Interior Design Business Reminder: No Good Money in Bad Clients
Are you’re working with clients who can’t afford you?
In challenging economic times, too many interior design professionals say “yes” when they should say “no.”
They accept small jobs with high maintenance customers more interested in bargain basement prices than fine design.
If you’re stuck with these bottom feeders, you’re fishing in the wrong waters. When you mix with the minnows, you miss the big fish.
Working with the wrong customers is a formula for failure, if ever there was one.
How do you know if you’re keeping the wrong company? That’s easy.
Ask yourself if your current clients can afford to pay the kind of money you need to make to meet your 2010 financial goals.
If not, you’re lookin’ for love in all the wrong places.
You’re better off eying eagles than tracking turkeys.
Promoting yourself to higher caliber clients is way smarter than serving smaller ones who are more trouble than they’re worth.
The idea is to find prospects who value your services, and can and will pay any price for them.
How do you bond with these higher caliber prospects?
Some suggestions, from the Digital Audio Success Series:
+ Revise your marketing materials so that you look the part of a design firm serving the heavy hitters
+ Add a page to your website devoted exclusively to them
+ Submit articles to print and on-line outlets that high caliber prospects read
+ Network with, and speak to groups they belong to
+ Align with allied professionals already serving the high end market
In the meantime, remember this: you can’t earn the right income from the wrong clients.
Fred Berns is an interior design industry sales and marketing trainer and speaker.
