Designing Success: Why Designers Need a Great Sales System

Sales is just one part of a designer's job. That isn't to say designers aren't motivated to do sales because That is, after all, how they get paid, but it isn't their core skill set. They are a designer because they love creating innovative designs that turn unfunctional, blah, kitchens into wows of spaces that are an incredible experience. In this episode, we'll be looking at the sales system from the designer's perspective. Embracing the unique position of the salesperson in a kitchen and bath design business is essential to first getting designers to use the system and also setting up the system to work best for when designers are wearing their sales hat, which isn't their preferred one. Not only are the salespeople unique in this industry, so are the buyers. Buyers for kitchen and bath cabinets need oh so much more than just a price list and a way to pay. They need someone that can assess their needs, apply creativity and expertise to create a cabinet design that realizes their desires and accounts for the complex reality of everything a kitchen or bathroom requires. Because sales success is dependent on the designer being a consultant, and designers being the creative type, sales systems for this industry work best when they can simplify the sales part of the designer's job and make it easy to do the legwork of lead engagement. Taking on the role of a designer for a moment, any week is likely filled with client meetings, design creation, working out the kinks with orders and project timelines, chasing down missing parts, interfacing with installers, and design iterations. Oh, and sales. Engaging in regular sales activities is likely falling onto the unimportant, no, the important, but not urgent bucket. So they struggle to prioritize it. And when they do turn their attention to working leads in the pipeline, and maybe even prospecting, the easier it is, the more likely it is to get done. When the designer fully utilizes a well architected sales system, they're able to minimize their time doing sales tasks because they are working at maximum efficiency and effectiveness. Not only is this great for profitability, but it's also a huge boost to morale, because designers want to be designing, not selling. Another challenge with designers in the sales role is that they don't know what to ask for when it comes to understanding their sales performance. The sales system can help here by providing the right leading indicators and giving designers an overview of the leads in their pipeline and visual indications of where action is needed. To help the designer make the most impact in their sales role, the sales system needs to give them, one, maximum efficiency and effectiveness. Easy to access on a device, clear list of leads they own, with views or lists that help them batch activities, like the follow ups or the prospecting. Also tools to reduce time intensive, low value tasks, like scheduling meetings, sending reminders, and creating emails, by providing them email templates. Next, understanding their performance. Scorecards, dashboards, or meters that show their progress on key metrics can make it easy for them to stay on track with their sales activities. And three, ease of use. Setting defaults, using integrations, and automations can help limit the amount of actions or clicks needed to input or access information in the sales system. Certainly, any system will have a learning curve and require training. However, every simplification of their use increases the chance of them engaging with the system and frees up their time and mental space to focus on the designing part of their job. Understanding the designer's perspective on the sales system means you are less likely to need to wrestle and neg them to use the system. And when they use the system, they're best leveraging their time and efforts to deliver exceptional client experiences. In the next episode, we'll look at the sales system from the client perspective. That's right, the sales system isn't just beneficial to people in the business, it can also make or break the pre sales experience for prospects and leads. Heads up, Hire Help, my book on how to use experts to shortcut improvement, growth, 23rd. Be the first to get the details on HireHelp and pre order by going to HireHelpBook. com. Was this episode helpful? Take a moment to rate and review this podcast. Rating helps other kitchen and bath design owners discover our episodes.