Exactly what's expected in the Initial Design Consultation?

paid initial consultations for interior design projects. Here are the key takeaways:

• Purpose of Initial Consultations: To assess the client's needs, budget, timeline, and constraints. It sets the stage for the future scope of work. It’s not to create a “design in an hour”
• Importance of Charging: Charging for consultations ensures that the designer's expertise and time are valued. It includes travel time, on-site consultation, and post-consultation work to draft detailed notes and proposals.
• Preparation and Presentation: Designers should lead the consultation to stay focused on relevant topics. Preparing a presentation pack or template can help communicate initial concepts, the scope of work, and fee proposals efficiently.
• Payment and Process: A clear payment method, such as a 50% deposit, should be established. Confirmation of payment IN FULL before the consultation is crucial.
• Building Rapport and Managing Expectations: Making clients comfortable and managing the consultation time effectively are key to a successful outcome. Designers should set clear expectations about the consultation process and follow-up.
• Gathering Information: Collecting detailed information about the client's needs, preferences, and the space is essential. This includes asking the right questions to understand the project's scope fully.
• Safety Measures: Taking precautions for personal safety, such as informing others of your location and being aware of your surroundings, is advised.
• Following Up: Concluding the consultation with a clear timeline for delivering the detailed proposal and next steps ensures a professional finish and sets the stage for the next phase of the project.

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Transcript

0:12

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. All right, let's get into this week's episode. Today I want to talk to you about initial consultations and give you a little bit of a guide on how, what is the purpose of them, how do you charge for them? How do you present them to a client? Why would you do them? How do you prepare for them? And everything in between really. So making sure that you can structure that consultation in a way where you're leading the consultation. The client is not cool, come in. And then you're four hours later, still looking at their grandmother's embroidery, that's got nothing to do with why you're actually there or what the future scope of work is. There's a lot to take in. I'll try to keep it as brief as possible. I think it's an important one for designers who haven't been doing this for years on end I am, most certainly a designer who is in the camp of all initial home in-home consultations must be paid consultations. All of my time must be paid for. I do understand the argument of oh, I'll just go over and see what it's all about and then I'll, pitch for the work or I'll do a fee proposal or scope of work document or I'm quite new. I'm just learning. That's even more reason to charge because you're not charging other people for other things and your business is not a hobby. It is a business often our in home consultations or the site that we're traveling to involved, travel fees. It's a little bit further out than our postcode or our office location. So in my mind and what I teach inside of the framework, it is absolutely 100 percent a paid consultation. It can take hours after you get home to pull together detailed notes to get your mind in a place where you're like, okay, now I feel confident to give them a bit of including where my brain is going with the initial concepts, obviously you're not drafting up those initial concepts just yet, but, effectively an in home consultation is travel over, it's time spent with the client, it's gathering of information, it's what are the budgets, what are the timelines, what are the constraints, what do I need to keep what am I working with, what do you need help with, and it's listing out all of those things. And then it's going home to the scope of work and itemizing those and attaching a paid element to each and every one of those itemized tasks that needs to be performed. Often a little presentation pack in the way that I perform my own initial consult. It's a templated presentation pack that they get back and they're able to open that pack. See some of my top line ideas. See the full client brief. See the full scope of work and the fee proposal. And then from there, they're able to choose to adhere to my payment method, which is a 50 percent deposit. Don't want to freak you out. I hope you're still listening if you're brand new, because I'm going to take you all the way back to, okay, somebody has been presented with the option of a paid in home consultation. They've decided to go ahead with that. They've paid you a couple hundred dollars, whatever your fee is to go in for a 60, 90 or two hour consultation. And we're going to pick up there. I'm happy to talk about the other stuff at another time, or certainly, obviously, inside paid containerships or mentorship. But for now, we are going to get moving on a guide for exactly how to handle your paid in home consultation, especially your first one. And breathe. Okay. Very firstly, you have got this. The very first in home consultation is equal parts terrifying and exciting. You might not believe me right now, and it feels really scary. And I bet you're like, Oh God, I'm going to go over there. And who am I to be the authority in this space? Or I'm not, I haven't even had a full client yet. So how am I going to walk in and start talking the language of design? You absolutely will nail this. Once you get inside of the house you just flood with ideas. It just blows. If you ever look at a real estate. com even property