "comprehensive analysis" that could mean anything. Pricing is opaque: "Depends on scope." The SOW is dense and confusing. You negotiate. Start date slips. Onboarding feels improvised. Every engagement feels different, even when the agency has done this exact work a hundred times before.

Why do agencies resist productization when SaaS proves the model works?

Fear of commoditization. The belief that "custom equals premium" and productization equals templatization. A misunderstanding of what productization actually means. Agencies think if they publish clear deliverables and timelines, they'll compete on price instead of value. But opacity doesn't create value—it just makes comparison impossible and slows down decisions.

The irony: AI already commoditized execution. Resisting productization doesn't protect the premium; it just makes the expertise harder to buy.

What Productization Actually Means

Productization does not mean removing customization or strategic depth. It means separating what should be repeatable from what must be custom.

Productize the repeatable:
The frameworks you've proven work. The diagnostic processes that reveal the same patterns across clients. The delivery models that create predictable outcomes. The workflows that eliminate unnecessary overhead.

Customize the application:
The strategic thinking. The specific insights drawn from research. The choices about which levers to pull and when. The execution tailored to the client's market position, growth stage, and constraints.

This is exactly what SaaS does. Salesforce productized CRM. Your specific Salesforce configuration—your fields, workflows, integrations, dashboards—is entirely custom to how your business operates. The platform is repeatable. The application is unique.

Our sprint model works the same way. A Brand Positioning Sprint is productized: four weeks, defined deliverables (positioning doc, messaging framework, creative brief), proven process. The positioning itself? One hundred percent custom. We're not filling in a template. We're applying strategic thinking within a structure that's been tested and refined across dozens of engagements.

A Media Health Check is productized: read-only access to ad and analytics platforms, two calls, a scorecard of issues ranked by impact, a prioritized roadmap. The findings and recommendations? Entirely specific to where the client's setup is leaking value.

Productization scales the expertise, not the labor. The client gets proven frameworks and experienced practitioners. We get operational clarity and the ability to deliver consistently without reinventing our process every time.

Why This Serves Everyone Better

For clients:
Speed matters. No six-week scoping odyssey before work begins. Clarity matters. You know what you're buying, what it costs, and what success looks like before you commit. Comparison becomes possible—you can evaluate whether this sprint solves your problem better than that one, or whether a retainer makes more sense than a one-off project. Proven frameworks mean you're not paying for the agency to experiment on your dime. And budget-ability: you can actually plan marketing spend instead of treating agency work like a black box that expands unpredictably.

For agencies:
You can finally market yourselves. Clear products mean clear offers mean clear calls to action. Your website stops being a vague "let's talk" and starts being "here's what we do, here's what it costs, here's how to start." You scale expertise, not headcount. Repeatable frameworks deployed across clients compound learning instead of requiring you to start from zero every time. You attract better clients. The ones who value strategic depth over bespoke theater. And operationally, you stop reinventing delivery every engagement, which means you can actually build systems that work.

FletchPMM is a great example of an agency that gets. They price in tiers, by your company’s revenue - write up front on their website. You know EXACTLY what you’re getting. In fact, they have scores and scores of happy customers providing testimonials - just like a Saas. Rumor has it they are doing more than $1.5M rev with only a few employees. 

Stop Resisting

The agencies that figure out productization won't just make buying easier. They'll build better businesses. When you package expertise into repeatable structures, you can scale what matters (strategic thinking, market insight, decision-making) without scaling what doesn't (overhead, coordination drag, proposal theater).

The SaaS model works because it respects the buyer's time and clarifies the value exchange. Agencies should stop treating transparency as a threat. When execution is abundant and expertise is scarce, the way to win is to make the expertise easier to access—not harder.

This is why we are building sprint-based services. Clear deliverables, proven processes, transparent timelines. The structure is repeatable. The thinking is custom. Buying strategic work should be as straightforward as buying software.

If it's not, you're competing with a model that's already obsolete.