Rendering by Gibson Design Management

Here are three main ways:

1. Sell emotion. When your client is able to see what their space is going to look like before it is even built or remodeled, they are going to bond.  They will bond with the space.  That bond will extend to their bond with you as the design firm.  Often it is difficult to communicate a visual to a client using words.  Eliminate the need for words and show them exactly what you mean.
2. Upsell. Just like with 3D renderings, you can show your client the “whole picture” with an animated walk-through.  If the client has only approved a few of the items for the living room, and think that they really don’t need the window treatments, additional ottoman, and artwork, show them how those additional items will complete the space.  If you are doing a large office building, show the client what their new workspaces will look like and why they really do need all of the bells and whistles.  Show them what their clients will see as they enter the lobby.
3. Set your firm apart. Most design firms are not using animation.  When you go into a big potential client meeting, show those clients that you are on the cutting edge with both technology and client service.  This will translate in their mind that you are the experts and your services are worth more than your competitors.  The client will then believe that you are on the cutting edge and progressive in all areas that will affect their project.

While I believe that 3D renderings should be used with EVERY client, I am realistic—which means I know that animation cannot be used with every client.  However, it is very important to show EVERY potential client that this is a service that you offer.  You should use animation with every large commercial and large residential client.  With larger budget clients, you will make up the cost of animation through the upsell and through the referrals.

To see an example of one of our animated walk-throughs, click here.

Design by Gibson Design Group | Rendering for Upcoming Charity House Show

Here are 3 ideas for using 3D renderings that you might not have thought about previously:

1. Work backwards. If you have a great project in your portfolio that you have already completed and photographed, why not render that project as well.  This will beef up your portfolio by showing potential clients what they can expect as a “before” (the rendering) and “after” (the photograph).  The similarities will be astounding to the potential client.
2. Project never built, but design done. Unfortunately, given the economy over the past two years, many large projects never got off the ground.  However, you may have done great design work for these spaces.  If you have a project that was not ever completed, or the client pulled the plug for budgetary reasons, why not render your vision and add that to your portfolio?
3. Substitute for traditional photography. While professionally photographing your best work is extremely important for your portfolio, there are some projects that might not be quite worth the thousands of dollars to photograph.  As a less expensive alternative, you can take photos of the spaces with a point and click camera and then have photorealistic renderings done to mimic them.  This is also an opportunity to add the window treatments, art, accessories, or additional pieces that were part of the design, but not purchased by the client.

Conventional or non-conventional uses aside, utilizing photorealistic 3D renderings in your portfolio is a great way to win that next client, and set yourself apart from your competitors.

To my delighted surprise, I was given the opportunity to pull supporting fabrics for one of her projects!  She had a presentation in several days, and could not fit the 5 hour round trip to the design center into her schedule.  She supplied me with the vendor and pattern numbers for the driving fabrics, and a few details about durability needs and budget.  The design center is 15 minutes from my office, and within 90 minutes, I had pulled approximately 60 fabrics from numerous vendors and showrooms, stopped at the FedEx store, and sent them off to be delivered to her doorstep the next day.

Here is a quote from her email:

“You spent half the time that I would have spent and found twice the number of selections.  There were at least a dozen out of the group that were extremely useful for the meeting.  My clients benefit because they don’t pay my high hourly rate and we still have a wonderful selection for them.  As you know, I was skeptical about having someone else make selections for me; after this process, I would absolutely use the service again.”

She was very happy with what was sent to her and was able to scheme for the presentation.  My greatest satisfaction was not that I changed her mind, but that I was able to help her and to exceed her expectations.

“One of the deep secrets of life is that all that is really worth doing is what we do for others.” – Lewis Carroll

The question that I encourage you to ask yourself and your staff is where that important project management and administration borders on inefficiency.  If you’re like most design firms that we work with, that greatest inefficiency is in the purchasing process.  You may have great technology (like Studio IT) and great systems in place to make this process a little less painful but the reality is that pricing, creating proposals, creating purchase orders, tracking and expediting takes time, often a lot of time.  In fact, I can imagine that much of your purchase order management time can be summed up with a few of these frustrating points:

• Calling multiple showrooms and vendors to get pricing…leaving messages…then calling them again because they didn’t get back to you.
• Calling multiple showrooms and vendors to get pricing…leaving messages…and then missing their next calls because you’re on the phone with another vendor.  Thus begins the illustrious PO management game of phone tag.
• Checking on orders weekly (if you know what’s good for you) because you’ve had too many times where a vendor has failed to notify you that the sofa, which was supposed to ship last week, will actually be another four weeks.  The vendor does not have to deal with your irate client who wanted the sofa before Thanksgiving.
• Creating client proposals that accurately describe the items but don’t give the client too much information so that they don’t “shop” you.
• Dealing with a delay in orders when you’re on vacation, in High Point, on another project install, or generally completely incapable of handling the crises as you’re nowhere near your computer and your office, and might not even have a pen in your purse/pocket that seems to work.

