Episode #4 Transcription - 10 Elements to Define your Interior Design Services

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. Have you ever struggled to explain the differences in your interior design services to a potential new client? Do you have a clearer picture of the benefits and the results of each service? And what type of client might be the best fit? Do you sometimes wonder if you have enough offerings? Or more likely? Are you offering too many types of services? Does everyone on your team know and understand the differences and your design services? Having clearly defined design services is paramount to running an efficient and organized business. It not only helps you get clear on the details, such as the deliverables, the investment and the timeline. But it also helps you to talk about your services to your clients with clarity, and confidence. 

And let's be honest, guys, confidence is what we're after here, right? You can also use these details to help you put together those Oh, so important client deliverables, such as your services and investment guide or your welcome packet. So if you're just getting started, this is obviously an important first step. But even if you've been in business for a while, it's important to refine and to audit these things from time to time. So maybe it's time for you to go back and look at your services and all of the details of each and make sure that they're really buttoned up and crystal clear. And that everyone on your team knows the differences. Okay. And then it's so important that you document these details. Again, anyone working for you needs to know exactly what each type of service entails. And it needs to be in a place where anyone can access it. Whether this is a digital version, or a print version, such as your business binder, which I'm personally a fan of. Keep in mind, this would be an internal document. This is not a client facing document client facing would be your services and investment Guide. For example, we'll save that for another episode. Real quick. 

Before we dive into this, I have made a cheat sheet that you can download so that if you need to sit back and really go through your services and make sure that it is clearly defined, you're now starting from ground zero, so you can find that link in the show notes. And also, I wanted to say if you haven't yet, go back and listen to episode two, we're talking about the five common types of interior design services that you might consider offering. This is where we talked about the different service types, the pros and cons of each and who is a good fit. And once you've narrowed down your one, two, maybe three service types that you offer. Each one of those is going to have these details documented for it. So we're gonna go through 10 elements that you need to define for each service. So if you offer three different types of services, each one needs to address 

These 10 elements that we're going to talk about right now. All right, so let's dive right into it first, pretty obvious, you got to name the service. Keep it simple, and it needs to make sense. Make sure that the name clearly reflects the service that you're offering. You don't want to get overly cute here and lose the idea behind the name. And for Pete's sake, don't use alliteration for alliteration sake, you know, here are some different examples. So designer for a day, you might call it designer for day like I do, or you might call it a VIP day or designer by your side, you're in home consultation. And I will tell you personally, I always lean towards the most direct and clear title or name for the service. I just call it an in-home consultation. You might call it a design, kickstart or design Jumpstart. I've heard all of these names used throughout this industry. You design, you might call it E design, you might call it virtual design or remote design, I used to call it oh my gosh, I forget design in a box or something like that for a very short period of time I dabbled with that name. But it just was easier to just call it E design. So we went back to that

design only if you offer design only service where you're not doing any ordering or project management. You can call it design only, we call it simply Design here at KBID. So think about the name of the service that is clear, and clearly defines what that service type is. Alright, next you're going to describe the service and what it entails. And what are the primary benefits? What does it achieve? Is it in person or remote. Here's an example designer for a day helps clients achieve a lot in a short amount of time. It's pretty simple description, there only needs to be one, two, maybe three sentences to describe what that service is another example full service. This is a turnkey service that handles everything from design to ordering and installation. Alright, so make sure you have a super clear description of what that project entails. 

Next, you want to make sure that you are clearly defining what is included? What are the deliverables? And what format. Some examples include? Does it include a mood board? Does it include a shopping list? Is it service include drawings? And if so, to what level? Are you including floorplans and elevations? What about 3d perspectives? Are you going to take it all the way to renderings that needs to be clearly defined? In this document? Does it include in person meetings? If so, what are the duration of those meetings? Where do they happen? And what is the what are the intentions of those meetings? So full service design, for example, it includes a deep dive interview and a site survey. Those are examples of meetings. And they are, you're going to clearly define how long they last, right? So think through all of those deliverables, including meetings. If you're including any kind of a shopping list or specifications, you need to define how much detail is expected from that list? Is it just a simple link? Or are you also going to include information like dimensions finish selections, colors? I would hope that you would include at least some of those basic details. But how detailed Do you want to get? So thinking through what's included? And also what format is it? Is it a digital format or is it print that kind of thing. So, just as important as what is included? Number four, you want to list out what is excluded, it should never be a surprise to a client what is not included with a particular type of service. So for example, are drawings provided are you going to provide follow up notes is project management involved a couple of examples. With each design, we specify that we will provide floor plans only.

