Industry Partnerships (includes your free pitch pack)

In this solo episode, I’m workshopping all things partnerships and pitching for collaborations, especially valuable for  interior designers who haven’t reached out to look at  networking with builders, real estate agents, and other professionals. I’m sharing tips on how to approach potential partners with a clear understanding of mutual benefits rather than just seeking client referrals. Key highlights include:

Identifying Mutual Benefits: Understand what you bring to the table and ensure the partnership is mutually advantageous.

Tailoring Your Pitch: Customise your approach to suit the communication style and preferences of potential partners.

Expanding Partnership Possibilities: Think beyond the obvious choices and consider various professionals within the early stages of your client's decision-making process.

Creating a Simple, Impactful Pitch Pack: want my FREE  Canva template to craft a concise and appealing presentation tailored to each potential partner? Drop into my DM’s on Insta @oleander_and_finch with the word ‘PARTNERSHIP’ 

Building Relationships: Farm your network for connections and get introductions and aim for in-person meetings to more effectively communicate the value you offer.

For a detailed guide and to access our pitch pack template, DM me on Instagram @Oleander_and_Finch with the word "partnership".

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Transcript

0:10

Welcome to Designing Success from Study to Studio. I'm your host, Rhiannon Lee, founder of the Oleander Finch Design Studio. I've lived the transformation from study to studio and then stripped it bare and wrote down the framework so you don't have to overthink it. In this podcast, you could expect real talk with industry friends, community, connection, and actionable tips to help you conquer whatever's holding you back. Now let's get designing your own success. Last week, if you listened to my interview with Crystal Bailey, you would have heard her speak about doing some collaborations or brand partnerships. And so I thought this week in my solo episode, I would talk to you a little bit more about partnerships and pitching for collaborations and ways that we can approach other businesses to Share clients have referrals. So not so much brand collaborations in the idea of the influencer space or online or digital. More the in-person networking and marketing that we can do. A lot of designers come to me saying, I would love to partner with a builder, partner with a real estate agent. Those sorts of partnerships, how to go after them and what to consider when you're thinking about how you'll present your brand, especially if you don't have a large portfolio or you're starting out, which is a lot of people listening in your first three years, maybe it's just your first time reaching out to suggest collaborating or working together. So hopefully today's tips will give you a little bit more confidence. I have created a template for you as well that you can come over and see me on. Instagram at Oleander underscore and underscore Finch DM me the word partnership and you will instantly get access to a Canva template. You can see how I've used it and then you can use the second page, which is basically formatted and set up for you to drop your own images in and your own information. And that should allow you to have something simple that you can save on your hard drive and just use over and over again as you reach out. Just make sure if you are using it, that each time you go to use it, if you dust it off. really look that the dates are relevant, the work is relevant, and the offers are relevant. Because yeah, sometimes we set and forget these things and three years down the track you're trying to win work with an outdated pitch pack. It's not a great look. Okay, so the very first thing that I would say you need to do before pitching out for a partnership is Work out why you want to partner up with this person. What is the benefit for each of you? Because they can give me all of my clients isn't a reason for them to want to work with you. So it's really important to sit back and think about what you bring to the table, what, and recognize what they bring to the table, and how this can be a mutually beneficial partnership. Because if you're just asking them to refer people to you and you'll do your job, it's a weird thing. Approach. If you ask me always think about how this would look if this was someone else in another industry dropping into your dms or dropping into your email inbox, what would be in it for you? Why would you open that email? What? What about that would say to you? Oh, this looks like an opportunity over. Okay, so you're allowing me to give you all of my clients and build your client base and there's nothing in it for me. So really, thank you Be honest with yourself about what you bring to the table and think about the presentation and the way that you approach things with other people. Do unto others as you have done unto yourself is always a motto for me. Before you have clients, you might find it a little tricky to list out the sorts of all the things that you'll bring to the partnership, but if you just get a piece of paper and write benefits or something on the left hand corner and then just start listing them maybe it's as simple as an easy onboarding or handover process. Maybe you have a good CRM like we have inside the framework and you're used to using it. So you're like repeatable processes that you can have. Access to, so maybe that's a shared notion profile. Maybe you will fund the gift hamper when they move in, in the idea of a real estate agent or something. Maybe, I'll bring the verb, you bring the client, you find a little funny way to explain what you'll do. Maybe you have a signature style that aligns really well with the suburb that real estate agent services. So you might lead with my contemporary modern organic aesthetic is perfect for Insert suburb here. Thinking outside of the box, what do I bring to this partnership? Why? What is the list