In our design firm, we utilize great technology and we institute effective systems.  Despite our finest efforts, this has not, however, eliminated the items above from rearing their ugly heads.  The reality is that on each project, a design firm may deal with 30+ vendors and showrooms which mean 30+ lines of communication.  When I look at our bottom line, I see this part of our business as the greatest drain, the greatest hindrance to our growth, and our greatest cost.

When we launched Gibson Design Management, we focused on purchase order management.  While we now have multiple services that we offer for the interior design industry, I still believe that our purchase order management service is the best way to make a design firm more profitable and healthy.

Instead of having those 30+ lines of communication open at all times and being the central hub with a plethora of spokes, our purchase order management services give you one “go to” person that handles every order that you place, every item that you want to price, and every piece that you need to track.  At the same time, your company can actually make more money with fewer paper-pushing efforts.

As I write this post I worry that this might be the first time in the history of this blog that I’ve written a sales-y post that is also an educational post.  I would not risk our readers with shameless self-promotion if I did not truly believe that this service can have the greatest impact on a single interior design firm.

We offer a lot of great services and our team is really, really good at what they do.  However, when we sit and talk about our different services, purchase order management is the one service that the team unanimously says “that’s a no-brainer; every design firm should use that.”  Once I explain and write down the numbers on the time and money lost on managing purchasing in-house and then I show that the design firm can actually make more money, it’s not surprising that they say that.

In 2010, if you are interested in growing your bottom line and getting back to the real reason you became a designer, please contact me and we can talk more.  Don’t continue to do things the old way as we all now see that the old way is slowly taking a choke hold on the livelihood of our industry.

Holly Hunt - New York

The perfectly sharpened pencils nestled in bins with memo sample request pads handily located next to them, the colorful and imaginative shopping bags full of gorgeous fabrics and funky trims, yours for the taking.

Fadini Borghi Fabrics & Trimmings

Graciously offered space to spread out and work, with water, coffee and snacks readily available. A sales associate ready to offer assistance; pricing and tear sheets swiftly and efficiently proffered.

But showrooms are more than that, they are a designer’s life blood, and designers are theirs’.  A perfect example of a symbiotic relationship.  Showrooms and their well-trained staff should be considered allies, a first line of defense. They are problem solvers, who will go to bat for a customer to help in getting to the bottom of a freight issue, or working with a vendor to push a lead time, or getting a difficult question or problem resolved.

The showrooms I have been fortunate to work both for and with have been much more than the selling, they have been about the relationship and the connection.

Gibson Design Management recently launched a Review Center.  This is a place for the design industry to review showrooms on the customer service that it receives.  We hope for it to be a place for showrooms that are providing great service to be lauded, and for those who are not serving the industry well, to improve from.  The way for this review center to be successful is for you to be candid about your experiences and to share those experiences.  We would love to have you contribute to our review center, and spread the word to your industry partners.

Currently, you can review showrooms in the Denver Design District and the Washington DC Design Center.  Please add your stars and reviews.  Posts can be anonymous if you do not feel comfortable adding your name, and of course, your email address will be kept strictly confidential.

1.)    What kind of inventory system do they utilize?  Does the warehouse have the technology to use photographs in their receiving reports?  Do they an accurate record of quantities of items from each vendor?

2.)    What are the hours of operation?   When you’re contacting the company do you speak with a live person or a switchboard?  Good communication with representatives within the warehouse is key.  Avoid warehouses with limited customer services hours.

3.)    Are they flexible and can they schedule last minute deliveries?  I recently encountered a situation where an office desk and credenza were delivered early to a hotel and needed immediate installation.  I was in a pinch, so I immediately called the warehouse we are using for the project to see if they could send an installer the next day.  Although it was last minute they were able to find someone that was available.  This was a win-win situation for both the client and for me.  Make certain you understand the warehouse’s delivery policy before you schedule an installation.

Talk to showrooms and designers in the area and feel out your options.  Build a personable relationship with your warehouse customer service team early on in the project.  They are there to help you run your project seamlessly.

Our Accounting Services team would be happy to set up a complimentary call with you in order to discuss the scope of your typical accounting needs.  Let Gibson Design Management handle:

• Creating invoices for time and goods
• Disbursing checks to vendors
• Operating payroll
• Calculating and paying sales tax
• Running reports to show both the financial health of your business and where you need to improve
• And more…

If you would like more information about Accounting Services, please contact Margie Strickland, Associate Director, Accounting Services.

As an added incentive, Gibson Design Management would like to offer our members a 10% discount on all accounting services provided through July 31, 2009. 

We’ve come up with our own official definition of our new word – Webster’s hasn’t quite caught on yet to our cutting edge way of thinking…so straight from the “Gibson” dictionary:

teamssourcsing (noun)  teamssourcsing [teem sawrssing] the innovative, strategic utilization of a fully staffed team of professionals to increase a design firms’ efficiency, profitability, expertise and versatility. 

