Episode #3 Transcription - Being Boutique - 3 Ways to Serve Your Clients so they Become Natural Evangelist for Your Work

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 helps you transform your clients' lives. You can do this. 

Let's get to it. Today, we are going to talk about what it means to be boutique in your business. Being boutique doesn't have anything to do with being small. It has everything to do with how you show up and serve your clients. And when done well, experiencing the natural benefits of that such as being able to charge more, and cherry pick the clients and the projects you want to work on. Sounds pretty good, right? So often as designers, it's easy to get caught up in the everyday the nuts and bolts of what we do the drawings, the specifications, booking meetings, ordering samples, and so on. 

One of my soapboxes is the incredible responsibility we have as designers, and how too often I see designers missing opportunities to connect with their clients in a more meaningful way. If you're a residential interior designer, for example, let's think about this for a moment. Your clients are literally and figuratively giving you the keys to their home, their most intimate space, the most personal space, and they're giving you all their money, and they're saying make this great. It's an incredible responsibility. And if you're a commercial designer, you're responsible for creating public spaces that shape and form our experiences and create spaces for connection and interaction. You're often working with clients who are making huge investments and taking on big risks. 

So how do we take this incredible responsibility and be good stewards to our clients? And the answer is through top notch service, incredible service baked into your design process. And we call this being boutique. And it's because of these practices that we can afford to take on fewer clients and charge a premium. And when we deliver an exceptional experience for our clients, we end with clients who love to share our name and give it freely to their friends and neighbors. So you starting to see how all of this works together. It's a win, win. So today, I'm going to share with you three ways to serve your clients. So they become natural evangelist for you and your work. Number one, do ordinary things extraordinarily well. Number two, prepare your clients for the inevitable. And number three, stay connected. All right, we're going to dive into each of these and I'm going to give you some examples. But I want you to be thinking for yourself and your clients. Let let this consider this episode, a brainstorming session. There's so much more that you could do. So I want you to think about what fits in your wheelhouse and what comes naturally to you and how can you really infuse that into your design services so that it's it's baked into your process, okay.

All right, let's start with number one. Delight your clients by doing ordinary things extraordinarily well. Alright, so there's a number of ways you can do this. Some cost money, while others are totally free. So here are just a few ways to do the ordinary extraordinarily well. First, pay attention and celebrate birthdays, holidays, and anniversaries. All right, depending on the scope of your project, you can do a small gesture, or you can go big, send flowers and a card. Give them a monogrammed gift, such as cocktail napkins or give them tickets to a cooking class for their anniversary. We just had Passover, you can send a nice bottle of wine or something to acknowledge the occasion. And this is especially meaningful when it's a holiday that you might not personally celebrate as long as it comes from the heart. Or you celebrate pets, your clients, pets are extensions of their family. 

First of all, learn their names, know your pets names, okay? And be sure to greet them when you whenever you're showing up to the house. All right, if you're going to a consultation, and you know that your your family has sweet pups, think about bringing a pet treat, there are boutique pet bakeries popping up all over the place. I know at our local farmers market, there's a guy, he's so cool. He's an Army veteran turned pet Baker. And so I love supporting him. Those are things that you can show not only are you supporting a local person, but you can use that as a way to celebrate your clients furry friends, I do think that having an ingredient list might be nice in case you you have anybody that might have a pet with allergies, I think that could be a thing. So just make sure you've got that on hand and make sure it's okay with your client before you give them any treats. 

Okay, next, I want to talk about the deep dive interview. Alright, the deep dive interview happens at the outset of a project, it's the very first step to kicking off a project with a client. So at this point, we've already done a consultation. We've sent the client a proposal, which they have accepted, and they've paid their retainer to start working with us. And when the project begins, the very first step is our deep dive interview. Think of it like a coffee date, this is a way to get to know your client better. And it's different than the consultation because of the consultation, you're going to be more focused on the project itself and understanding the scope of work, what needs to be done, right. So that's where you're getting to know the details of the project. Now, in the deep dive interview, this is your chance to get to know the details of the people. It helps you establish trust, and it shows them that you really care about them as people first and foremost. You can ask questions like, tell me, where did you meet? What travel experiences have you had? Where did you grow up? Has? What are the things that have happened to you in life that you've experienced that have maybe impacted? What kind of how you're inspired? Like, what do you how you want this space to look and feel and the vibe that you want. 

