If you’re in the neighborhood — or, even if your aren’t — you’re invited to attend my presentations in the next few months.

I’m also offering personal coaching sessions for design professionals and Industry Partners in each of the cities I visit.

Here’s the rundown:

+ SURFACES 2007 – Las Vegas

FEB. 7: The Top Ten Selling Sins

FEB. 8: Dare to be a Different Designer

+ MERCHANDISE MART– Chicago

MARCH 13: Double the Fees You Set and Get

(Tentative): additional program for showroom managers: Build the ’Buzz” Makes ‘Em Buy

+ ASID INTERIORS ’07 — San Francisco

MARCH 18: Million Dollar Marketing on a Shoestring Budget

+ ATLANTA DESIGNERS NETWORK — Atlanta

APRIL 10: Topic to be Determined (tbd)

+ LAGUNA DESIGN CENTER — Laguna Niguel, CA.

APRIL 17: 1 program for designers: topic tbd                 

                1 program for showroom mgrs.: topic tbd

Showrooms spend big bucks to attract big name designers.

They don’t have to.

Here are affordable methods and cost saving concepts showrooms can use to get design professionals in the door …and coming back for more:

1/ Make a Plan – A showroom without one is alike a ship without a rudder. Spell out your sales goals, your target market, and your top five marketing strategies.

2/ Make Up Your Mind – Decide and stick to a policy regarding whether you’ll open your showroom to the public. Communicate your policy to your designer clients

3/ WMYD / Only – Determine five things that make your showroom different. Determine five things that only your showroom offers. Include that information in your marketing materials.

4/ Get Focused – Hold a customer appreciation dinner for 5-6 of your top designer clients. Seek their advice on how to attract and build lasting relationships with more high end designers.

5/ Questions from Hell – Compile a list of the most common and difficult questions experienced designers ask about your showroom. Create a “cheat sheet” of responses.

6/ Free Publicity – Tap into the best advertising showrooms can’t buy by submitting news releases & articles to key publications about what’s new and hot at your showroom.

7/ Become a Resource –  Offer a “Designer Business Library.” Make available tapes of your educational seminars, along with books on how designers can increase their business.  

8/ “Bottom Line” Events – Offer programs on how high end designers can boost sales, increase fees, overcome price objections, get published, write better contracts, etc.

9/ Wall of Fame – Solicit testimonial letters from your top designer clients, and post the best ones on the wall of your showroom. Include others in a “brag book.”

10/ Reach for the Stars – Invite your area’s top designers to present programs at your showroom. Their involvement could be a big draw for other designers in your area.

11/ Attitude of Gratitude – Poor staff attitudes and erratic hours in showrooms keep high end designers.  Commit to better customer service and a more regular schedule. 

12/ Sell Yourself! –Promote yourself as well at your centers at networking events, in trade publications, etc. The most important sale you’ll ever make is the personal sale.

Can your clients afford to pay what you need to earn to achieve your financial goals?

Or, are you looking for love in all the wrong places?

Maybe it’s time  to find and work with  better customers. You know, the ones who value your services and are  willing to pay any price for them.

Try these ten steps for connecting with higher end clients:

+ Identify and become the No. 1 expert on your target market of high caliber prospects

+ Commit 100% of your time and energy to connecting with these prospects, and converting them to clients

+ Position yourself as a design pro who already serves this high end market

+ Revise your website and marketing materials, so they help you “look the part” of a design firm which serves the high end market

+ Charge “high caliber” fees

+ Communicate with confidence and present your prices with polish
 
+ Write articles in publications high end prospects read

+ Present seminars, workshops, courses, and other programs to groups which high end prospects belong to

+ Align with allied professionals already serving the high end market

+ Offer extraordinary customer service

+ Stay in touch with high end clients, always striving to turn single sales into long term relationships

 Time was when your reputation, alone, could assure your future prosperity.

Times have changed.

Welcome to 2007, a year with more gifted, acclaimed, talented, qualified, award winning design professionals than ever before.

Given that competition, it will take more than skills to meet your financial and other goals this year. It will take Big Thinking.

Big Thinking, as in pursuing higher end clients. Bidding on bigger and better jobs. Proposing larger scale deals.