We will only provide elevations. In cases where we think they are necessary. They are not fully expected and we decide if we think that they are necessary. And so for example, if we're doing any sort of bathroom, we would want to include an elevation of the sink and mirror and lighting heights. Any sort of art installation, we want to make sure that we're indicating where everything is located that way so in those cases, we might draft up a couple of simple elevations is project management or ordering included make sure that you include In all of that information when you're thinking about what is excluded from that type of service? Alright, moving on, we want to talk about how will you communicate with your clients, you want to outline what methods of communication will be utilized in the service, will you have in person meetings or calls? Okay? Let's think through a couple of examples, first, full service clients. And I'm just going to use my own examples because this is what I know. But you are the best person to decide for your business what you're okay with. So for me full service clients, they know that they can't text me, text is reserved for friends and family. But they can call me anytime during business hours. And if I'm not available to pick up the call, I will call them back. Usually that same day. Okay. 

There are exceptions, you know, if we are meeting somewhere and they'll say I'm running late, because I can't find parking, or they're running late, they can't find parking, they can text me and say, Hey, I'm on my way, or you know, anything truly urgent, they can if they need to hop on the call with me. But generally speaking, we don't communicate via text designer for a day clients will typically need to book a call with me, or they can send an email. And then you design clients they have built in calls and emails for the duration of their project. So think about how you will communicate how the duration and sort of the schedule and what what you're comfortable with. I know a lot of designers they're perfectly okay with text because it's just easier and faster for them. And that if that works for you, great, do it, make sure it's clearly documented.

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Okay, moving on number six, what is the timeline? Is this service two hours, one week, six weeks, four to 12 months, every service needs to have a timeline assigned to it and even if that's a time range, so for example, an in home consultation, how long is that it's new for me, it's two hours. Designer for a day is six hours. If we're doing an E design project, my clients know they can expect that in two to four weeks. And we set that schedule from the very beginning of a project. But in this case for this internal document, we want to outline sort of some generalities of what is the timeline, I want to share a little story. When I was living in Texas, I booked a designer for a day in Dallas with a client. Typically for me a drive to Dallas is an hour and a half away. But I spoke to them on the phone they said they lived in Dallas, we I said that's fine. Of course we charged for the extra time to drive and the mileage and they were happy to pay it. Well, I didn't realize the who lived on the other side of town and Dallas, which made the entire one way trip to get there a solid two hours. So this added four hours of driving to an already long day of design. Plus, I needed time to stop and eat and I also had to deal with some traffic. It was over 10 hours door to door that day and I didn't get to see my girls before bedtime. Like I said, Of course I charge for my time and my mileage but overall it wasn't worth it to me. It was an awful feeling and I was exhausted. So it was at that point I decided that I would no longer accept designer for day clients beyond a one hour drive to avoid this happening again. So when you're thinking about those timelines, you can think about it in this way too so that you can set your boundaries and what is going to work for you and what you're okay with. Okay, moving on. Number seven, what is the investment? Are we talking about a service that is flat fee? Are you charging hourly for the service Is there a range of hours? Is this a custom proposal? Or do you have a set fee? Is there a minimum for you to accept the job, I want you to think about each service and how you will charge. I understand if we're talking about a full service project, generally, you're going to provide a customized proposal for every single client. But I'm going to recommend that you establish a minimum, even from the very beginning, establish a minimum for what it would take, think about, what does it take just to put together like, the most basic deliverables to do a site survey to do a deep dive interview, to put together your essential drawings? You know, so if you say have a minimum of 10 hours, well, guess what I mean, everybody's different. And every, every designer works a little bit faster or slower. But just think about where does 10 hours get you? Chances are, this is probably not going to get you too far. So full service, whether you're charging flat fee, or hourly, you want to think about or hybrid, which is my my preferred method, what is your minimum for full service? To get started on any project? That's going to make you excited, okay. So that you want to think about what is the investment if you're doing e design, those are often you would come up with a fee schedule for the different room types. Of course, you always want to put in that caveat that if there is an exceptionally large or complicated space that that fee could change, but those are your kind of your starting place. So number seven, what is the investment?

Alright, moving on, we are getting through these. So quick. Number eight, who is this service? Ideal for? Please don't skip this question. If you are on the phone with a busy executive, what services would be ideal for that person, likely full service design. So if you are offering an E design service, who is ideal for that, you may reveal the service that you're offering, or you're putting together doesn't line up with your ideal client who you actually want to be working for. And so you may decide to not offer that service for that particular reason. So again, in episode three, I share my ideas on what kind of clients are a good fit or not for those five common design services, if you want to revisit that I do share some of my ideas there. Okay, moving on number nine, what are the terms to book with you? Okay, so this is going to tie to your contract or your agreement. But I want you to think about what are your non negotiables for certain projects, just to book with you. These are non negotiable. So here are some examples to think about. We just talked about minimum fees. So for full service, minimum fee, maybe is 20,000, I don't know you are the only one who can decide what your minimum fees are for different service types. Back to my example of traveling in a long day, what is the distance you are willing to travel for a particular project? For me, today, if I had a client call me and they wanted, they lived, I live in Denver, they live in Boulder, I'm probably not going to take that project because I am at a place where I just don't want to travel. And it's only 30 minutes on a good day. But if I had any sort of traffic, it's just too far for me to travel for for a full service project. But I am willing to do a designer for a day there. 