And I will just tell you, that clients will often open up to you and tell you very personal and interesting stories that can simply become good to know details, or be a jumping off point for design inspiration. i To me, the deep dive interview is my absolute most favorite part of the design experience. I love to sitting and listening to the stories. And it for for me and our team. It gives us so much inspiration for the starting point. And then we kind of get to know our clients and what do they want their home and I'm speaking from a residential perspective, if you're a commercial designer, you can still do this with your commercial clients understanding their

business and what was the inspiration for their business and how you know, where did it start? And so this still applies in the commercial world, I believe. Yeah, I clients will open up and you just if you don't already do this, I would really encourage you to take an hour to sit down with your clients, bring bring coffee, meet him at a coffee shop, whatever. But just let them talk and listen. 

All right, next our end of week emails, totally free and absolutely essential. So this is foundational to our business. Every single client gets an email at the end of the week on Friday to recap where everything is on their project. For one your clients are Busy people, they're usually so busy during the week. And they really start to think about their project and where everything is over the weekend, you want to get ahead of their questions with an end of week email. This gives them the opportunity over the weekend to think through any questions you may have asked or provide feedback on anything you've shared with them. So they can put together those questions. And then you've got it for Monday morning. So you can hit the ground running. The last thing you want is to enter the week without having touched base with your clients, and let them know where things are that you're thinking about them that you're handling things. So they never have to wonder where things are. I know anytime we have missed this opportunity, you bet Monday morning, we get an email saying hey, just kind of wondering where things are. And and, you know, we've there have been I have, my business has expanded and retracted because we've moved a couple of times, sometimes I've had a team of people sometimes I've had nobody working with me, sometimes I've had one person. And when I have been in the smaller days where it's just me or maybe two, there's just one person. And if an email, if I know an email can't get out, very, very, very rare. Something comes up, I've got a sick kid, or you know, who knows what, I will at least send an email and say, Hey, guys, I want you to know I'm taking care of everything things are looking good over here, i Something came up and I didn't have time to give you a full rundown for the week. I'll let you I'll get that to you Monday morning. Just want you to know, we're all good. Nothing, nothing major happening over here. Look for that update on Monday. And they usually appreciate just knowing that they're being thought about. So end of Week, end of Week, emails, absolutely essential, totally free. All right. This next one is something we do with very large projects, when a client is living in the home. And we have a a big install day, or maybe even a multi install day. So not every client not every project. But what we do is we will offer to give them a hotel, stay at a nice hotel and dinner for the night. It's all too common that we underestimate how long an installation takes, or you run into issues, it just happens. It's the nature of the beast. The last thing you want is your client walking in at the end of a long day for both of you and to not be done. 

Wouldn't it be better to put your client up in a nice hotel and offer dinner so they can enjoy a staycation while you and your team finishes the job without the time crunch factor. And the next morning, you and your client will be rested, fresh and ready for the big reveal. And you'll have beautiful natural light. So budgeting think about this for a minute. If you're doing a large project like this, and you've got a good furniture budget, you you are maybe making 10 to $20,000 on your markup. Spending a few $100 on a hotel, and dinner really becomes a no brainer. So these are the kinds of things that you want to budget for and be thinking about very early on and making sure you've got that that buffer built in so you can really treat and delight your clients. Okay. All right. And then finally are the project binders. And I think this is fairly standard practice. But you really want to do this well, to close out a project project close is so important. And I know that this happens at a time, especially these days, as long as projects are taking. I know that it can make you can feel fatigued, you're just ready to move on, you might have a new shiny project that you're ready to get started on. But taking the time to put together a project binder for your client really makes them feel supported. So you give this at the close out. And this binder is simply a record of the items and specifications along with any manuals that you may have received care instructions. So like an upholstery care and maintenance sheet, any warranty information. 

