Strategy question

After several custom deployments in adjacent verticals, how would you identify which patterns should become core product, which should remain configurable templates, and which should stay services-only? Walk through how you would translate that into a reusable vertical offering, including packaging and pricing principles.

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What this question tests

Tests turning a series of custom vertical deployments into a reusable, packaged product offering, with clear packaging and pricing logic.

Catalog patterns across the custom deployments: which workflow steps, integrations, or configurations repeated across multiple adjacent-vertical customers.
Classify each pattern into core product, a configurable template, or services-only, based on how much it varied per customer and how costly it is to generalize.
Promote patterns that repeated with minimal variation and low generalization cost to core product; keep highly variable patterns as configurable templates.
Keep genuinely bespoke, low-reuse work as services-only, since forcing it into product would add complexity for one-off value.
Package the offering around the template layer, a named vertical solution built on core product plus configurable templates, rather than a fully custom pitch each time.
Set pricing that reflects packaged value, a vertical-solution tier priced above the base platform, with services priced separately for the remaining bespoke work.

Classifies each pattern by variation and generalization cost, not just how often it appeared, to decide core-product versus template versus services.
Packages around a named vertical solution instead of continuing to sell custom work project by project.
Prices the packaged tier to reflect its bundled value rather than defaulting to the base platform price plus ad hoc services.

Promoting every repeated pattern straight to core product without checking generalization cost.
Continuing to sell each new vertical deployment as fully custom instead of packaging what has already repeated.

How would you decide when a template has enough demand to become core product?
How would you price the vertical solution against a competitor's point solution?