staging or or unstaged houses and you're looking through, you're immediately going, Oh, that rake ceiling's beautiful. I would accentuate the beams. I would paint the adjacent wall in a deep green and I would do this and I would do that. And all of a sudden you're like, Oh my god, I've redesigned the entire house. And this is another reason my in home consultations are paid. Because I go over there and I absolutely word vomit every idea I've ever had. I cannot help myself. I get so excited. I'm writing everything down. I'm saying to them, we need a bit of height in that corner. In fact, it's low on light. I'd suggest a mirror. And as I'm going around saying things, I'm having all these ideas and I'm writing it all down. And I'm not the first and I will not be the last designer who's gone over to a home. I've charged a one hour or 90 minute in home consult fee. I've given them oodles of my ideas, thousands of ideas, because I'm very excited. I've gone home, I've spent another hour or two pulling together a detailed document after that initial consultation. And I've provided them that fee scope or the scope of work and the fee proposal. And they've said, ah, we've decided to go in a different direction. I know what direction you went in. You went in the direction of taking every idea that I gave you and DIYing it or implementing it yourself, knowing exactly what is needed now, because I was in the home telling you that and if that is an unpaid consultation, they've gotten all of your expertise every minute that you had an assignment due and you were stressing and everything that you did in design school, they've gotten it all for free. They're not going to recommend you. They're not advocates for your brand. They're not engaging with your brand. It's a sad and sorry state of affairs. So a thousand percent do not recommend. Okay, so now we know that we are going to pay, we are going to charge for the consultation. We have taken a deep breath. We know that we can do this. It is fine. We're going to get in there, get to the house and we will have ideas. Look, the absolute plain devil's advocate, worst case scenario, you go in there, you've got no ideas. You're not there to give ideas. You're there to gather information to come back to them with the scope of work. Stop stressing about whether or not you're going to flood with ideas or you're going to be like a wet fish and just go in and see what happens because I promise it's the ideas thing, not the fish thing. The first thing I'm going to suggest is that we make sure that you have receipt of payments. Confirm that they have paid for this consultation. The amount of people that are like, yeah, I do paid consultations. I'm like, okay. It's tomorrow morning at 10am. Have they paid? Oh, not yet. Okay, look, we really need to get onto that because you do not get in your car and drive over until that money has landed in the business bank account and I'm not joking when I say that bit gets missed all of the time. The amount of people I speak to I did the initial consultation, was it paid? Yep. Have they paid the invoice? Oh, not yet. Okay, so you've already been over there and told them all the ideas, given them the scope of work, but they haven't even paid the initials. So please, this is your time to practice your payment methods and practice your processes around payment because it's your first initial consultation. So this is a great chance to say, Hey I'm really looking forward to tomorrow. The next step is reconfirmation. So here we go. Let's just get straight into it. Can't wait to chat tomorrow. A friendly reminder. I haven't actually seen the invoice paid. The, Initial consultation is not actually confirmed and I won't be there at the agreed time unless the payment is received prior to, give it a deadline, 8am tomorrow morning when I pull together my calendar, whatever that looks like. While we're talking about reconfirmation, I have a templated email that I will always send out 24 hours a week. prior to the initial consult. Just reminding them I'm coming over to the property tomorrow, please let me know if there's anything I'm unaware of, like you have some sort of like vicious dogs or an alarm's going to go off if I open the front gate or anything like that. And I also have an attached document again that's templated or that's inside of the framework around what to expect in the initial consultation. From the perspective of the client. So it talks them through things to be aware of make sure you have time to have me there. Don't have, the mortgage broker arrive halfway through to look at your opportunities and you've got an appointment with this person. And, of course, things come up, the postie might knock on the door or whatever, but don't invite your sister in law around and make space for this appointment and treat it. as important as it is. I also, what else is in that document? Things like discuss who's in charge of this, who am I going to be communicating with? How many people live in the home? What are the functions of the rooms? So I give them a bit of a heads up of the sorts of things that I'm going to be asking of them. And I also reassure them that I am not there to judge their clothes, halls of clothes. I am Melbourne born and raised. I understand that 50 percent of my life 50 percent of my year, my clothes are hanging inside of the home. I also have three kids. So baskets of unwashed washing is not uncommon in my home. Because hashtag life and I'm not there to look at that. I can absolutely look beyond that. So it's got a whole bunch of different things in it. There's a few tips for you. If you want to go and create a similar document for yourself. But in my experience and in everything that I teach, I am always looking at ways to preempt questions that my clients might