Interior Design Clients

The Designer's Guide to Building and Keeping a Great Clientele

Thomas L. Williams

• Publisher: Allworth
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781581157413
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Interior Design

Clients are the lifeblood of any interior design firm and a sound understanding of how to manage those clients is essential. Interior Design Clients is an informative yet fun read for entrepreneurial designers interested in gaining a better understanding of how to build and manage their clientele. Tom Williams, designer, author, and blogger, deconstructs the pitfalls and challenges that can waylay even seasoned designers. As many professional designers learn, clients can be intimidated by interior designers and sometimes can even be fearful of the process. This unreasonable intimidation can often hinder the designer-client relationship and can even stop clients from asking for what they want. This leads to clients being unsatisfied and then walking away with a negative impression of their designer. Learning why clients fear their interior designer and developing strategies to allay those fears is essential for gaining and keeping a satisfied clientele. Everything from good client, project, and time management to interview techniques and staff and paperwork organization can all lead to making client interaction as rewarding as possible and are important aspects of the business rarely addressed by the interior design community as a whole. Interior Design Clients covers the subjects rarely taught in design schools such as specific presentation and interview skills and how to sell to market. Through frank discussion and practical examples, Williams weaves the art of selling into his lessons on interviewing, presenting, and pleasing the client as a natural part of the design process. Becoming a residential or commercial interior designer is not an easy undertaking, but Thomas Williams' Interior Design Clients: The Designer's Guide to Building and Keeping a Great Clientele provides the fundamental lessons and innovative solutions to help designers succeed in the ultra-competitive world of modern interior design.Allworth Press, an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, publishes a broad range of books on the visual and performing arts, with emphasis on the business of art. Our titles cover subjects such as graphic design, theater, branding, fine art, photography, interior design, writing, acting, film, how to start careers, business and legal forms, business practices, and more. While we don't aspire to publish a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are deeply committed to quality books that help creative professionals succeed and thrive. We often publish in areas overlooked by other publishers and welcome the author whose expertise can help our audience of readers.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Chapter One: The Ideal Client
• Chapter Two: Marketing to the Client
• Chapter Three: The Initial Interview
• Chapter Four: Signing the Contract or Letter of Agreement
• Chapter Five: Creating the Budget
• Chapter Six: Client Communication and Contact
• Chapter Seven: Preparing the Presentation
• Chapter Eight: Presenting to the Client
• Chapter Nine: The Client and the Sale
• Chapter Ten: Ordering, Follow-up, and Project Management
• Chapter Eleven: Delivery and Placement
• Chapter Twelve: A Client for Life
• Afterword
• Index
• Book