114: Creating Barriers to Entry for Your Design Business
114: Creating Barriers to Entry for Your Design Business
with Michele Williams
If you have ever read the book, Book Yourself Solid, by Michael Port, you may be familiar with his velvet rope policy. This policy is created to establish boundaries for working with your ideal client. You identify your client and give them access to cross the velvet rope to work with you. In this podcast, we are going to dig into creating barriers and then removing barriers for entry to working with your company.
Topics Mentioned:
Barriers
Ideal Client
Messaging
Profitability
Listen to the Episode
Recently I was looking for a product, and I found a website offering something similar. The more I looked at the offering and the description, I quickly recognized it was not for me. Conversely, when I found what I was looking for, it was as if the stars aligned and I could not click the buy now button fast enough.
Have you ever considered your barriers in business?
Here is the ultimate goal: create barriers to entry for those you don’t want to work with while at the same time removing the barriers that could be in the way of your ideal client engaging with your team. Barriers, in and of themselves, are not bad. They are highly useful tools when handled in the correct way.
Let’s begin by talking about some of the barriers we want to remove from so our ideal clients feel excited to move forward.
Identify the Barriers to Doing Business
First, to identify the barriers we want to remove, we have to know what they are. Consider it this way: what are the objections you encounter or the pushback you get when someone is looking to work with your team? What gathers the most questions in your sales process?
I believe it is best to talk about and remove the barriers early on so that for your perfect client, they never really feel like barriers at all. What is so great in this way of doing business is that those who are not your ideal may actually see a barrier that is non-existent for your ideal client.
Barriers we want to remove
Here are a few barriers to entry that we might want to remove so our potential clients will more quickly say yes to working with us. We will look at barriers that we want to create to block those we are not meant to serve after this. These are in no particular order.
Money – Yep, money, or budget or investment is always a common sticking point. And you know what is interesting when we are actually creating the budget for our clients, we are also sometimes shocked…and we do this all the time. Rarely do the numbers ever come in less than what we think they will be. Right now, we are experiencing a rise in construction materials due to the broken supply chain from earlier this year. Lumber and other supplies are costing so much more. What we quoted weeks ago could be much higher now. And if we are not prepared for this, our clients won’t be either. Also, sometimes our clients just have no idea what it costs to get what they want. We joke about this and call it beer budgets and champagne taste. It can be a real thing at any price point. Wanting to do the entire family from for $2000 is just a ridiculous as having a $50k budget to furnish a $2M house.
If we want to remove this barrier, we need to educate on the cost of doing business, the cost of quality and value of products, and the cost of engaging our services. As we all know, the cost is tightly tied to our second barrier, which is value.
Value – When a client values a product or service differently from the way we do, there will be a disconnect. This is where education becomes very important. If we can get buy-in early on to decide what is most important in quality and value, then the cost of the project will come into a framework and make sense. Price separate from a full understanding of the deliverables and transformation is just an unanchored price. I always start with value, then move to price. So that any number I give is anchored in defined value and quality.
Timing – Timeline can be another barrier we need to deal with. Unrealistic expectations have been presented in many online fixer-upper shows that show a mad dash through the weekend and a fully restored and refinished home on the other side. Creating a reasonable timeline for a project and setting expectations is key. This also means we need to understand our own internal timelines and that of the industry and subcontractors we work with. Timing varies naturally throughout the year and even more so now with a demand for services.
Don’t fully know their own needs – Here is another barrier. The client does not fully understand the scope of what is necessary to get the results they are after. Again, HGTV and others have misrepresented all that goes into interior design. It is our job to fully explain the process and the scope of work. When a full understanding of project needs is lacking, it will cause compiled issues with pricing and timing of the project.
Spouse or partner not on board – Go ahead and, from the start, ask for all decision-makers to be present. Require it as much as possible. This one thing will reduce stress later. There is nothing worse than you going through a portion of a design project or even the initial consult only to be told they have to go back and get their partner’s approval. Talk to all those invested in the project at the same time. It is always best if they all hear your explanations together to reduce misinformation or a strung-out sales process.
So, in light of these barriers, how do we remove them? We educate around them. Talk about these on your website and in your welcome materials. Always start by removing or messaging around these in your online presence. This includes the copy on your website and social media. Continue this messaging in your welcome packets, 15-minute phone consults, and questionnaire you send out prior to the consult. We want your client to have more reasonable expectations prior to your arrival, which makes the process flow more smoothly.