have and then give them a document that already answers those frequently asked questions and puts them at ease. It's in my tone of voice, and it's something that they don't need to come to me and say, Oh, look, the clean is not coming till Thursday. They already know I'm not there for that. Okay. Packing up your stuff or your toolkit or your mobile design house, whatever you're taking this can look different for different people and at different levels of experience. Some people do have this like big, looks like they're going into state and they're wheeling in a case. And some people have a small carry bag and other people have, a laptop satchel with a whole bunch of things in. Some people need a lot in order to get there. Ideas across, like they wanna take in fabric swatches, color swatches, color fans camera phone tools, measuring tape or app on your phone or laser measure this will look different. For everyone. So I think it's really about thinking, what is my approach? What is my style? Do I want to be showing them a lot of options at this early time? Or am I happy to go over and gather the information and do some of this stuff? Bring it to the concept meeting. That's my style. It's not everybody's style. I like to go in and my initial consults are very heavy on understanding what the client's going to need for me. Do I have space to take this job on in my life right now? What will it cost to work with me? Is this the kind of work that I want to do? Because being an e designer, obviously my in home consults are few and far between, but I do. Do you do them? And I absolutely, I'm working on a project locally that I installed with Globe West last week, and I will do things like that. But predominantly, this little portion is something that I teach in the framework, but that I do maybe 3 times a year. For me, it looks a little bit different. I won't need to do a lot of. Measuring in that moment, I'm more likely to gather as much information as I can take it off site, pull it together, get all my detailed notes and my proposal together and then decide what next steps look like. But if you're wanting to pack something up a little tip, I generally always, we all have our own aesthetic and so I'll know that there are certain fabric samples for shears that I have and there might be certain timber. Colour tones that I lean towards when I'm making selections, there are specific, I might take over a specific supplier's new collection launch catalogue, or I might have, I'll generally always have one or two colour fans in the colours that I feel, like I've asked enough questions in my discovery call, I can usually take, a bit of a triage pack over to the home just to get us started. So we're still getting ready for the initial consult. I generally, in terms of dress code, you want to be professional, but you also want to be comfortable. So don't wear like killer heels if you normally sit in your studio in like flat slip on shoes or boots. Like you're going to be walking around like a baby giraffe on their existing floors looking silly. So make sure you're dressing comfortably, before you're an interior designer, you just get this perception that all designers are in blazers and heels and they're this and then that just be who you are. Don't show up in tracksuit pants and half of your lunch down your t shirt, but do show up in a way where you can freely move, where you communicate comfortably because however you show up, it's going to absolutely. Determine how successful the initial consult actually is in terms of your ability to communicate, articulate and be comfortable further to that. Don't forget. This is not an exam. Relax. Be okay. It's completely bespoke. It's dynamic. You lean into it. You don't know what's going to happen. Yeah, we can get ourselves so worked up, especially like the night before, or if you are compounding with another issue that you might have, if you suffer from anxiety or things are going on, it will be fun. This is what you got into design for in the first place. This is the stuff that lights you up. So just try to relax as much as you possibly can and enjoy the time that you're there. I'm going to wear my weird on the outside for a minute because I am quite convinced that it's because I listen to and am exposed to so much true crime podcasts. Side note, come and drop into my DMs at oleander underscore and underscore finch if you have a good recommendation because I'm pretty much up to date with all of them. I Is this am I being lured into a murder trap? I don't know. I don't know these people or sometimes, this single individual and I'm going inside of a locked apartment. There are a lot of things that I do because I do have this weird, a little security thing. One of the main ones is I never go anywhere without at least two different people knowing the home address. Like the address that I'm going to. I generally always let my husband know that I have arrived, that I'm going into the property, that my phone is on and in my hand, he will sometimes text for updates, but let's be honest, especially as he has his own profession that he can't always be by the phone sometimes, I'll see him at night and I'll be like, Oh, by the way, I didn't get murdered. Thanks for the checkup at the end. But I do like to check in with people or let people know what I have. So along with planning well ahead, so letting people know where I'm going, what I'm doing, I always park my car like out the front, my getaway car. It just means that, I always make sure things are safe. Is it well lit? I'm not going down a back alleyway and around. I will call someone and say, Hey, is this really your address? This is another really great reason not to be in 8 inch heels, because if a girl's got to run, I'm not, I can't run in heels I don't want to be throwing