EP #21 | Being Boutique - How to Turn your Clients into Natural Evangelists

Welcome to the Designers Oasis podcast. I'm your host, Kate Bendewald, interior designer, mama, and CEO of a thriving interior design business, built on authentic word-of-mouth referrals. It wasn't that long ago that I stepped away from my corporate architecture job to build my own dream, one that would allow me more time with the people that I love, the ability to serve my clients at the highest level and to make a great living. It wasn't always easy, and I've made my share of mistakes along the way. Fast forward to today, and I've learned a thing or two. This podcast is for you - the inspired, creative, ambitious, and let's admit it,  occasionally overwhelmed interior designer who shares this dream of transforming lives by transforming homes. Join me and my guests each week as we walk through practical ways to build an interior design business you love, and help you transform your client's lives. You can do this. 

About a year ago, I was invited to speak at the designers on social Summit. And today I want to share this presentation with you. Because what I talked about is so near and dear to my heart as it relates to interior designers. You see, years ago, I struggled with pricing my services because I thought I needed to compete with the online design brands who at the time were offering $99 room designs. I thought How will I ever compete with that you can't even get me in your door for less than a few $100 What I started to realize was that I was focused on the wrong thing. I didn't need to nor should I compete on price. And this was where my competitive edge really light was in my ability to provide excellent service to my clients. And that for me, it was developed in the years of working in the high end hospitality design. 

So I have distilled my thoughts into this presentation on the idea of being boutique and Being Boutique is how to serve your clients naturally in a way that they become evangelists for your work. So this is a short but powerful episode. I hope you enjoy it and will take into consideration how you can take some of these these ideas and implement them in to your own design business. 

Well, hello there and welcome to designers on social Summit. I'm Kate Bendewald. With Kate Bendewald, interior design and designers oasis. Today we're going to talk about being boutique, how to serve your clients so they become natural evangelists for your work. So two things are gonna happen when you start to implement these practices. Number one, you can charge more you are turning this from an ordinary service into an experience with your clients. And number two, you will find you'll have a long line of eager clients ready to work with you who have come from word of mouth referrals from your clients. So let's dive in. 

Alright, real quick, a little bit about me. So my name is Kate Bendewald. And I am a transplant from Austin, Texas now in Denver, Colorado. I'm an Enneagram seven. So if you know what the Enneagram is, you might know that this is the enthusiast. I love being an enthusiast but it sometimes gets me in trouble. It means I usually have too many projects going on too many pots on the stove, so to speak, and drink of choice I enjoy by old fashion. And finally I wanted to share with you the quote that for me is the guiding light in my business. And it comes from the great Maya Angelou and it says I've learned that people will forget what you said people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. And I think that this really embodies the spirit of it. The being boutique concept. So I hope you will stick with me here while we explore what this means and how you can implement this in your business. 

Before we dive in, I just wanted to mention designers Oasis is a hub and a resource for interior designers. So head over to designersoasis.com and check us out, I'd love to meet you. And you can access our free weekly newsletter, I do offer business coaching, there is a membership for interior designers, as well as Canva templates for your business. Alright, here's where we're going today. 

First, I want to talk to you about how to delight your clients. By doing ordinary things extraordinarily well. Then we're going to talk about how to prepare your clients for the inevitable mishaps. So they always feel supported. And finally, how to turn your client into a natural evangelist for your work. 

Number one is to do ordinary things extraordinarily well. And there are a couple of ways that we do this. Now, we don't do all of these things all the time, except for the first one, the birthdays, but we try to find opportunities to sprinkle in these moments that really just delight our clients, things that they typically are not expecting. And so the first one is celebrating birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays. And we do this by asking our clients for their birthdays at the very outset of the project. And we put it into Google Calendar. So we never forget celebrating pets. And don't forget your clients, furry friends are just as meaningful to them as their children oftentimes. And I think so often, we get so busy in the design process that we don't acknowledge that piece. And I think it's really special. So this could be things like bringing pet treats when you come to share with their furry friend. Certainly, if someone loses a pet really taking time to acknowledge that as well. 

Okay, the deep dive interview is so fun. And this is the chance for us to really get to know our clients from the outset of the project. I think it's so easy to just send a long questionnaire and have them sit and fill these things out. But by giving this personal touch, you're really giving yourself the opportunity to learn things about your client that you're just not going to get from a written response that you can only get through having an authentic face to face conversation. So this is asking questions like, let's say you're working with a couple. Tell me about how you met, you know, keeping track of the details here, like where did they meet? How did they fall in love? Where did they get married? Where did they each grow up and had that have any influences on what they're attracted to InDesign? Where have they traveled? These are the kinds of questions that you can just sit back and listen to their answers and find these wonderful nuggets that become design inspiration. So this deep dive interview, not only helps them feel connected to you and helps build trust, but it also is a perfect jumping off point for the design process. And then we emails I'll talk about these more in a moment. But we just make sure to really streamline our communications to be very respectful of our clients time dinner and hotel during install. So we do this on multi day installations, we put them up in a nice hotel, and place to eat. And that is something that we pay for because if we're doing a two day install, we are going to have a margin to be able to cover that for our clients. Finally, the project binder with manual care instructions. We present this to the client at the end of every project is including plant care. So if we've put any live plants in our client's home, this will have instructions on how to take care of them.

The time is now to stop reacting to your business and flying by the seat of your pants. Your designer, right why not design your year? Let's make 2023 your best year yet. If you're ready to gain clarity in your business, get control over your finances and have peace of mind. With laser focus heading into the new year. Mark your calendar on November 10. I'm hosting the annual master planning workshop and I've got to see with your name on it. In this workshop, I will help you effectively look back at your business and identify what's working and what's not. Plus will map out your revenue and vacation goals for the next year. I want you to get in the right mindset so you can achieve the results you want in your interior design business. Get ready to design your year with intention. Head over to designers oasis.com forward slash plan. As always, the best experience is the live experience. But if you're catching this after the live workshop for live The tie will offer the replay. So you too, can enjoy a year of intention and clarity, all while crushing your goals. Again, that's designers oasis.com forward slash plan.

