I often get asked which order things should happen in an interior design project (and at what point certain templates or documents should be sent to the client).
Here’s my process…
The first step should be a paid initial design consultation. This is where you’ll gather a scope of work, understand budget, walk through the project etc.
This is a paid meeting and for me should be the first step, instead of a free call.
I personally don’t recommend wasting your time on free calls as people who want free advice are often the worst clients!
I explain why in THIS POST.
Don't make it hard for clients to do business with you - get them to a paid offering (paid initial design consultation) as quickly as possible. If a client contacts you the first thing to do is to tell them that all your projects start with a paid initial consult and book them in for that (ideally you’ll have a booking system on your website that they can just book in for themselves and pay).
After the paid initial consult my next steps would typically be…
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Prepare a fee proposal within 12-24 hours and email over (the faster the better while they are still excited about the ideas you’ve talked about with them)
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Have that accepted by client
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Send out your legal contract (design agreement) for signing. Make sure to get this put together by a lawyer - don’t DIY your legal work
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Have that signed and returned
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Get first payment, which is normally 50% of phase one from fee proposal. Whatever you do, don’t start any work until getting this! Sometimes designers get excited and ahead of themselves and will start spending time on a project only to find a client changes their mind prior to paying the initial deposit. So wait for the money BEFORE you get started.
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Start onboarding the client. This normally includes:
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a kick off meeting
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getting a client onboarding questionnaire filled in
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site measure up/existing conditions survey etc. (for comprehensive step by step of this get my SOP database for designers HERE)
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The order and the way I approach the above steps depended on the size of the project
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Start project!
If you need help unpacking this step by step then join my Design Business Bootcamp (info below). Otherwise thanks for reading and catch you in my next post :)
Clare x
Dr Clare Le Roy