So thinking about what are the distances that you're willing to travel from your home base, and make sure that that's clearly defined. Some other terms you might think about, think about your design consultation. Who needs to be there for that meeting? Are you going to require that all decision makers need to be there? I know that I've heard stories of designers who have gone and had a paid two hour consultation with somebody, one family member showed up, they talked about things they really jived they came up with some great ideas. And they decided, Oh, this is great. Let's get started. Let's do full service together. You go back, you put together a proposal, send it to the couple, and all of a sudden you've got this other decision maker who doesn't really know what's going on or isn't filled in or doesn't share that vision. And so you may decide if you've got a project that is likely going to be full service. And you're going to start with a two hour design consultation. You need to decide how important is it for you that you require both decision makers to be there. For me personally I make it a strong suggestion. But I have been in situations where I was flexible, because I saw a scenario where I've got a couple there, they're \clearly telling me that this other person, you know, is cool with us getting started. And, you know, generally speaking, I can, I can decide for myself on a case by case basis, if I'm going to require it or not. And I'm, this is really just a case of like reading the room, so to speak, when you're on that discovery call. So it is my strong recommendation, but not a requirement. But you decide what you want to require there just to book that consultation. How about cancellation policies, How flexible are you, all of my services do have a pretty strict cancellation policy that they must agree to, at the time of booking, I am flexible in cases of sickness or illness, which I realized happens, we're all human. And I just do that on a, you know, it's a trust factor, you know, if somebody says, Hey, I'm sick, or I've got a sick kid, I'm not going to heaven Hall, we're just going to reschedule that with them. So another one thinking about, who do you back to who you want to attend this meeting, maybe you've got a consultation or designer for a day, I have decided that it would be one of my non negotiables that for designer for a day, that I do not want any of my clients to bring a friend to toggle.

Stick with me. I'm sure their friend has great ideas, but they're friends not paying me. I'm working directly with my client. And unless this person lives in the home, I have asked my designer for day clients that they that only the people who live in the home and those decision makers should attend this day. Okay. And I learned this from experience, because I had a designer for a day, the client brought in a friend, the friend had a lot of opinions. And it wasn't necessarily in alignment with the clients decisions. And so all of a sudden, I was in this odd like, place of like, who am I trying to please hear this, this friend who is well meaning and wasn't trying to to, you know, shake things up in a negative way, I think she was just truly unaware that the commentary was really slowing us down and slowing the client down from making decisions, it really just kind of put a damper on the day. You know, it wasn't totally awkward, it was just one of those moments where I was like, you know, what, I'm just gonna have clients make sure that they're there, you know, it's them and a partner if they choose to invite their partner. And that's something they want to come along for. Other thing is I make a very strong recommendation that if somebody has young kids, that those kids have a caretaker. So if they're not at school, if they're at home, they need to have a babysitter, or grandma or somebody that's taking care of them. 

Again, this is all from experience, having a long meeting where you're trying to communicate, you're trying to be efficient with your time, and you've got a client who is very distracted by children, it's going to be harder to get through the work done. So most people understand it, they get it, and it's not a big deal at all. So thinking about those kinds of things, when you're thinking about what are the terms to book. Okay, and then the last one is you want to think about how will your clients book with you how to book your service? Are you going to use a program like dubsado, or HoneyBook. And if not, you just need to think about what software or tools you will use to have the client read through their proposal, sign any agreements and pay for the service. Personally, I use dubsado. And all of my clients pay schedule and sign their agreements online, before they ever see my smiling face. So thinking about how the clients will book is another key decision that you need to make for every single service that you provide. Okay, we got through this really quick today. Yet, I still think this seems like a lot to think about. But having each of these elements clearly defined, ensures you can number one, talk about the service clearly with your prospective clients. 

Number two, ensure your team understands what is included and how the service works. Number three, it's going to help you to put together those things like your welcome packet or your services and investment guide. In number four, it's going to make sure that your contract backs all of these things up because it's going to be reiterated in your contract. Okay, so now if you want my cheat sheet for this, it's a free download, look for the link in the show notes to snag that. And remember, even if you've been in business for a while, every now and then it's nice to do an audit of your services, how they work, and make sure that everyone on your team understands them as well. 

I hope you found today's episode helpful. Thank you so much for hanging out with me today. Join me again next week for another episode. Bye for now. 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