What’s it going to take to make 2007 your best year yet? Good answers to some basic questions.

You don’t need slick advertising or a glitzy new web site or trendy new product lines to make 2007 your “career year.”

You need answers. Answers to questions about goals, what’s working, and what needs to work better with your design business.

Many design professionals never consider the kinds of issues raised below. That’s why they’re so unfocused and unprofitable.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

Home Depot? Budget Blinds? Dolly Designer? If not, stop trying to act like or compete with them. Create your own unique message. Target your own market.

You make a great you, but a lousy somebody else.

Why you?

Competition has never been tougher. It’s never been easier to buy elsewhere the design services and products that you sell.

What do you offer that your competitors — especially the lower priced ones — don’t? Don’t say “good customer service.” Every other design pro in your area talks about the same thing.

Who’s Lovin’ Ya, Baby?

Who are your blue chip clients? How have you built rapport with them? How do you stay in touch with and generate additional business from them?

How Do You Find the Fatcats?

Where and when do you get your best clients? What marketing strategies work best for you? What are you MVP (Most Valuable and Productive)promotational activities?

What’s Makin’ Ya Money?

What are they buying? What’s your most lucrative product or service? How much of your income comes from your design consultations? From product sales?

What percentage of your sales comes from residential clients? From commercial clients?

I met a designer and landscaper once who wrote letters of introduction for each other.

The landscaper’s letter to his clients began: “I’m writing to introduce you to the most talented interior designer I know, and to recommend that you contact her the next time you or someone you know needs the services of a designer.”

You might call that “aligning with allied professionals.”

I call that  “Cool.”

Who are you planning to team up with 2007?

Some tips on how to make your partnerships profitable:
 
Make A Plan: Set goals, then figure who you can “align” with to achieve them.

Know Their Buzz: Want to connect with potential “partners?” Understand their issues. Read what they read, network with their groups.

Establish Your Expertise: Impress them further by writing for their trade publications, and speaking at their trade group conferences.

Make the First Move: “What kind of leads are you looking for?” Be the first to ask, and you’ll be a winner in the long run.

Say “Thanks”: Adopt an attitude of gratitude toward your allies. Express warm appreciation for every referral they provide.

Get Introduced: Ask your allies to write a letter of introduction in your behalf to their clients. Offer to return the favor.

Get Focused: Take your allies to lunch to thank them for their help. Use them as a focus group, seeking their ideas on growing your business.

Sell Yourself: Promote yourself, as well as the partnership idea to a potential ally.

What’s your plan for 2007?

A design professional without a plan is like a ship without a rudder: you may have a rough idea of your destination, but not a clue on how to reach it.

Set aside time over the holidays to create a personal wish list, and then determine the kind of income you need to make those wishes come true.

Speaking of income: can your clients afford to pay the kind of fees you need to charge to reach your financial goals? Or, have you been looking for love in all the wrong places?

This is a good time to identify the five types of clients and prospects you most need to influence in order to achieve financial success in 2007.

Finally, focus on the past year to help you plan  for next year. Who were your five best clients? 

 What, if any, marketing did you use to find them? How did
you sell them? How did you keep them?

Set aside some “self appreciation” time this  season.

Give yourself something over the holidays that doesn’t cost anything, come in a box, or sit under a tree.

Credit.

Credit yourself for changing people’s living space. And changing their work space. And changing their lives.

Credit yourself for saving them time, money and headaches.

Credit yourself for providing ideas and insights and inspiration to those who are clueless about interiors.

And credit yourself for turning houses into homes, and offices into creative working environments.

As you think about gifts this holiday season, appreciate your own.

You have more than talent for design. You have the gifts of artistry, creativity,  style, vision, and resourcefulness.

You have the wisdom to solve problems, the expertise to manage projects, and the imagination to make dreams come true.

You have what it takes to be a contractor, coach, consultant and confidant.

Not to mention that one other gift you possess as a design professional: A Mass of Class.

May the new year bring you the recognition and rewards that you want and deserve.

I look forward to helping you make 2007 your Career Year.

       Best wishes for the happiest of holidays!        

“He’s nuts!”

That’s what Cathy Orfall later told me she thought when I suggested she nearly double her rates.

No way, the Hood River, OR. designer said. No way that her clients would agree to an hourly fee above her rate of $75.

“I was kicking and screaming against your idea all the way,” she recalls. “That’s how stubborn I was.”

That was then. This is now.

“Not an eyelash has been batted,” she told me this week, since she finally agreed to raise her rate to $125 per hour.

No one has even questioned the fee. Not even her current clients, one of whom actually sent a congratulatory note.

Cathy’s is one of many success stories I’ve heard from designers who substantially boosted their hourly fees.

After 16 years, I’ve yet to hear from one coaching client– not one — whose business decreased after they raised their rates.

Can’t say I’m surprised.

Repeat after me, then memorize … and then never, ever forget these two prosperity principles:

1/ You can set and get ANY fee as long as you differentiate yourself from competitors who charge less.

— and –

2/ It doesn’t matter what you say about your price. What matters is what you say about yourself.

“Where ya been?”

We’ve heard that question lots lately. The short answer: we’ve come down with a case of technical troubles

We figured that posting messages on InteriorDesignBusiness.net would be goof-proof.

We figured wrong. Problems with our server have miffed – and muzzled – us in recent days.

Please Stand By, as they say on TV.

We’ll be up and running soon with more messages, more often.
Thanks for your patience!