Get paid. Get clients. Get known as an expert. Those are among the benefits of teaching a class.

Share your expertise in a continuing education class, remodeling seminar or other public program, and you can pick up new clients and a little extra cash in the process.
 
More and more design professionals are offering seminars, courses, clinics, workshops and other programs at adult learning centers, chambers of commerce, retail outlets, libraries, and elsewhere. By doing so, they build their client base and their bottom line.

Lining up speaking engagements isn’t all that difficult, thanks in large part to the popularity of home shows.  At a time when HGTV reaches 80 million homes, there’s increasing interest in the kind of ideas and insights that you can share.

In addition to trade groups, organizations ranging from service clubs to chambers of commerce are always on the lookout for speakers.

Then again, you can always stage your own event.  Jane Gates, a veteran Denver designer, landed a remodeling job worth more than $400,000 from one of her ” Quick Fix Remodeling Tips” seminars.

Teach ‘em what you know - and watch your business grow. Here are some tips on how to add class to your class and book a bunch of business while you’re at it:
 

Team Up - Ask a retailer, vendor, supplier or other “partner” to promote and host your program. Point out that it’s a great way for them to reach out to their prospects.

Touch ‘em with your Topic - Focus on a subject you know about - and your prospects care about. Reducing energy bills, motorization, privacy, child safety issues, preparing your home for resale - the possibilities are endless.
 
Touch  ‘em with your Title - Choose  a program name that catches their fancy - and attention. Examples: “Million Dollar Remodeling on a Shoestring Budget:” “What’s Hot & Not in Window Fashions;” “Turn Your House into a Home for the Holidays.”
 
Make Yourself Memorable - Add pizzazz to your presentation by including humor and anecdotes. Provide top notch visual aids and handouts.

Make Yourself “Reachable” – Supply your business cards, brochures and other marketing materials, so attendees can recontact with questions – and business.

Sell Yourself - Promote yourself as well as your design products and services. Remember: Most do-it-yourselfers don’t. They want and need your help.

Focus on the Catalogue, not just the Class - Your course description in an adult education catalogue can bring you lots of business from those who never attend your class. Why? The catalogue may reach hundreds - and the course write-up positions you as an expert.

Get Their Feedback - Provide a form on which attendees can evaluate your program. Use it to solicit their referrals.

Too many design professionals let their fear of public speaking prevent them from giving presentations.

Don’t make that mistake.

Remember that those who attend your programs don’t do so to critique your presentation skills. They come to learn from your expertise about design.

Add up all the failures of all the design professionals you know, and that number won’t even approach the failure rate of James Dyson.

Dyson is a designer of a different sort. He’s an industrial designer, engineer and inventor who knows a lot about failure.

He failed 5,126 times over 15 years trying to invent a prototype for a his Dual Cyclone bagless vacuum cleaner. Attempt #5,127 was successful, and he’s now known as the maker of the best selling vacuum cleaner by revenue in the U.S.

Dyson’s  net worth : $2 billion.

In a recent issue of Fast Company magazine, Dyson shares some interesting views on failure.

 ”I learned from each one. So I don’t mind failure,” he points out. “We’re taught to do things the right way. But if you want to discover something that other people haven’t, do things the wrong way.  Initiate a failure by doing something that’s very silly, unthinkable, naughty, dangerous. Watching why that fails can take you on a completely different path.”

How many interior designers, design industry manufacturers and others focus all their time and energy instead on avoiding failure? How many stay in the box, rather than think outside of it?

 Design professionals looking to move to the next level in their careers should heed the words of IBM founder Thomas Watson: “Would you like me to give you a formula for…success? Double your rate of failure.”

“If you’re not a success, you’re not an ‘original.’”

Those words, shared at by a presenter at a conference I attended last week, got me thinking about our industry.

So many design professionals and industry partners are so creative and innovative and visionary.

Yet so few come across as “originals.”

So few can explain what differentiates them and their design products and services . So few can list the unique benefits that they alone offer.

