Interior Design Education | Interior Designer's Business Success Coach |

WOW! Had Almost 500 Interior Designers Sign Up…

Gail Doby — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 23:10:35 +0000

Did you miss Strategies to Avoid Interior Design Fee Fiascos? If you did and still want to hear the recording, just sign up for the free ebook at the top right of the page and we’ll send the information to get the replay.

We had so many incredible comments and so many questions, too. I’m working on them now, and you’ll have to be patient with me because I want to answer them thoroughly. We’ll be sending those over the next week or so.

If you missed it, it’s not too late to sign up for the replay. I over-delivered especially for a free webinar. I reinforce some long-standing good practices and you hear great insights on today’s consumers. I’ve spent months researching to teach you what I did on this jam-packed 1 1/2 hour webinar.

You’re not going to learn that information from anyone else unless they decide to copy me…and there are competitors out there doing exactly that. You know who you are…I encourage you to be original.

So…be sure and sign up for our free Interior Design Fee & Salary Survey eBook at the top right of this page, and we’ll send the free eBook and the information to get the free recording.

For our attendees…just post your biggest AHA or insight from the session and be sure to share why you’d recommend this to your peers. We’ll select one person to receive a scholarship for the Value Based Fee System series and Group Coaching. Make sure you do this by midnight, March 7th!

Thank you again for your kind words. We really work hard for you!

PS…Save the Date! March 24th starting at 10 Eastern, we’re celebrating DSU’s Second Birthday. If you’d like to share your testimonials live on the call, please email us…we’d love to hear from you. We have 10 industry leaders sharing their vision for the future of interior design, gifts and drawings all day, and 10 – 5 minute coaching topics. I won’t have a voice at the end of the day! It’s going to be fun, and we encourage you to invite all of your colleagues to this amazing day.

#9 Biggest Mistakes Interior Designers Make With Fees

Gail Doby — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 21:15:56 +0000

Not getting paid for your fees long before the project is over.

Have you finished an incredibly intense interior design project and waited for your final payment for a job well done…and the check never arrives?

A big frustration in this business is getting paid what you’re worth, and sometimes, just getting paid is a challenge. The last invoice is often used to negotiate your fees, or even worse, some clients won’t pay at all.

If you’ve had this happen to you, how can/did/should you handle it?

Get depressed…maybe you feel that you don’t deserve it and you let it go
Cry…you might not get the money you deserve, and it could be a large portion of your profit
Write it off…maybe you feel that you were well-compensated without the final payment
Get angry and stalk your client…not recommended
Call your client and ask why you didn’t get paid….try to understand what went wrong and how you can resolve the problem
Send several bills and include an interest charge – which may or may not be paid without the interest you charged
Have your attorney write a letter…which may do little or no good and cost you attorney’s fees
Threaten to take the client to court…if your client was intending to do this anyway, they probably have a history of doing this to others and it won’t help
Take the client to small claims court…even if you get a judgment, you still may not get paid…and there isn’t anything you can do about it!
Offer a discount on the final bill…maybe this will work, but it does devalue your services
Offer a payment plan…one option if the person is having cash flow issues or personal/business challenges

Even celebrity designers face these challenges with celebrity clients that enjoy the feeling of power over others because of their high profile. I can’t mention names, but it happens more than you might think.

Please share your thoughts. #10 of these mistakes is posted on http://www.Facebook.com/DesignSuccessUniversity

Top 10 Ways to Create Happy Client Relationships and Prevent Disasters

Erin Weir — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 22:10:36 +0000

We are very excited to announce that Gail recently started guest blogging for Decorati! Here are her first two posts for you to check out – be sure to post your comments. Nice work Gail!

Top 10 Ways to Create Happy Client Relationships and Prevent Disasters- Part 1

Top 10 Ways to Create Happy Client Relationships and Prevent Disasters-Part 2

Mistake #7 Interior Designers Make With Fees

Erin Weir — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 19:43:05 +0000

Not knowing how to present your unique difference in such a way that your prospects choose you over competitors. When you’re competing with other designers for a job, and the only way a prospect can differentiate you is your hourly fee, how will they make a decision?

the lowest cost per hour
the portfolio they like the best
the person they like the best

It could be a combination of all three, and you could lose the job.

