How To Pick The Right Interior Design Clients and Projects?
11 Mins Read
February 3rd, 2024
Jump ahead to:Interior Design Clients and Projects
You’ve likely heard someone in the design industry say that their business, product, or service can “help anyone!” That’s never true and it actually makes it difficult to explain exactly what type of new clients would benefit from working with your business. Why don’t you chase down anyone with a budget and a need? There’s an old saying in business: “pick a niche, get rich.” What this means is that an ideal client profile for interior designers will help them orient their messaging, service delivery, pricing, marketing, and other customer-facing operations to appeal to a specific type of client that has the greatest identifiable need.
Read also – How To Get New Clients For Interior Design Business?
Don’t worry if you’re unsure of exactly where or how to get started creating your own ideal client profile. Most small businesses put off this priority while trying to chase down new clients. In a later section, we’ll walk you through some of the basic questions for arriving at a complete picture of your best business prospects. Generally, marketing experts recommend using two different types of data when defining your target clients: demographic and psychographic.
Demographic data includes objective information about your prospects and psychographic data profiles are used to answer more subjective questions about a prospect’s tastes, preferences, interests. Listed below are the most common categories of information for each type of data:
Demographic Data
Psychographic Data
Can you have more than one ideal client profile?
If your business offers multiple design services (particularly if you have multiple employees), then it is possible to target several different types of clients. For example, some of your ideal clients may want only one of the services you offer, while others want a full suite of services. What matters most is that you can define why you want to target potential clients that make sense for your business niche and strengths.
Image Credit: Designer’s Oasis
There are numerous reasons why you build an ideal client profile for an interior design business. Included in the list below are six crucial advantages that interior design business owners can realize from creating and sticking to a well-defined target customer:
Read also – How Do High-End Designers Get Interior Design Clients On A Low Budget?
After investing the time to create a full, descriptive ideal client profile you’re likely ready to put it to work by getting new clients! Here are just a few ways that you can start using your ideal client profile in routine business development and marketing activities:
Read also – 15 Steps To Prepare Interior Design Client Contract
Picking the right clients ultimately means that you’ll have access to the right kinds of projects; ones that pay well, go well and leave the client feeling satisfied with the results. However, it can be extremely difficult to walk away from clients that promise great opportunities or aggressive compensation. Although it’s been said a lot it still bears repeating: big contracts or opportunities that don’t fit in your ideal client profile are likely not worth pursuing.
Even when there’s a lot of money on the line, the best thing you can do is walk away from a bad fit. In fact, large projects that pay well can complicate the entire relationship. For example, because the client has offered you a competitive contract they might have unreasonable expectations about how much time you will spend on the project or how available you will be for meetings, phone calls, travel, etc.
Later in this article, we’ll discuss some additional strategies for vetting (beyond the hard data in your ideal client profile) whether it’s worth taking on a specific client or their project.
Read also – Financial Management For Interior Design Business
Image Credit: Gather
If you’ve just started creating your ideal client profile or looking to tweak a working document, here are 5 expert tips to get you headed in the right direction:
Use the tips listed above to create a fuller picture of the person you want to work with and keep your sales and marketing efforts focused on the right strategies and tactics.
Read also – Instagram and Pinterest Marketing For Interior Designers
Image Credit: Dreamstime
Following the criteria outlined in your ideal client profile isn’t a guaranteed failsafe for picking the right customers and prospects. The second step in vetting projects and clients is assessing your feelings about and connect with the prospect. The ability to do this well is called emotional intelligence and it describes the capacity to intuit whether you can have a healthy, happy, and profitable working relationship with a client.
While the hard data in your ideal client profile will help set up an analytical process for defining the right clients, high emotional intelligence will help you communicate and connect with the client to answer a key question: can you work well together?
Unfortunately, there’s no exact right answer to this question, and emotional intelligence is what people typically refer to as a “soft skill.” Nonetheless, there are some basic frameworks you can use to understand how well you’ll partner with the client. We suggest you start by reviewing these areas after your first meeting with a prospective client:
A client might seem like the perfect fit on paper, but once you start getting into the details of a project it can become clear that they will be difficult to keep on track or agree to project details.
Read also – Lead Generation for Interior Designers
Image Credit: Home Stratosphere
Now that you’ve created an effective roadmap for intellectually and emotionally identifying clients that will be a good fit, it’s time to review how you can pick more successful projects. How can you identify opportunities that will take your business to the next level?
Below are a few standard questions that you can use to help determine if a specific project makes sense to accept and if you and the client will both be thrilled by the outcome:
It’s fair to say that not every project will fit all of these criteria. You can’t do only the work you want to do all of the time. But, it’s worth making a commitment to yourself that you won’t take on projects that don’t meet at least 6 out of the or 7 out of the ten criteria.
The added benefit of using these qualifying questions is that it can save you from taking on a nightmare project that will prevent you from pursuing something better when it comes along.
Read also – The Ultimate Guide To Building A Strong Interior Design Brand
If you’ve decided that a client or project isn’t a good fit, it’s time to formally turn it down, and that can feel awkward. The best advice for this situation is very simple: clear is kind. From the very start, you can let the client know that you will be honest with them if you feel that the relationship won’t work. When it comes time to separate or reject their offer, clearly, professionally, and unemotionally express why it’s not a good fit for you. You might also consider providing further feedback if it would be helpful for them. If the client is offended or angry, this is not your fault!
Having the right business tools will make each stage of the interior design process simpler and more efficient. Foyr Neo is a powerful interior design platform built with you, the designer, in mind. Take design ideas from concept to a photo-realistic rendering in just minutes with a suite of advanced tools, including:
By combining the functionality of multiple tools in one platform we empower designers to spend less time with software and more time with their clients. You can try Foyr Neo free for 14-days now and experience the power of limitless design.
Using Foyr Neo is as easy as 1, 2, 3. First, upload a floor plan or create one from scratch. Then drag and drop from over 60K 3D models to fill your rooms. Lastly, just set the shot and let the AI create stunning 4K renders for you in less than 10 minutes.
Start your 14-day free trialSpecially built for Interior Designers