heels behind, I know, I'm going into this way too much, but it is important that you're risk assessing, especially if you have staff or yeah, if this is your first initial consult, you may not have even thought to leave the address with somebody or to do like that extra preparation beforehand. Trust your instincts. Oh my God. Your gut knows everything. If you are standing at the door and it is just giving you the ick, get a phone call. I don't care if they didn't see the phone ring. There's such a thing as silent rings and be like, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. My child's fallen. It's a head thing. So the school needs me to pick them up straight away and get out of there because your gut knows everything and your instincts are always right. Okay. Now, because of my true crime paranoia, we have pepper sprayed a completely innocent couple who just need help choosing a tile for their splashback. But these things are really important to consider because you may not have. The next thing I want to talk about in your initial home console is just some tips around building rapport and making them feel comfortable. It's a very intimate space, people's home, so they've invited you in and then they're just feeling a little bit like Or you don't really know each other. So just some small talk tips. Say yes. When offered a drink like tea, coffee, it just makes the homeowner feel more at ease because as as someone who also owns a home, if you're like, can I get you anything, tea, coffee? And they're like, no, thanks. You're like, okay we're just here for the professional stuff, whereas if you actually do take the tea, sit down for the minute, at the very beginning, you're going to just be having a little bit of a comfort conversation anyway, just telling them how this next little bit's going to go, the kinds of information you're going to need and, you can make them feel really comfortable by doing that and just, Offering other things like carry the cup to the sink, show genuine interest in the client's life and their home ask questions about how they entertain, what is their dream outcome like if they could walk in and it would blow their mind, what would it feel like, what would it look like, think about your questions prior to showing up. It's obviously important that you take the lead in these initial consultations, and trust me, these are the places that can really blow out time wise, because they've got you in the home, and they start talking, and the next minute they're like, come with us, I'll just show you the en suite for a second, because we're thinking at some point we're going to do this, that, and the other. Everyone's got wild plans for their home, but if they have consulted you or asked you to come over to consult on an open plan, Living room refresh and they're dragging you into their personal master bedroom on suite to talk about the paint colors or tiles or whether they should replace the tap where you're in danger zone. It's always important that we try to lead without being like. rude and bossy and overbearing. You don't want to be in there being like we've wasted 15 minutes with this. Let's move on because they're not going to hire you. Who would? I wouldn't want to work with that person long term either. So what we really want to do is be clear around setting the expectations of how long it takes. And if you do find that you're losing control of the reins a little bit, just say, look, guys, I'm really, Conscious that we only have another 30 minutes and I know you have so much more to show me. So if we can just keep moving through if I need clarification, we'll get to that when it comes to our first onsite visit or just keep looping back around to that sounds great. I am only here for the open plan. Love to hear about that. But let's do that in phase two of the project or just finding other ways to keep them on track. My general approach is to sit for 10 or 15 minutes, ease them in with some project based small talk, explain what's going to happen during the consultation. I'll talk you through some questions about the overall project and take lots of notes as we go. And then we'll head for a little tour of the appropriate spaces where I'll measure, take photos, brainstorm ideas, and just get a real feel for what's possible. And once we've done that, let's reconvene back here. We'll review the scope of work together, make sure we're both on the same page. I haven't missed anything. And I can give you a little indicative idea of the sort of design direction. I'm thinking of. That's just one little paragraph. That's something that comes up all the time and now they're like, okay, I know what we're doing today. It's not going to take long. And this is what is going on. This next section, I wasn't actually going to share, but I think I will because it might help some of you to get your notebooks out and to pause the podcast and go back and write them down. But here are a list. a sample from a much larger list inside of the framework of some questions that you might like to ask in that initial consultation. So who lives in the home? What function does the room require? How do you entertain? How do you like to entertain? What size family do you entertain? It's very different having just the neighbors come over versus having seven siblings, for example. What do you love or hate about the space as it stands and what sort of timelines you want to fulfill the section selection, will you want to fulfill the selections immediately or work towards the selections? Do you require me to procure or simply select? Do you want the room, how do you want the room to feel? Tell me about your intended style outcomes in your own words. What colors are you naturally drawn to? What's in your wardrobe? What do you, would you like to