The real point is that few designers really know how to handle the conversation about fees. If you haven’t established your differentiating value prior to talking about your fees, and you don’t know the prospect’s buying criteria, you could easily lose to the lowest priced option.

How do you avoid this? You’ll just have to come to our free webinar, “New Strategies To Avoid Interior Design Fee Fiascos,” on March 2nd and hear some solutions.

Please retweet this and also, please sign up for our RSS feed – the orange button to the right for more helpful tips delivered right to your inbox.

#5 of 10 Biggest Mistakes Interior Designers Make With Fees

Erin Weir — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 00:23:48 +0000

Not offering tiered pricing and services. The model of offering an hourly fee and mark-up is one of the least effective ways of working with clients today.

Even if you offer a fixed fee for your clients, have you considered offering three options so your clients can decide what level of services they want? You will find that they will select the middle or most expensive option when they see the added benefits.

If you don’t offer a tiered pricing structure, you’re likely to leave a lot of money on the table. Many of these additional offers may take little of your time and add a huge amount of perceived value. Make sure they are aligned with the main offer.

#3 of 10 Biggest Mistakes Interior Designers Make With Fees

Gail Doby — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 15:24:13 +0000

Thank you for participating in this conversation, and for our new visitors, please be sure and check the previous posts about this topic. We’d love your input on this very important issue.

Here is #3 of the Biggest Mistakes Interior Designers Make With Fees…

Not doing a good job of qualifying clients with effective questions that help uncover potential problems before developing a design proposal is mistake #3.

What are some of the problems that may be encountered?

Pricing a project based on a typical client instead of understanding that someone may be indecisive may cost you money, and potentially all of your profit.
Not uncovering the real buying criteria and jumping to conclusions about what they value may lead you to proposing something that really doesn’t fit what the client wants.
Not having all decision makers participating in the interview process together leads to potential conflict. The dynamics are entirely different, and you get different stories from each client when you interview separately. What is important to one is a non-issue to the other in some cases. And, the flip side is also true. What is really important and derail your process may not be uncovered in separate interviews. You must have all of the decision makers involved in the initial interviews.
Not asking the tough questions and having a way to uncover the potential objections and fears that the client might have about your services leads to potential problems. When your clients are feeling stressed, it could be turned on you if you the problems weren’t addressed in the initial interview. Surface the difficult questions about money in the early stages, or you may face challenges later.

Please sign up for the RSS feed of this conversation with the orange button on the right side of the blog. You’ll get the latest posts and comments delivered to your Inbox or feed reader. Please comment!

The Second Biggest Mistake Interior Designers Make With Fees

Gail Doby — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 20:53:51 +0000

I’ve been guilty of this before, and it usually happens when I am swamped with work. This is also one of the reasons so many designers lose money.

What is it?

Tracking your time. I know. This is a royal pain, but it is part of doing business.

What happens when you don’t keep up with time tracking daily? You don’t have a baseline for how long it takes to do certain activities. That means it is difficult to estimate time for a project, and therefore estimate budgets.

Also, it leads to scope creep that isn’t paid by your clients. You have to be firm with yourself because this is money in your pocket to pay for your children’s activities, vacations or employee paychecks. It’s also extremely important to have your employees track their time frequently, too.

A few times, I had to tell my employees that if they didn’t get their time entered, they wouldn’t get their paychecks. When it affects their paycheck, it’s amazing how they get it done.

It’s like a diet – once you record what you eat, you can see patterns in your eating behavior and how many calories you’re really eating.

This is also extremely important for time management, because you can’t manage your time if you can’t estimate how long it takes to do something. Interesting?

I know how long it takes for me to write a blog post, ezine article, write a class transcript and a typical white paper. I schedule these activities early in the morning or on Sunday, because those are my best times for creation.