The more you can share about your design process or budgets for similar rooms or timing and scope of work, the better off you will be. We don’t want them to feel blindsided at any point.
Now let’s look at barriers we might want to erect to keep the wrong client from calling us.
Barriers we might want to put up
Defined offer – If there is a product or service you do not want to offer, don’t put it on your website or in your package. If you only want to do full house renovations, then your marketing should only talk about that as an offer. If you only want to do e-design, that should be all of your focus. Don’t muddy your own products and services by creating multiple offers, then being frustrated that someone called and actually asked for one of them. Be clear on who you are as a company and how you serve your clients.
Area of service – It seems simple, but if you want to work in a limited area – be clear about that. You don’t want to drive across town, which is 20 miles but takes 1.5 hours, then be clear on the locations you do serve and offer higher pricing if outside of these defined service areas.
Minimal investment – Do you have a minimum you will leave your office for? A minimum that you have decided will be necessary for you to engage in a project? Then say it. You can find a way to do this kindly, but something like: Full room design begins at $5k. You can even have a sample that they are given during your sales process that allows them to see if they are within your ranges.
Timing – If your ideal product and service has a timeline associated with it – again, say it. If you do whole house builds from the ground up, then mention that you work with a client for 1-2 years on this process. Anyone looking for a weekend warrior project will pass you by. If you only do weekend warrior projects, then the full service long term clients will pass you by.
We want our ideal clients to think – WOW, this is the company for me on all of these points and for the non-ideal clients to be able to self-edit out early.
Where is the profitability in defining, creating and removing barriers to entry?
If your ideal product and service has a timeline associated with it – again, say it. If you do whole house builds from the ground up, then mention that you work with a client for 1-2 years on this process. Anyone looking for a weekend warrior project will pass you by. If you only do weekend warrior projects, then the full-service long term clients will pass you by.
We want our ideal clients to think – WOW, this is the company for me on all of these points and for the non-ideal clients to be able to self-edit out early.
Where is the profitability in defining, creating and removing barriers to entry?
It comes in saving you and your team time. Even if you are paid a few hundred dollars for an initial consult, the emotional investment of gearing up for a potential project has a cost to you and the client you just decided not to work with.
I want you to engage and spend your precious resources on those that you can most assuredly serve. Not the tire kickers or those who are looking for something different than your business brilliance. No one wants wasted time that could have been spent bringing in a profit.
Write down the barriers that you want to remove or build. Message around these. Know who is best aligned to work with your team and for your team to work with. Talk to them. Go after them. And in the process of being very clear, the non-ideal clients will walk away.
Profitability in a company shows up at every step along the way. Decision 1 leads to decision 2. The earlier we can tweak our processes to allow the best work, the better off we will be and the more joyful. It is frustrating to get lead after lead, and yet they all seem to be non-ideal. When that happens, it is a sure sign that your messaging is off or where you are marketing is not on target. Go back and erect some boundaries and remove others. It feels so much better to have the opportunity to talk through the projects that are best suited to your firm as compared to call after call and feeling let down that the phone is ringing. You are busy talking to people who you will never work with.
We talk about making adjustments like this continually in my coaching programs. Because we are not the businesses, we were last year. And as our businesses morph, so do our products and service offerings. Staying on top of this is key to forward movement and continued profitability. Reach out and let’s talk if you have any of these struggles. You can go to www.scarletthreadconsulting.com and book a discovery call. Choose to be profitable, because it doesn’t happen by accident.
Key Thoughts:
The first is to identify the barriers that we want to remove, so that those that are working with us will continue. Michele (4:04)
Another barrier that we have to work through is, the client doesn't fully know their own needs, they don't know what they don't know. Michele (11:40)
We just want the client to have very fair and reasonable expectations of their project prior to you showing up. Michele (17:49)
No one wants wasted time that could have been spent bringing in a profit. Michele (24:55)
Contact Michele:
Facebook: Scarlet Thread Consulting
Instagram: @ScarletThreadATL
References and Resources:
The Designers' Inner Circle - Become a Member Today
Book Yourself Solid by Michael Port