Big Thinking, as in seeking more referrals. Reaching out to more prospects. Marketing yourself in more high profile publications.

Big Thinking, as in networking with and speaking to more prestigious groups. Aligning yourself with more established allied professionals.

And, Big Thinking, as in setting higher fees.
    

If “Success” is your answer, what are the questions?

What questions must you ask yourself if this is going to be your best year yet?

Ask — and respond to — these questions, and you can create your Roadmap to Riches for 2007:

/ What are your financial goals for 2007?

/ What are your other business goals for 2007?

/ What are the five major challenges facing your business?

/ Who do you see as your major competitors?

/ What is the target market you need to penetrate in order to meet your goals? (Be as specific as possible)

/ How many of your current and/or past clients can afford to pay the kind of money you need to make to reach your financial goals?

/ How would your current clients respond if you were to significantly increase your fees?

/ What are five groups within your target market you would like to network with and speak to?

/ What are five publications within that market you would like to be featured in?

/ Which allied professionals (builders, realtors, etc.) could best help you achieve your goals?

/ Who has been your most lucrative client –and what’s been your most lucrative project – thus far in your career? (Try to recall as many details as possible about both.)

/ What 2-3 marketing strategies have worked best for you in the past?

/ What part of your business now is the most lucrative?

/ What part of your business now is the least lucrative?

/ What do you see as your 3-5 key “Onlys?”

/ What are your three major accomplishments thus far as a design professional?

/ What are the perceptions of you as a design professional?

/ What would it take for you to communicate with more confidence and become a more effective self-promoter?

/ How would you describe your feelings when you have to explain and/or justify your fees?

/ Do you have a strategy for handling difficult clients? If so, explain.

/ What do you consider to be your five “Questions from Hell?” (Questions you have the most difficulty answering)

/ How many hours do your work per day? Per week? Would you like to increase or decrease these numbers?

/ What are five major tasks that you would like to delegate to others?

/ What would you like your business to look like 3, 5 and 10 years from now?

Do what you gotta do to get the right interior designer.

That apparently is actor Ralph Fiennes’ philosophy.

From the Sydney Daily Telegraph comes word that Fiennes pursued Sirin Lewendon, a  designer, for two months before winning over by performing naked yoga in her London apartment.

Now that the New Year is here, listen.

Listen carefully, and you can hear more than the sounds of the world around you.

You can hear the sounds of success.

You can hear how to get higher fees, markups and margins in 2007. And how to handle price objections And how to do magnificent marketing for a minimal price.

You can listen to a set of three audio programs that will help you reach new heights in the year ahead in your design business and career.

These very special programs are available through Feb. 15 at the very special price of $65.

The programs are:

1/“Twice the Price: Double Your Dollars as a Design Professional “- ten simple steps to help you double your fees and income without working longer or harder.

2/“Million Dollar Marketing on a Shoestring Budget” -  high impact, low cost promotion strategies that will convince you that the best marketing costs the least.

3/ “Overcoming Price Objections: Turn Price Bellyachers into Believers”  -  what you can do and say to handle any price objection, any time, and turn those objections into opportunities.

They’re included in the Design Business Fit Kit.

Invest in the Fit Kit, and you get more than three practical, powerful audio CD programs.

You get a bonus, too.

You get the Victory Vocabulary, a laminated pocket card with, on one side, 75 winning words forpersonal marketing, and, on the other, Self Promotion Success Principles.

Click here for more information and to buy the Design Business Fit Kit.

http://fredberns.com/Products_FitKit.htm

Happy New Year!

One thing’s certain about 2007: You won’t achieve superior results with inferior clients

You won’t prosper serving customers who are more trouble
than they’re worth. Customers who don’t appreciate you. And who beat you up on price.

But you will earn top dollar from top clients if you follow a very simple 10 step formula.

That formula is the focus of our “Find and Work with Better Clients”  Tele-Seminar set for 11 a.m. - noon Eastern (10 a.m. Central, 9 a.m. Mountain, 8 a.m. Pacific) on Wed., Jan. 17.

The investment is only $30.

You won’t have to leave your home, office or showroom to find out simple things you can do to connect with higher end, top caliber clients.

All you need do is dial in and enter your pin number.

For more information and registration details, click here: http://fredberns.com/Teleseminarjan172007.htm