of things that I can make easier for the person I'm pitching to? Sometimes I like to think with builders, for example, builders are very I'm going to generalize terribly here, but I feel like builders are very respect decisions. They want, they don't want. Fluff around. They don't want nonsense. They want to know it's option A or option B. My choice is option A. Do you agree or disagree? They want to know that you're a clear communicator who can come in and be decision led and not muck around holding up tiles in different lights with them for half a day. They've got things to do. So I'd be leading with that sort of stuff. That I am an incredibly decisive designer. This is my process. I take it all off site for you. We only come to you with finalized documentation, drawings, or FF and e schedules, those sorts of things. So just really making sure to highlight what I'm going to do that will take all these pesky design based questions off site and out of your hands. The next suggestion I have is just to respect that they are also busy professionals and try to pitch in their preferred style of communication. To be honest, how many builders do you know knock off after a huge hard day's work and enjoy opening emails and specifically reading a 24 page presentation from a stranger? I'm waiting. No, it's just not a thing, right? Perhaps email is the last thing that a builder gets around to. A text message might be received more easily or a printed version of your pitch pack or getting in front of them, networking. It's not to say that you shouldn't send an email. It's to say that you should respect that they're busy, as I mentioned, and try to Their personal style of communication, but also if you have to do it by email, strip it all back and make it simple. They don't want a 24 page presentation. So what can you do on a one pager? What can you explain in less than a paragraph? They don't want to read a cover letter. They don't want your resume. They don't want to know about how you can turn underwater in your dolphin certificate. Keep it really simple. I know that sounds really odd, but I am referencing a past application that I had when I was in recruitment for travel, where somebody had a display folder, and it had literally originals of everything they've ever, school assembly certificates, their dolphin certificate, they could put their head underwater for swimming, and I was like, I really don't know how this will make you a better travel agent or professional, or you have given me your school memories basically. It's a little bit off topic, but think about it like that. You do want to make sure it's really simple, really clear and really created for the specific reason of showing how you can help make someone else's life better and what benefit it is to them to go into partnership with you. The next step is to think really broadly around possibilities. So we've mentioned builders and real estate agents and they're the obvious ones that I feel like people know about when they come out of design school. But what about an interior photographer? Or personally, I always suggest my coaching clients go higher in the funnel. So thinking about the whole picture and trying to intercept your client in the early parts. So mortgage brokers. Conveyances, building designers, developers, architects, think about the process and where can you insert yourself as the interior designer before you actually need to be procuring furniture and installing. So you want to go as high up in the funnel that you can think of and jump in there. And sometimes that's. The same reason I'm very strong about getting on Pinterest, because I believe that if you're even thinking about renovating, revamping, or building, the first place you go to get ideas about what your new home could be is Pinterest. So I want all designers that work with me to be there, so that they're actually getting ideas. To the client at that early top of funnel part, not all the way down when it's okay, I really need a designer and you can't make space with them in the calendar because they want it yesterday. We hear a lot about red flags and people like I'm ready to go. I want this, that, and the other. And I feel like it's because interior designer has only come across their mind at go time. And so I'm a big advocate for getting in way earlier. So maybe that means that you can partner. There's many different people that you can think of, or professionals, that people reach out to before they go looking for the interior designer. So what do they need to lock in early, or what sort of things are they looking to do? That's where you need to be, that's who you need to be reaching out to and saying, Hey, can I, put you on a referral program if your client is interested in getting help with making selections, or looking at drafts and drawings, explaining what you do. So that's where you need to be, right up the top. Another partnership that can become successful will be meeting up with some local trades, so electricians, landscape designers, painters, some other trades who meet consistently to help homeowners but can't offer that design advice. I like the referral fee model here, like for every onboarded design client with a scope of work over 5, 000, I'll send you a 100 Colesmire voucher, etc. So explaining to the local electrician, like it's in your best interest, yep, you're there while they're doing their lighting planning, or they're doing this, that and the other. You can give them that information and say, I work really closely with this designer, so they can obviously choose the right pendants and help you with the lighting design. And then I can come in work in. Collaboration and then obviously they're still getting something 100 in the background, which is great for them, but they also build a relationship. You get a couple of those off the. Mark, assuming you get five of those. For example, you've spent 500 in Colesmire cards and you've had a minimum 25, 000 return because I've said, I'm just going to send you the card if their work is over 5, 000, which happens quite easily if