So few can share their “only.”

I remember a conversation years ago with a Market attendee at High Point, the world’s premier home furnishings center.

“How’s it going?” I asked.

“Well,”  he replied. “I’m beginning to think that once you’ve seen one armoire here, you’ve seen them all.”

All those furniture companies paid all that money to exhibit at that show, yet none of them stuck out as an “original” in this designer’s mind, anyway.

Makes me think the design industry should take to heart these words of Walt Disney: “To be successful, you have to be unique…so different that if people want what you have, they have to come to you  go get it.”

How can you reach a point when you never have to cave in on price, fee, markup or margin?

What will it take in the future to turn those price bellyachers into believers?

It will take the kind of cutting edge strategies I’ll discuss in my presentation at the Business of Design Conference Sept. 6-7 in Las Vegas.

I’ll share tips, tools and techniques that I’ve never written about or covered in my live presentations.

To save $50 on the registration fee for this conference, enter “fred” when you’re asked for a discount code.
<
Register now at www.designingprofits.com

In the meantime, there’s a powerful new toolkit available now on how to overcome price objections.

The Design Business Fit Kit  is an audio CD package filled with ideas on pricing, and simple things you can say and do to deal with any objection, anytime.

Also included in the Fit Kit: insights on raising your fees, managing your time and promoting yourself for pennies.

Click Here for more information: http://fredberns.com/Products_FitKit.htm

It’s not enough, in these competitive times, for design industry partners to sell products. Today, more than ever, they have to sell themselves.

If you work for an IP company, think of it this way: it’s never been easier for interior designers and end users to get what you sell elsewhere. But there’s one thing they can’t get elsewhere: YOU.

The most important sale you ever make is the personal one.

In my work as a design industry coach and speaker, the most successful retailers, manufacturers’reps, and showroom employees I meet are the best personal promotors.

They’re as comfortable discussing themselves as they are discussing their services and products. They’re skilled at blowing their horns and tooting their flutes.

These leading vendors understand that personal promotion can help them build trust, convert single sales into long term relationships, overcome price objections and “upsell” more clients, more often.

Members of industry partner companies can distinguish themselves by discussing their special areas of expertise, accomplishments, awards, degrees and other recognition they’ve received.

They can share that information in networking situations, and in their personal marketing materials, company websites, articles, speeches, and even in voicemail messages and email “signatures.”

Self promotion begins with the personal commercial, the brief marketing message which defines what makes you special. The most effective commercials contain the word “only.”

To be able to say that you’re the only area sales rep who formerly ran a residential design firm, or the only local showroom manager with a degree in landscape architecture–that set’s you in a class by yourself.

Savvy industry partners write articles in print and online publications for those they seek to influence. Free publicity is the best advertising that manufacturers and showrooms can’t buy.

A fabricator, for example, can gain considerable visibility and credibility by writing an article in the appropriate outlet on what’s hot and what’s not in window treatments.

Speaking at industry events is another example of self promotion and smart marketing at their best. Design groups often seek speakers, especially if their programs are CEU-accredited.

In the book Sell Yourself! 501 Ways to Get Them to Buy from YOU, I present several strategies retail professionals and others can use to market themselves.

Here are some of them:

Document your deeds.
Maintain a written record of key accomplishments, sales, and career milestones.

Establish your expertise.
Become – and promote yourself as — the information source in your specialty area.  Share your insights in articles and seminars.

Maximize your marketing materials.
Develop a “Sell Yourself” portfolio that includes a personal promotion photo, a bio sheet, articles by and about you, testimonial letters, and more.

Present yourself with polish.
Take a class to add pizzazz to your presentation skills. Master eye contact and body language.

Communicate with confidence.
Be positive in the words you choose to use, and accentuate the positive about yourself and your services.

Designers don’t buy from companies, they buy from people.

Why should they buy from people like you?

Your ability to answer that question, and to promote yourself, will determine how successful you’ll become.