Okay, number two is preparing your clients for the inevitable. So we have a you know what happens a clause in our contract as well as our welcome package that just reminds client things are gonna happen, there's no such thing as a perfectly crisp, smooth sailing project, it wouldn't be realized. And point here is not to scare your clients, because you don't want to do that. But you want to normalize the things that are going to happen the damages that happen in shipping contractor who doesn't show up the you I could go on. So we just want to normalize it and remind them that they are in good hands, and that you have the experience that is necessary to take care of them. And this is why they've hired you. Again, with preparing your clients. This isn't really preparing your clients for the inevitable but it is just making sure that they stay abreast of what's happening. So for example, with the weekly email that we send, at the end of the week, let's say something arrives damaged on Wednesday, by the time we send this email on Friday, we already have a replacement on the way we've already taken care of it. But by streamlining our communications, it gives our clients much more faith in the process they know to expect it so they're not emailing us throughout the week getting trained to just check in and see where things are. Obviously, some things can't wait till Friday, but most of the time it can pending know to expect it. And I know that they'll have over the weekend to prepare any replies that we might need. So we can hit the ground running on Monday. 

Finally, are the what's next PDF series that we keep. And these are templates that we use the same ones over and over for every project. And what happens is, after these major milestones, our clients will receive a PDF that just reminds them of what to expect next, right? These are the things that we find yourself saying over and over and over again to a client. But after each step, this puts them at ease. They know what to expect. And there's really no question about it, I think we sometimes forget that we always know what's happening next. And sometimes that's not always clear for clients. And so you can just really put them at ease and help them trust the process by having these sort of PDFs ready for you to send as well. All right, moving on to number three. Our final point is how to turn your clients into natural evangelist, what you want to do is just remember to stay top of mind with to your clients after their projects over. And if you're like me, many of my clients have actually become really dear friends through the design process. So we naturally stay in touch. But even if that doesn't happen, I think it's a good idea to stay in touch and keep in contact with your clients after the project is over here are a couple of ways you can do that. One is to follow and interact with them on social media. Now, if you've become friends with them, this is probably pretty simple. And you're doing this already. But even if you're not go ahead and find them and just get connected.

All right, throw a cocktail party open house to showcase the project. Obviously, this is a pre COVID practice. But I know we'll be able to do this again soon. But the idea here is to really hand off the project to your client with a bang. So we do this two different ways. One is we do all of the preparations and hosting and cleanup. And, and the clients pay for just the food and the drinks. But we take care of all of the logistics. But if there's a was a bigger budget project, then we would cover the cost of the the food and drinks there. And remember, this party isn't about you and celebrating and showcasing what you've done. This is really a celebration of your client and their friends and family and reminding them this is a place where you can expect to make some really amazing memories and make sure that you make it about your client and that celebration and not about you. Okay, another way that we have done this is to include the family and photo shoots. So many times my clients have said to me after they've gotten these pictures, I've never had a professional photo taken of me and my family or I have no pictures of be with my kids. It's always me behind the camera taking the pictures, or it's just been years or decades since they've had a professional photo taken at all of their family. So if you're already taking a photo shoot, ask your clients to come at the very end and leave 15 to 30 minutes and have the photographer take a couple of family shots that you can gift to your clients and they absolutely love this and it costs you little to no money To be able to do this for your clients. Finally, when giving gifts, you know, we continue to celebrate our clients for years beyond working together with birthdays and anniversaries, and sometimes it's just a card. But we definitely like to give gifts that keep giving, for example, the the family photo is one way that every time they see that family photo, they're gonna think of you, well, let's say wine club membership. So maybe you give them three months, a three month membership to a wine club. So now they have all these bottles of wine, they're having a friend over, they open the bottle and pour it and they start talking about the wine. And all of a sudden, you're they're asking, Where did you get it, and it's my, my interior designer gave it to me. And now they're talking about you, it could be a candle, you know, somebody, they have friends over and they comment on the candle, all of a sudden, they're talking about you again. So gifts that keep on giving and or conversational just adds to your ability to stay at the top of, of your clients minds. All right, I hope you have found this helpful. 

One last thing I will say before we wrap up here is that it's super important to add some of these things to your documentation for your design process. For example, we use Asana for project management. And this is all of our tasks that have to be done at every stage of the project. So a lot of these things like documenting the clients birthdays, for example, that is a step that we have listed in Asana, it's assigned to someone and they have to make sure that that's done. So I find that a lot of these ideas can be very lofty, unless you do it intentionally. And you find ways to give yourself the reminders that you need to make sure that it happens. Okay, so thanks again, real quick. Before we go, I want to just remind you that if you haven't yet head over to designers oasis.com forward slash join if you want to learn about the membership. And here's my contact information, email me at Kate at designers oasis.com If you are interested in the membership, or have any other questions for me, and again, thank you to designers on social summit for having me. Thank you for being here. And I look forward to talking with you soon. 

Thank you so much for letting me spend part of this day with you. If you're loving this podcast, please share it with a friend who you think might also love it. Or perhaps you can take just 30 seconds to open your podcast app and leave us a five star rating. And if you have just an extra minute, go ahead and leave a review. This helps me so much and it helps other designers like you to find the podcast. It also adds fuel to my motivation to keep making great episodes just for you. However you choose to help. Please know I appreciate you so very much. Thank you, my friend. Have a wonderful rest of your day and I'll see you next time