they've got enough in the scope for you to help with. So I think that's a great Condition to put on a referral program. Otherwise, I don't want to be spending 100 on a Colesmire voucher when you've sent me someone who wants a 30 minute consult or, I have a facade consult or something that's a lower cost fee, you want to be making sure that return on investment is met. This has a double win too, because it means that you're setting the expectations with the electrician that you want to be working on nothing, or no jobs that are under 5, 000 basically, or I work at this level as a minimum, and that's where your referral fee kicks in, but it's setting that expectation that most jobs will be above and beyond. A good exercise to do at this point is to start thinking through your existing network. So in, I mentioned before that builders aren't going to be loving like cold calls or emails and that sort of thing because it's this is draining. I don't know what this is about. But if you think through your existing network, you might know someone who is or is partnered with a builder. You might know someone who works with. Or adjacent to real estate agents or like literally is located next to the real estate agency on a shop front and you can get them to, they probably got a relationship with those guys or see them have a coffee or serve their coffee, whatever it is to think outside of the box, even someone who's recently bought or sold a home can be used as an entry connection point, reaching out and saying, Hey my friend Sally recently just sold X address into address property with you. She had great things to say about you. I am also local. She has recognized the possibilities here. Something like that. So using a third party as a catalyst or reason for sending the email in the first place. I always think that's always nice having a bit of a. Personal connection or touch, not just pitching like I followed you for ages or I drive past your real estate agent all the time. Those pitches feel like there's an expectation because you're in the same postcode, you should work with me. And that's really not how relationships are built. That's not what it's all about. So trying to find a personal connection is a great way to go to some open homes. Chat to the agent who's showing the home. Just let them know. Oh yeah, I'm a couple of streets down. Actually. I just like to keep my finger on the pulse. I like to come and see what you guys are doing. I love seeing the staging. I love seeing what's hot right now and what property prices are going for what not like starts and conversations. No harm, no foul. You're not. Going to the open house with a pitch pack in hand, you can, if you want to, if that's your approach, what you think is best, but it allows you to build the relationship. So then later you can send an email and say, hey, Johnny, it was really nice to meet you at insert address here this email. It's not because I'm putting in an offer, although I'd love to. I love what you did with this, that and the other, putting in some nice compliments there. But actually, I wanted to follow up on my introduction. My name is Rhiannon. I run Oleander and Finch Interior Design. I'm also in the Macedon Ranges. And I just wanted to let you know, see attach how I can service or help any of your clients and how I might be able to make your job easier. Things like that. So just keep it simple. Don't overcomplicate it. Don't get the thesaurus out. Don't throw it through chat GPT. Sound like you mean. These are human relationships you're building. If you want a partnership, be real. Don't be overly professional to the point where you rock up and there's a complete disconnect. The main aim of this particular email in my mind is to set an in person meeting. All I actually want out of this is to give you a brief amount of information so I can sell myself in person and the opportunity for us to work together and have a mutually beneficial partnership. I will do that selling in person because nobody's going to read the entire email and you're going to waffle on and you're going to write way too much and it's not going to be the relevant stuff. You're much better off getting into a cafe, spending 20 minutes with someone and listening to what they need and matching yourself to every need and then it's a no brainer. I'll remind you again there. That's why I have the one page pitch PDF that you can get. Just come over to my DMs at oleander underscore and underscore binge, write the word partnerships, and I will send it to, you will get a copy immediately and you can just go and edit and create one for yourself. It's all your information, how you help others. If you could use the same template for a real estate agent, a builder, a landscape designer, a local electrician, you just have to tweak things slightly and make sure that you're. Really assessing the benefits. You're going to want to highlight that you have studied lighting design specifically when you're talking to an electrician or that you have worked on site with other electricians, you can quickly communicate for the client between the technical electrician speak and the client speak and bridge that gap. Because that is effectively what your job is to make sure that there is a amazing outcome for the homeowner and keep everybody calm so that nobody feels overwhelmed and nobody feels like they don't know the tech talk and what's happening in that. So it's something like that. You create your own little blurb about what it is, but you want the pack, come and see me in my DMs. Any time and pop the word partnerships and you'll get it straight away. Okay, I'm going to finish up with a type of partnership that we workshop a lot inside of the framework because I actually have a couple of course students in there who run B2B businesses. So their businesses, their clients are other interior designers and they help them with photorealistic renders with constructional drawings and all sorts of other things. And they're generally the things that designers have identified as. Massive drain is like you either love