Now that we all understand just what Teamsourcing is, let’s talk about some of the ways teamsourcing can help you run your interior design business.

Technology – Recently my daughters were moaning and groaning while using our family computer because it is “so ancient and slow!”  Since my husband and I both have our work laptops we don’t end up suffering the perils of this 3 year old computer very often; therefore, we haven’t felt the need to upgrade yet.  It seems like with anything in the technology realm you are constantly feeling out of date and under equipped.  With Teamsourcing, you have the benefit of an expert team who are continually learning the latest and greatest, while investing in the necessary equipment to deliver it.  You are able to offer your clients the most up to date technology without large expenditures on equipment and training.

“Thanks so much for your team’s work on our project. The kitchen designs were immaculate,3D work was stunning and the client is now very happy.” -David Bassett-Parkins, CEO, Ava Living

Time – The commodity most of us are probably most lacking in today’s world is time.  Try as we might, we haven’t figured out how to invent a 30 hour day.  However, by teamsourcing some of your responsibilities and tasks you are able accomplish much more with the 24 hours that are in a day.  Delegating tasks to a team that can handle them quickly and proficiently allows you the time necessary to focus on the aspects of your business that you enjoy.  We can’t create more hours in the day, but we can certainly maximize each hour we do have.

“I was at a conference all day on Friday. When I returned from the conference I had all of my proposals ready and waiting for my next client meeting thanks to Gibson Design Management. If I wasn’t a GDM member, I either would not have been prepared for my client meeting or I would have had to miss my conference to prepare.” - S. Lee Wright, Allied ASID, Holistic Designer New York, NY

Expertise –Let’s face it, we can’t all be experts at everything.  To be honest, I wouldn’t even want to be an expert at everything because quite frankly there are jobs out there I would not enjoy.  A major benefit to teamsourcing is the ability to call on your specialized teams that have the expertise (and passion) for what they are doing.  In our own homes most of us don’t try to take care of everything.  We have trained professionals we call on for assistance with at least some of those tasks (plumber, electrician, handyman, landscaper, housecleaning, etc.)  My landscaper and his crew take really good care of my yard!  Yes, I am capable of doing it myself, sort of, but it sure doesn’t look nearly as good and takes me at least twice as long.  Teamsourcing affords your design firm the advantage of expert teams available to take care of those areas of your business where you lack the proficiency and enthusiasm.

“There is no task too large or too small that the friendly Gibson Design Management staff cannot assist with. The team at Gibson Design Management has made the entire project as effortless & seamless as possible.           -Matthew B. Quinn, Air Sea Packing Group Inc., Long Island City NY 11101

Profitability – One of the most significant benefits to teamsourcing is increased profits.  With most of our services our members can easily mark up our service fees and pass it directly onto their clients, making a nice profit.  Additionally, you also have those hours available to generate revenue yourself, at your hourly rate.  And if you decide you want to celebrate your new profits by taking a trip to the Bahamas, you won’t need to worry about keeping an assistant busy.  Our team is there when you need us; not a financial drain when you don’t.

“Gibson Design Management has taken a burden off my shoulders in a way that allows me to service customers in a timely manner and still profit…THANK YOU, THANK YOU. I look forward to doing more and more with you.” -Valerie Steil, A.S.I.D., Marc T. Nielsen Interiors, Valparaiso, IN

Flexibility – the ability to be nimble, to expand and contract as your projects require is a huge benefit to teamsourcing.   The amount and complexity of projects you are working on is bound to fluctuate; it’s never any fun to have to turn down a project because you lack the team to handle it or to lay off employees because you lack the work to support them.  Teamsourcing gives you the flexibility to handle bigger projects, take a month off in the summer to play with the kids or redefine yourself as a designer.

“Outsourcing to Gibson makes perfect sense because it gives you the ability to handle bigger projects with their help and expertise” -Laurel Quint, Q Interiors in Denver, CO.

Professional Networking – In any business, networking has always been of vital importance.  In today’s culture it’s not only possible, but critical to network with industry contacts around the nation (and beyond.)  When you teamsource to GDM, you have the ability to let our social butterflies handle some of the networking for you.  We are always connecting with industry affiliates to form and strengthen relationships, keep up on all the latest trends and news, and stay informed about information our members need to know.  Our team loves to connect our members with industry affiliates and contacts, open doors, and help our members get and stay connected to the interior design industry. 

“I still can’t believe I have accomplished my social networking goals in just a matter of days. I would still be an “unknown” in the social networking world if I did not sign up” -Linnore Gonzales, Decor and You, Denver, CO.

• Basic outsourcing advantages
• Advantages of each particular service
• Easy step-by-step of how it works
• Time for Q&A

This webinar will be available weekly on Tuesdays at 4pm EST and we encourage you to attend to learn about what our membership is all about.

Click here to sign up for the complimentary webinar.  For more information, please contact Kay Alessi, Director, Sales and Marketing.