In VMware Workstation, you can easily extract the zip file, create a full copy of the Virtual Machine, and you would be good to power on and run another Virtual Machine.

Workstation has some additional options that I find useful, so let's dive into them here.

Open VMware Workstation, and let us take a snapshot of the Virtual Machine we built in this paper.  The snapshot will be sysprepped, and in a powered off state.  There is a button to take a snapshot, or you can use the pull down menu (VM → Snapshot → Take Snapshot).  I'll name it Sysprepped XP.

Now right-click the winxpprosp3 tab (the one next to Home in the next figure), and select Clone.

We now have a Clone Virtual Machine Wizard show up.  Click next.

Since we already created the snapshot, we can select an existing SnapShot, and continue.

Here we can create 2 types of clones.

Linked Clone

Uses the snapshot we created, and references the snapshot VMDK file.
This conserves (tremendously) on disk space.

Full Clone

Uses the snapshot we created, and creates a new full VMDK file.
This creates a new VMDK file of the full size, and does not reference the template VM afterwards.

In this example I will be using a Linked Clone to conserve on hard drive space.

I'll name the new Virtual Machine, dc01, and the folder will be named accordingly.  Clicking Finish will finalize the new Virtual Machine.

Now you can edit/clean up/change settings for dc01, without affecting the Template Virtual Machine, and the state the snapshot is in.

Fusion

VMware Fusion does not yet have all the advanced features of VMware Workstation.

When you want to deploy another template Virtual Machine, you must double click on the zip file, and you will duplicate the Virtual Machine, in its entirety, including consumption of disk space.  Each Virtual Machine will be its own entity entirely.

Double Click the Zip file, and you will, after it extracts, that you have a duplicate name.  Rename the Virtual Machine file, and you will be good to go through the Mini-Setup that sysprep has prepared.  Then the Virtual Machine will be ready for use.

The screenshot below shows the extracted Virtual Machine, with the number 2 appended to the zip file name.