it or you don't. And for some people, it's Oh, I want to do all the creative stuff. And then I want to hand over the tech drawings and the technical stuff to somebody else who's also qualified that I can work with really well. But I'm much slower at that. Or it does not light me up. It's not that I'm slow. It's just that I'm bored. I don't want to do that. And that's the case for a lot of designers that I know. You're in that you're either all in or all out. So for the girls who run their B2B businesses, they clearly all in, they love to sit and tinker and be in AutoCAD, SketchUp, whatever, doing their thing. And for those who want to outsource it, they're like, look, I really love pulling it all together, but then I hate doing all the documentation side of things. So it's very common. It's a great partnership, but there are some major. flaws as I see them. These are my opinions. I might be completely wrong, but this is what I feel like I see a lot within the girls that I've one on one coached or coaching group membership who are running these B2B businesses. And in terms of attracting B2B clients, it's trickier in that space than it needs to be. The main reason, and I can be absolutely guilty of this myself. Is that designers get overworked and busy and the first thing they want to do is outsource the thing that doesn't light them up. So for many, as I mentioned, that's drawing and it can be time consuming, blah blah. However, because it's technically a skill that we have, we can do it. Paying a rate or a similar rate that you would charge a client, like an hourly rate to someone else, hurts. You're literally paying. To outsource a task in your business that you can do, but you don't want to do. But I feel like designers don't see that. Like we do when we outsource admin tasks to a VA and you're like I'm perfectly capable of doing that task, but I don't want to do it. So I give it to the VA, but when it's designer to designer, there is something about it. All I can ever visualize. It's one person is holding on to a pile of. Money or has money in their hand, think of 500 in your hand. And the other person is like tugging on it, like tug of war to try to prise it out of their claws. And that is the relationship that I keep seeing over and over again. And I think primarily it's because of the way B2B partnerships tend to be positioned in the market. Like. People will go on these large interior design forums. We all know them. They're on Facebook big communities and say, I'm really overworked. I'm really struggling. Does anyone do SketchUp drawings for other designers or whatever? DM me. And then all of the B2B designers who do offer that service are like, yeah, I've sent you a DM. I've sent you a message. And then the designer is Oh my God, she wants 65 an hour. Whereas if you were explaining rendering to your client, you are going to be easily able to justify more than double that as your hourly rate as a kickoff point. Yeah, sometimes I think that the value perception is not as it should be. Okay, so just to be clear in no way am I throwing shade to the interior design industry or designers I don't think this is intentional and I have already said I am guilty of this myself being like I'm drowning in work and going Oh my god, I need help. I need help. I don't want to pay you. I could do that myself It's a very difficult thing when we get to a point where we do need that help So my suggestion and what I often will coach people through is around I guess reframing things, approaching it a little bit differently. Firstly, offer it out to your network. So the designers that you talk to in the DMs, don't tell me you aren't all following each other because I see this. Everyone's following everybody. Go out to that network first, create a what is it called? Like a broadcast channel on Instagram and curate it to be other designers and often put some of your example work in there or talk to them about upcoming special or rates, designer only fees, that sort of thing, make a big, Song and dance about it. I see these working really well inside of our group membership. So we have just yesterday. Someone posted some work that they couldn't do because they were over they were overbooked and they're like, I've been approached by this developer to do 10 townhouses. I can't do it. Do any of you girls want it? Amazing. Love when I see that happen and someone else who wasn't yet working with a lot of clients can pick up that work and kick off their career effectively. It's magical. But in terms of B2B, I have also seen lots of my girls partner up and be like, I love your renders. You're always showing me what you do for other designers. What are your fees like? Maybe I could work with you next time so I don't have to do the rendering. And it's working quite well. I have seen that happen across multiple businesses inside of the framework. So start there, start with your existing network and showing them, whether that's a particular mate's rates or deal or whatever you want to do. The other thing that I would definitely consider doing in terms of attracting B2B clients is, To teach them, other designers, exactly how to factor your costs into their scope of work. So you want it to be factored in as a cost neutral expense line so that effectively the client is paying you via them but you liaise and work with them, the designer. They need to reframe it in their mind from them spending their money or profits. to buy you and your time. And instead, what they are doing is eliminating that actual element out of their scope of work and handing it over. So if you can teach them that, if you can continually reframe when you're in your stories or you're talking about your work and saying, look, I know it can be difficult to think about paying another design an hourly fee, but what if you looked at it instead as though you no longer offer that service? service. You partner me to offer that service directly to your client and you continue with your own profit margins and your own service package, offer, et cetera, costs, everything else about that