Learned It From Experience: L.I.F.E. Lesson #15
Standard Operating Procedures. In the design world, they are often called processes.
Many designers are exactly that- designers that are great at design. But when asked if they have a process, the answer is usually no. Or sort of. What happens when you don’t have any processes in place?
- Clients suffer when you don’t have a process in place. It is hard to trust you or feel like they understand you, or how you communicate ideas, how you work, or costs
- When a client doesn’t trust you, this leads to more questions, fear of the project, hesitancy to sign off on things and give you money, and more of your time is spent convincing them
- You lose time with inconsistency and that’s not only your time, that’s project time, which is money. You also look unprofessional which means that not only the project may not go well, but they probably won’t refer you.
When you have no process, and no templates, you have to recreate everything each time on every project. This goes back directly to wasting your time, and the client’s and thus, losing money.
If your business doesn’t look professional, how can you ask for top dollar for your services and the items you are selling?
Exactly- you can’t.
Creating the processes isn’t pretty or fun, but they will save you time, trouble, and money if you take the time to create yours. Getting in the habit of a system will save you so many headaches and your projects will run more smoothly and your clients will trust you and be pleased with the process (even when things go wrong) Sounds worth it right? This will also help you streamline and delegate when you bring on team members.
If you don’t have anything set up the best way to start is to go through an entire client project and write down the steps.
Here is a list of things that you should create one time as a template and then use as SOP.
- Discovery call
- Proposal
- How we Work
- Budget Builder
- Trello board
- Loom Video
- Calendly
- Quotes
- Materials list per project
- Budget list per project
- PO’s
- Thank you gift
- Testimonials
Need help creating SOPs for your interior design business? I share some of my own templates when you join MYDB. MYDB (Manage Your Design Business) is a unique mentoring program with a course, private Facebook group, and coaching. Learn more here.
