Organize Your Interior Design Client Experience Workflow: Your Services and Pricing Guide
Updated September 2023
In this post, I talked about how to set up autoresponders to streamline the very touchpoint of your client experience. In this post, I’m moving on to the next step of the inquiry phase, which is sending your Services Guide/Pricing Guide/Investment Guide. I’ll refer to it as an Investment Guide throughout this article for simplicity.
Sending an Investment Guide is so important because, as a solopreneur or small business owner, you absolutely must be prescreening your leads. Your time is too precious to get on the phone with prospects who a) aren’t ready to hire you, b) can’t afford you, or worse, c) just want to “pick your brain” and try to get something for free.
NO.
The goal of sending an Investment Guide to potential clients is to:
Prescreen leads.
Educate potential clients about what you do, how you do it, and what you charge for it.
Establish your authority.
Set your company apart from competitors.
An Investment Guide is a sales and marketing tool that also provides tons of important information to potential clients so that when you get on the phone with them, you move straight to talking about them and how your service will specifically solve their problems. This removes the scary sales vibes and turns each call into a simple conversation about how you can help someone. So easy, right?
Stop Wasting Valuable Time!
I’ve personally wasted so much time talking to vendors who don’t send me pricing via email and then we spend 30 minutes on the phone just talking numbers before we even get to talking about what I need or what service will be best for me. That waste of time right there was enough to make me not want to work with a particular vendor.
Or even worse, businesses who charge a gagillion dollars, and as a consumer, I had NO IDEA so then wasted all this time talking to them only to realize I cannot afford them. Ugh.
An Investment Guide Shows Potential Clients you Value Their Time (and yours)
When you send potential clients all the info they need to make an informed decision, you show them you respect them, value their time, and want them to make the best decision for their situation. So strategic, yet simple, right?
Streamline Sending Your Investment Guide to Potential Clients
Step One: Create email templates that outline your services
You’ll want one email that outlines all the services you offer in one. Sometimes you may have an inquiry where a client is pretty vague and you aren’t sure which service would be best for them, so you will want an email template that outlines all your services and who each one is a good fit for.
Then, create an email that outlines each individual service for inquiries that come in that would be perfect for that particular service (NOTE: If you’re following my contact form tips, you should be able to tell exactly what service they need from their initial email). If you have two services, you will have an email template for each service.
And if you have inquiries that come in specifically for ONE particular service, you wouldn’t want to send information about all your service offerings.
In each of the email templates, you’ll also want to include:
a way for them to schedule a call with you in the body of your email.
next steps so they always know what to expect.
The link to your Investment Guide for all the details.
Don’t have time to write all the emails needed for an elevated client experience? Grab the done-for-you Client Experience Email templates here and save hours every week.
Step Two: Create aN investment guide THAT DETAILS your service offerings
In this next step, you’ll create an Investment Guide that details your service offerings so you can include it with your initial inquiry response. You can purchase a template online (designers love mine!), make your own in Canva, or create one as a hidden page on your website.
Once you have your Investment Guide finished, you’ll want to upload it to your file storage system (like Google Drive or Dropbox), and then copy the URL to link the Investment Guide in the body of your email.
Need an investment guide for your interior design or wedding planning business? Grab our done-for-you Client Experience Templates here.
What to Include in your Investment Guide
A welcome message and picture of you/your team
An overview of the service and what is included
The simplified process/delivery method
Who the service is best for
Timeline
Samples of work, if applicable
Pricing
Next steps
If you don’t already have these items created (your initial inquiry email templates and your pricing/services guides), I recommend setting aside some time to create them so you can start using them ASAP to streamline and elevate your client experience.
If DIY’ing it in your limited free time isn’t your thing, you can get the entire system delivered to your inbox in minutes with my Client Experience Templates for interior designers. We have a set for designers who offer Full Service Design and a set for designers who offer Design Day services.
—> Click here to read the next step in the process: Client Onboarding.
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