remains. And the only difference is you will instruct me what you want me to do. So you get the best outcome and the overall packet that you can then present back to your client. That is a missing link that I'm seeing that people just don't understand how to be like, okay, it's not my money or my time. Okay. I am connecting client to professional renderer and vice and then present presenting professional renders back to my client and I have simply transacted the money. It's not like a trade transaction. You don't need to build margin on top of it. I don't know why, but that feels gross to me when you're like charging a client 120 an hour and then getting a other designer to do it for 65 an hour. I'm using these. Honestly, these numbers are out of my head. They're not real examples, but I'm like, why would you be making a 50 percent markup or profit fee on that and doing nothing? That doesn't feel ethical to me, but you guys. Do whatever you want with your own businesses. Just putting my two cents out. When you're showcasing your work on social media, always mentioned things like, imagine opening this from your email, ready to present to your clients. The only effort that you made was to click open the email or was to copy this into your presentation pack and send over to your clients. You just need to paint the picture of how much better their life is when you do the tech drawings and they do not. Keep it really simple, strip it all back, present it and all of its benefits, paint that picture. It's exactly the same as working with our potential homeowner clients. You want to paint a picture of the end transformation, and that is just marketing. It's just explaining to people how you can take away that frustration. So I hope today you've gotten some ideas on how to address partnerships, collaborations, how to put your thinking cap on, keep it really simple. Make sure you write down all the reasons that you can, all the ways that you can make The person who you're pitching to is life easier, the benefits to their client, they're not gatekeeping their clients. They're not going to recommend you to their clients unless they're 100 percent sure that you're going to look after them in a way that represents them well and the same way they would look after them. Think about it from your business. You're not getting your interior design clients and immediately just handing them over to any old gardening, Service or something for ongoing maintenance. You'd want to know. Okay. Is this guy going to show up on Thursday? Is this woman that does the gardening? Is she does she do a good job? Will she pull out all the way? You really want to know more about that before you would ever put your branding on that. And lastly, while I think of it, because I've just mentioned it, you can also pitch some advertising space in your documentation. So there's nothing stopping you from having the last page to contact us and within your. Offboarding or handover documents. There's nothing stopping you having a page. It says our friends in the industry and then having those real estate agents to build like a couple of key contractors or people that you work with because just because you're finished and you've handed everything over and like they've had an electrician and la. Lights break, things fall off walls, the holes in walls happen. I don't know. I just think that sometimes you could also position that as a benefit of ongoing marketing if that's in the back of every presentation pack that you have in your handover documents. Okay, plenty of ideas there. I hope you had the notes section in your phone open or you had a notebook with you. Just a reminder, if you are listening on Apple, I believe that you can get the full transcripts of any of these interviews or solo episodes, which you could. If you wanted to cheat, you could drop the entire transcript into ChatGPT or an equivalent AI and just ask for the key takeaways or get it to pull together like some notes for you. Yeah, and then you can get pitching to built in partnerships. If this is effective for you, if you suddenly find yourself in a meeting, With a local real estate and landscape gardener and electrician and builder and architect and conveyance or anything like that. I would so die with excitement. If you came over to my DM at oleander underscore and underscore Fint and let me know that this specific episode helped you in that way. Or share it with a friend because this works for any business. This is not just interior design. You can go ahead and grab the template through my DMs and just change it to your industry and your small business needs. Any creatives out there, if you can think creatively about who you might be able to help, perhaps you can build some more clients and more long lasting relationships with peers in the industry. I have a really exciting interview for you on Thursday. I'm meeting with Belinda the Valuer. If you don't know Belinda, check her out on TikTok or On any social media really, and look at all the amazing information that she gives us, mortgage holders and homeowners. It was an incredible chat. I really enjoyed it. You're going to really love it too. Specifically, if you've been thinking about exploring things like business on TikTok. Have an amazing week. I will chat to you then. Bye for now. That wraps up another episode of Designing Success from Study to Studio. Thanks for lending me your ears. Remember, progress over perfection is the key. If you found value in today's episode, go ahead and hit subscribe or share it with a friend. Your feedback means so much to me and it helps me improve, but it also helps this podcast reach more emerging and evolving designers. For your daily dose of design business tips and to get a closer look at what goes on behind the scenes, follow at oleander underscore and underscore finch on Instagram. You'll find tons of resources available at www. oleanderandfinch. com to support you on your journey. Remember, this is your path, your vision, your future, and your business. Now let's get out there and start designing your success.