This is especially important if you are managing several projects. Scheduling revenue generating activities first is your number one priority.

Even if you do value based or fixed fee projects, it is vital to track time. For you as a business owner, it is also important to track your marketing and administrative time. Why? It helps you manage the work and identify where you need to make improvements.

There are a number of ways you can track your time. I use a combination of my Google calendar, and Studio IT for design projects (Studio Webware is even better because you can update your time from your mobile phone). For DSU time, I make a To Do list with Estimated and Actual time per day on an Excel spreadsheet. It really works for me.

You can save time checking the blog for the latest post by subscribing to our RSS feed with the little orange button on the right side of the blog. You’ll receive the lastest updates and comments either by email or with Google Reader or your preferred web aggregator.

Be sure and post your comments about this…we’ll share all ten of the mistakes with all of you who post comments.

The Biggest Mistake Interior Designers Make With Fee Setting

Gail Doby — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 16:09:55 +0000

Would you agree that most interior designers charge an hourly fee for services? We found that to be true with our recent Interior Design Fee & Salary Survey.

I asked a few other questions in an earlier post about interior design fees, and I’d love to get your thoughts.

Between now and February 17th, I’d like to get your questions about setting fees in today’s economy. I’ll give you answers on the blog, and in a special free webinar we’re planning for March 2nd. When you sign up for the for the complimentary Interior Design Fee & Salary Survey eBook, we’ll send you an invitation.

Here’s an extra incentive to participate in the conversation…anyone that posts a comment by the end of the day on Tuesday, February 10th will receive a complimentary copy of the Top Ten Marketing Mistakes Interior Designers Make.

So, what’s the answer to the question? I’ll give you one answer to the question, and in fact, I’ll share another one each time I post between now and February 17th. If you want to make it easy to follow the conversation, just sign up for the RSS feed of the conversation using the orange button on the right side of the blog. You can either get the information delivered to your inbox or to your favorite Google Reader or My Yahoo.

Many interior designers have been trying to get clients to accept their hourly billing structure without considering what the client values…a result.

Why is this a problem? If you look at the survey results, you’ll find that less than ten percent of all designers bill by fees related to the perceived value of the services. ASID’s survey a few years ago showed that approximately 70% of consumers want a fixed fee. That’s a big disconnect.

I struggled with this when I was doing work with residential clients. It was so much easier to compute a fee for a builder or commercial project because the process was more straightforward.

One of the biggest concerns I had was how to manage the client and keep them within the scope of work. What about that indecisive client? What about the one that says, “while you’re at it…”

What are your biggest concerns about fees, and how do you think the economy and/or consumer attitudes are affecting your decision about fees?

Please retweet this to your colleagues. This topic is a huge issue today and a good conversation will help everyone. OK?

Interior Designers…Brilliant! Branding Comes From A Hair Of An Idea…

Gail Doby — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 00:34:23 +0000

This is how clear and simple your brand needs to be. Let me know your thoughts…Gary Vee – Linchpin.

This is a great video by Seth Godin, Author of Linchpin with Gary Vuynerchuk who created a $60 million dollar business with social media.

Interior Designers – Are Your Clients Happily Paying Your Hourly Fees?

Gail Doby — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 18:43:38 +0000

Have you had challenges with clients about your interior design fees? I posed some questions in an earlier blog post and would love to get your input about this topic.

During other downturns in the economy, or when business is slow, some designers are tempted to lower their hourly fees to get work. Have you done this, or been tempted to do it?

One of the greatest challenges to billing your services by the hour is to justify the time it takes to do seemingly small tasks in the client’s eyes. Is it worth a billing rate of $100 per hour to shop for fabric? What is the true difference between one designer billing $100 and another?

What happens when you have the highest billable rate in town? Does that result in more or less business?

What are your client’s reactions to your bills? Are they comfortable with what and how you’re charging?

I will answer your comments over the next several days. Just in case you haven’t requested your complimentary copy of the Interior Design Fee & Salary Survey ebook, just click on the link and we’ll send it to you.