If you've put any live plants in your client's home, you may want to have a record of of how to maintain or to care for them. Okay. The specification sheets removed they've probably seen those already at the presentation. This is just a final accounting of of those items, we usually will staple to it a small sample of the upholstery fabric that we have used on that particular item. So just a few examples of what you might include in a project binder at the end of a project. Okay, so those are the ways that you can delight your clients by doing the ordinary extraordinarily well. Is that an exam must have list No way. I'm sure you can think of some other ways to simply delight your client by going above and beyond or doing things that they may have never expected. So build it into your process. If you use Asana or some other project management checklist for project, put it in there. Okay. Real quick before I move on, I will say that for the birthdays and anniversaries, that is a question that we put into our initial our long form questionnaire that we send our clients prior to a consultation. So we've already done a discovery call, they get a, and they agree to a consultation. When they book their consultation, they will also be given a long form questionnaire that that asked for more detail than we do in that initial intake form. And one of those questions is, what are their birthdays, we just asked for the month and the day, we don't care about the year. And then if they become a client, a full service or design on the client, or whatever, we have a special calendar on Google Calendars just for client birthdays. And it is someone's job as we're doing Client Onboarding, to add that to Google Calendar and to set a reminder, one week in advance. So keep in mind, as I'm talking about doing these things, it is all pie in the sky. If you do not formally build it into your process, you have to have a checklist for everything right?

And assign somebody to do it. If you've got a team, somebody needs to know who is responsible for these project binders, what goes in it who's responsible during the onboarding phase for making sure that the clients birthday gets put on that calendar so that it doesn't come and go and we forget. All right. Moving on. Number two, prepare your clients for the inevitable mishaps so that they always feel supported. Alright, you know what happens, stuff happens. Preparing your client for hiccups not only shows that you have experienced things long enough to know what to expect, but that you also know how to handle them when they do arise. Setting expectations is so much of what we do. And I, I have been guilty of this, of knowing that something could possibly happen. And then maybe not saying anything or just getting too busy to remember to remind the client you know, just keep in mind blah, blah, blah, like leather, right? You've got leather upholstery, leather is a natural material it is going to and this isn't a mishap. This is just setting expectations, right? Making sure your client understands the nature of leather, or marble. Or let's talk about logistics something arriving damaged. Okay, let's get into some specifics examples. Demolition demo, is when you will discover things behind the walls you just couldn't see before. And until you get X ray vision, you need to prepare your clients, that the contractor builder may uncover obstacles that you'll need to solve for. It's just the nature of the beast, if it's gonna, if something's going to happen, it's going to be during demo that you find something that you're going to need to troubleshoot and work through. Sometimes it doesn't happen, but that's in my experience is quite rare. So just be prepared. Just prepare them that don't stress, we know these things happen, and we'll solve for them when and if they do come up and move on. Industry delays is another example by now. Everyone knows that everything just takes longer. 

Just be honest and realistic with your clients about what you know and keep them apprised as needed. I also want you to ask yourself, do they need to know remember, your clients don't always need all of the information and I do not mean this in any way that would be considered unethical. But it is our job to make their lives easier. And we make it look easy. Something arrived at the warehouse broken, no biggie, have a replacement sent and move on. Telling your client only adds unnecessary stress and questions about the process. Sometimes clients just have to know and you need you need an answer from them. But if there's something that happens that you can resolve on your own, without involving them in it, they're just going to have a better experience. So there is a time and a place where they just don't need to know and you can fix things move on. Alright, another thing is the next steps PDFs preparing next steps PDFs. So these are one page PDFs that outline what to expect next, right remember I just said setting expectations is so much and he would deliver these to the clients in a printable or or digital format at the end of each major milestone such as the end of the consultation concept Design and have the design presentation. Prior to the install, perhaps these are meant to be general in nature so that you can reuse them for all of your clients. But the point is you may have, you should have at the very outset of a project, giving your clients an overview of the design process and what to expect, right. But two things, one, they're going to forget what's next, if you don't tell them and number two, there's probably some more detail that you're ready to add into the mix at this point, at the end of these milestones about what to add next that you know the kind of details that would overwhelm them if you shared at the very beginning. So you want to almost drip feed some of these details so that your client sees not only do you have a process that you're going by, but you know what to expect, and you're setting their expectations, so that there aren't any surprises along the way. Okay.

