Solo with Beth - Clear Communication is Key
Episode 67
This week it is a Solo with Beth episode and I am looking at common friction points designers face with clients, primarily stemming from unclear communication and unmet expectations.
I look at three examples of where designers are commonly seeing friction pointes which can be easily resolved with clear and concise communication.
By fixing these friction points, you are going to be able to create smoother project experiences, leading to happier clients and better referrals.
I hope you enjoy the episode
Beth xx
Hi everyone. Welcome to this week's episode of the Design Dialogues podcast and it is a Solo with Beth episode.
This week, I have been talking to lots of designers inside the health check and in talking to them with more time to design, our software tool, and one of things that keeps coming up often is friction points that they're having with their clients.
So often these friction points stem from there not being clear communication with the client and therefore the expectations of the client aren't being met. This then leads to friction points. So a lot of this is easily solved with good systems and processes. And the thing that good systems and processes allow you to do, is it allows you to communicate clearly with your client. It might be through the documentation that you're sending throughout the pre-client phase. It might be the emails that you're sending, the wording that you're using in those emails, which is clearly stating to the client what's happening next, what they should expect, and how long it should take.
So often these friction points that designers are seeing come down to communication and expectation setting not being there. And the thing about friction points is they're not nice. It's not nice having a client that's not happy with us. It zaps our energy. It takes time away from other client work. It usually means that you are doing work that you're not being charged, like that you're not being paid for. So being able to remove these friction points in your business is just going to mean that you're going to have a smoother process. And ultimately we want, you know, a project to happen with as few of these friction points as possible.
What that then means is that the client is going to love the project and the process, and they're not just going to love the end product, but they're going to have loved working with you and the process with which you took them through. And that means you're going to have a client at the end of the project who is going to be really happy to recommend you, to advocate for you and to leave a glowing testimonial.
So I thought I would give you three examples today of where I'm seeing designers having regular friction points and how you can fix those with some adjustments to your communication.
The first one is about the budget not being clear, and I'm just going to say from the outset, as a studio owner or someone who is talking to the client, you need to be comfortable talking about money. Whether that be your fees or the budget for the project, you need to feel comfortable talking about money. Understanding the budget for the project is so, so important.
And you need to get this information out of the client really early on, like before they've even become a signed client. It doesn't have to be an exact number, but it does have to be relatively accurate.
By knowing what the client's budget is, this is going to allow you to design accordingly. We all know as designers, if we take the example of a bathroom, we know that you can design a bathroom for $50,000. You can also design a bathroom for $200,000. And that is part of our skill, being able to design a bathroom that functions well and looks good at any budget level. But if the client isn't upfront with you from the start about what your budget is, and let's say for example, you have designed a bathroom that is $150,000 and really their budget is $100,000, it then becomes very hard to take that design back. The client has fallen in love with what you've designed and now because of the budget, you have to slash things out of it. Whereas if you had known that their budget was a hundred thousand dollars to begin with, you would have been able to design accordingly and it still would have been a beautiful bathroom. The design would have been amazing, but you might've made different selections of the materials that you've used or the supplier that you have used.
So much of a successful project is around momentum that we build throughout the project. And one of the fastest ways to kill the momentum is when something comes back way over budget and you have to redo the design. So being clear with the client around what their budget is and having clear communication around that throughout all of your pre-client stage,
And then also reaffirming that in your initial kickoff meetings once they are a signed client is really, really important.
The second thing that I have seen coming up regularly is around feedback from clients and clients really not understanding how they should give feedback and how much feedback or revisions they have available to them. Then designers not really knowing how to deal with that. So one of the best things you can do in your fee proposal and also in your documentation leading up to issuing the fee proposal is making it clear how many revisions are included in your work. Now you might have two revisions included or three, maybe four, depending on the size and scope of the project. But being clear from the very beginning around what that amount is and when that will happen and how the client needs to give you feedback is going to mean that you're able to manage that really well. And the client is going to understand how they need to give you feedback. So for example, say you have maybe a couple of concept presentations because it's a large project and really you want them to solidify their feedback in one document, in one email, however it is that you capture that feedback so that you can do one round of revisions.
When you issue that round of revisions, you can easily say this is round one revision, we have two more included or we have three more included. You're communicating clearly to the client how many more revisions they've got left. You're being very efficient with your time, not by doing a few changes here and a few changes there. You're kind of waiting until the end of the process and then doing a round of revisions.
And once again, you just need to communicate this with the client. Say, we won't be doing any revisions till after this date. If you could please make sure all feedback is received by this date so that we can stay on track.
Similarly, once you've issued your second round of revisions, you can say this is our second round of revisions. Just to make you aware, we have one more round of revisions included. Any changes after that will be billed at our hourly rate. Clear and concise communication is so important, but you can't just drop that into an email. You need to have kind of said that at the start. It needs to be included in your fee proposals. You need to talk to the client about that.
Remember, they might not actually know what you mean by three sets of revisions being included. Is that three major revisions or is it every little tweak? Is that a revision? So being clear about what it is, what's involved at the start of the process, but then also being clear and concise in your communication throughout the process is key.
You also have to remember so many of these people that we work with, they might not have ever done a design and build project before. So part of our role is to educate them about how they need to act throughout this process.
The third one is around invoicing for furniture items. And this is one that I've seen come up a lot lately. So a really good way of setting up your week is that you have one day, one morning, one afternoon where you are doing all of your invoicing. So it might be that you're doing your invoicing out and you're also paying all the invoices that you need to to furniture suppliers and whoever else.
If I use the example of a piece of furniture that is going into a shipment, you have a cutoff date with the supplier that you need to have placed the order by X day to ensure that that piece of furniture will get into the container with the delivery of X date three months down the path.
This is a common scenario with so many, especially overseas furniture suppliers where they have shipment dates that they have closure on. Now, if you have, you've issued the invoice to your client to say, here is the deposit invoice for this piece of furniture. You need them to pay the invoice in plenty of time so that you can pay the furniture supplier in a timely manner that sits within your weekly process. So think about it. If you don't have the client's money in your account by the day that you are sitting down to pay your invoices, two things are going to happen. You either need to pay that invoice at another time, which will disrupt your whole week, or you need to wait a week until you pay that invoice. Now, that might sometimes be possible. But if you are working towards a shipment date, that would mean that the furniture would be delayed. So this can be easily fixed by when you send the invoice. Firstly, send it with plenty of time. Don't leave it to the last minute and then when you do send the invoice, clearly state payment on this invoice needs to be made by this date so we can ensure we meet container cutoffs or supplier cutoff timelines. Then possibly schedule a follow-up email if that invoice hasn't been paid. Now, this is just something that helps. We so often think that clients aren't paying an invoice for a particular reason. And generally it's just because they're busy.
We're all busy, lives get busy, you read an email and then before you know it, it's a couple of weeks later and you haven't got a chance to get back to it yet. But being very clear in the communication around when you need them to do something. So setting the expectation of their behavior is so crucial because then that means that their behavior is not disrupting your workflow.
And that is so much part of the feeling of being in control of your studio. So often, you know, one of the overarching things of all of these kinds of friction points with clients is that we no longer feel in control of our studio. We feel like the clients are running the projects. So they are just three friction points that I'm sure a lot of you have experienced that can easily be resolved with clear and concise communication. Of course, all of this clear and concise communication really hangs off the framework of your systems and processes.