What Would Lu Do? When Clients Don’t Understand the Value of Full Service Design

Welcome to A Well-Designed Business, it’s time for another episode of “What Would Lu Do?” where you ask the questions and LuAnn helps out with the answers.

Today’s question comes from Leslie, a designer that LuAnn happened to meet last winter in Chicago at the Power House Luxury Conference. Leslie is struggling to educate customers who walk into her hybrid full-service design firm / large retail showroom and expect free design services.

Listen in as LuAnn digs into the details, susses out the situation, and lays out her reasoning on the resolutions.

If you are not working with a coach or perhaps you don’t have a business mentor or business bestie to provide guidance, this is the perfect opportunity to email LuAnn the burning issues that you need insight on and she’ll answer them on air. Please send your questions to LuAnn Nigara!

Show Highlights:

• LuAnn shares the details surrounding Leslie’s dilemma and identifies with the consumer education stru
• It is likely that your messaging is not clear if you are constantly explaining yourself, your business, and your process to people. Once you are clear, the struggle will be over.
• LuAnn suggests that Leslie carefully analyze all of her revenue streams, using this enlightening and motivating exercise:
• What was your gross revenue last year?
• Identify all sources of revenue: design fees, product sales from the showroom, markup on outside contracted goods and services…what others do you have if any?
• What is the breakdown in gross revenue by category?
• What is the net profit margin of each category?
• What one or two revenue streams do you like doing the most?
• Are either of your favorite ways to make money also one of your top producing streams?
• If the answer is no, is there a way to increase their gross revenue capacity or their gross profit margins?
• The 2 big things to consider from this exercise:
• Step 1: Get clear on where you earn the most and then move in that direction.
• Step 2: If the competition is zigging, you need to zag.
• Have a beautiful hand-out made for the furniture salespeople, designers, and customer service reps to refer to and to give out to all potential customers that come in the store.
• LuAnn details all the information that the hand-out might hold, such as furniture services on one side of the hand-out and full service design on the other side.
• Educating the team members on the two different services is very important, so that they can present the hand-out to customers and answer questions with confidence.

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