Alright, moving on. Number three, stay connected. I want you to always be top of mind with your clients. Remember, we're talking about being boutique and we're talking about how doing this creates natural evangelist for the way you work for you and your your your design business. So how can you stay connected, even after the the project? One way is to follow them on social media did they post a cute picture with their family on vacation, like and comment on your clients post and just let them know that you're happy and excited for them. And I don't mean this in any sort of inauthentic, sleazy stalking way at all. I mean, generally speaking, if you've got a great experience with your clients, following them on social media is, is often as a natural progression, if they're on social media, not all of my clients are. But this is just a nice way to let them know you see them and you're thinking about them. Okay, another idea is to throw a small cocktail party or open house to showcase the project at the end of a project. And it allows you to meet their friends. So this doesn't have to cost a ton of money. You can give them a couple of bottles of wine and present a short coterie platter if you want. Help them get get it set up, you know, ask them to invite you know 5 - 10 You don't want I mean if they want to throw a huge rager to celebrate great and you can help them put that together if you want. But what I'm talking about is is possibly presenting and you'll know if it's the right project to do this on or not. But maybe presenting within the idea of offering to do a little open house for you, provide a couple of bottles of wine and some nibbles and some bite sized nibbles to have a charcuterie platter is really nice. You want to stick around for maybe the first 15 to 30 minutes, and then you want to split and you want to let them enjoy their time together just long enough so you can showcase the home, meet their friends, thank your client, and then move on and let them have their time. So I don't need that for every project. But there are many projects where that is a really fun thing to do for our clients. And you'll know if it makes sense for some of your projects. Okay, when you're doing a photo shoot for the project, so staying connected, remember, we're talking about ways to continue to delight your client even after the project is done. 

So let's think about the idea of of you're doing a photo shoot for your project. And let's say it's a family. What if you arranged for the clients to come at the end of the photoshoot and ask your photographer to do just a mini photoshoot with the family, giving them you know three to five nice photos that they can keep and then you can choose to frame that for them and make sure that they have an opportunity to get their hands on those at the end and it You know, usually your photographer, they're not going to charge you any extra to do just a couple of quick photos at the end, so long as it's within that allotted amount of time that you asked for. But your clients will cherish that. And think about this too, when you've, when you've got that photo in the house somewhere for them, they're gonna think of you and be reminded of you every time they look at it. So that is another way to just stay top of mine. All right, you can offer up conversational gifts. So this could be really interesting cocktail glasses or embroidered cocktail napkins, a really nice candle. These turned into conversational pieces with their guests the next time they're having people over hosting. So I know you can probably think of more ways to stay connected with your client but but think through ways to just stay top of mind with your client long after the project is done. And I will tell you back to the birthdays, we still send our old clients birthday cards, even after we're done with them. Every year we hit the recurring reminder goes on for I think we haven't slept for like five years. So that is an easy way to stay top of mind at least once a year.

I hope today's episode has given you some food for thought about how to be boutique. Being Boutique is about delighting your client every step of the way and beyond. When you do, they will naturally brag about their experience with you to all of their friends. And in my experience, the best clients usually have great friends and are more of the kind of people you would want to work with. And word of mouth is the absolute best way to gain a strong client base. And remember, you don't need to do all of these things all of the time, with the exception of the end of week emails. But know that small, meaningful, authentic connections help your client to feel like they're part of your world. And they are supported throughout their project with you. And in turn, they are excited to share your name. And you'll be top of mind the next time they're ready to do a new project. They've had such a great experience. They wouldn't dream of working with anyone else. Okay, friend. That is all I have for you today. Stay tuned for another episode of the designers Oasis podcast. And don't forget, we've got a recap of notes from today's episode, which can be found at designers. oasis.com. All right, I will see you next time. Thanks, 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 No, I appreciate you so very much. Thank you, my friend. Have a wonderful rest of your day and I'll see you next time