see when you walk into a room? What existing pieces am I working with? Is there anything that we need to keep or are we starting all new? This helps you manage budgets and the number of items and the mood board. It could also be a good idea to Flag family heirlooms or like super ugly pieces that might make your job more of a challenge and set up that expectation that you'd actually get a discount if you've already got a sideboard if that sideboard is missing a cupboard door and it's like horrendously offensive and I have to work with it. I can say that on this podcast, but obviously, I'd be much more politically correct and tiptoe around in a much kinder way when dealing directly with the clients. But Other things I always discuss like artwork, what types of art do you love and hate? And you might not know what you want, but you might know I absolutely will not have coastal in my home or I don't want any abstract because I don't get it or like they can give you a bit of preference and lead you in that area. And then what are you comfortable sharing with me in terms of our budget and have you considered or what are your expectations in terms of budget? between the budget put towards creating the selections and the budget for the design fees. So just having a chat to them there and then about the fact that, I'm not included in your budget, I am different and I have my fee. And I always like to talk about that stuff at some point in that initial consultation. There's plenty of other tips inside of the resource library in my group membership. My group membership, the framework we just do things like break it down to room by room strategies, talk about observation techniques, listening techniques paraphrasing, just a whole bunch of extra stuff that we teach around how to make a really successful initial consult. And look, once you do two or three of these, you'll get your own flavor flave. You'll be in there, you'll be feeling really good and you'll get it done really tight. That's how we stick to 60 or 90 minutes, whatever it is. It's because. It all flows and you get a process and you really know I've blocked that time in my calendar, I have another appointment to get to, I can gather all the information I need in this time because I've walked through multiple times and I'm getting quite good at it. So it does take practice, paid practice, paid initial consultations, but you will find that it gets faster and faster. So you might like to allow 90 minutes to two hours for the first, Sort of nine months of your business. And then when you feel like you've done enough of them, you might say, I just do a 60 to 90 minute consultation. I've got lots of other time saving tips around reflections and taking detailed notes and pulling that together in a scope of work document, the fee proposal, all of that, again, inside of the course, and in time, I hope to do some more podcast episodes that might break down some of those other areas. But this is a solo episode today, a mini one. I want to keep it to the initial consults. And just remind you that every single one of these is a learning experience, and it's going to step you towards becoming a much better interior designer, much more confident. The last little tip that I'll give you is around wrapping up at the end, when you're leaving, make sure that you set expectations on the follow up timeline. Great. I've loved seeing everything. I'll pull together my detailed notes and I will have a fee proposal and scope of work over to you with a an idea of the design direction that I'm going in that I can get to you by insert date here. So always over to you. No, do not do that. Always under promise and over deliver in what your timeline is. So you'll always say to them, look, it's usually two weeks after the consultation, you can expect it all and then give it back in four days. Or say if you. Two weeks is far too long and you definitely don't have any other clients and you're going to get it done in two days time. Just say, it's usually about a week or so to get this done. I will make sure it's over to you by next Tuesday, assuming today is Tuesday. And from there, then you actually deliver it on Friday afternoon or something. Then you have obviously over delivered. They're feeling really great. They can go into the weekend and consider it. I won't go into how much you will freak out when that arrives in their emails and you have to wait across the weekend for them to discuss it before deciding to proceed with the job. All these little things that are just so scary, but it's all practice and it doesn't matter if you lose a job. You win some, you lose some, literally. Some pitches at some scopes, you'll win the work and sometimes you just won't. And I will come back to you again with another podcast episode around what to do with objections, what to do when we don't win the work, but that's it for today. Enjoy these initial consultations. They're my favorite part. I don't always get the work, but I love being invited into people's homes. It's the reason I do what I do. I love to be able to get all these wild ideas and get creative and get in there. What an amazing experience. So please join me on Thursday. You will be able to listen in on two friends in business discussing all things interior design business and chatting with Eliza Grace from Eliza Grace interiors. Eliza and I have been friends for a very long time on Instagram. We've met in real life. She's done some really different things with her business and her trajectory is quite different. I remember she stayed in her job for quite a while before she actually took a step towards running her business and things. So I think you're going to love her story and I can't wait to bring it to you on Thursday. 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.