Tales of a Designer

Designers Should Understand Business

When approaching new projects, and being a creative type, it can be very tempting to want to jump right into Photoshop and get out all of the ideas that come to mind from discovery meetings. And when you think of designers, being business savvy doesn’t exactly come to mind. I’ve already discussed the importance of knowing how to sell your services, but it’s also very important, if not essential, for designers, especially freelancers, to be business minded.

Say, for example, I wanted to consult with an architect on remodeling myself a new kitchen. You don’t just sign the paper work and have them start building a kitchen. They would ask questions like how you use the kitchen, what you’re looking to do in the kitchen, if you entertain in the kitchen, etc. They need to know how you’re going to use this space before they can start crafting it.

Websites work the same way. For you to effectively design the best experience for a website, you need to understand how your clients’ business works and what they’re looking to do. Understand all of the hows and whys of the business that you’re working with. Understand the challenges the business has and will face, their business objectives/goals, and so on. Here are a few, of many, questions that we, at Tridea, normally ask during the client discovery meetings:

• Who is your target audience?
• What do you feel is your number one business problem?
• How does the company differentiate itself from competitors?
• What are your short-term marketing goals (in the next 1-2 years)? And how will the website help reach those goals?

Remember, as designers, you’re a problem solver. More likely than not, if you’re being approached by another business for work, they need your help (and creative knowledge) in solving business problems. And asking the right business questions will help get you to better creative problem solving. I would recommend asking these types of questions in a questionnaire, so that you can come back to the answers during your creative jam sessions. They can turn into a good checklist when going over a design to make sure that you’ve addressed the business problems.

Outside of working in Photoshop, what other skills do you find necessary for designers to have?

Selling Your Design Services

For designers, it’s pretty normal to do some freelance work, and in my early stages of freelance work, it mostly came form friends and family members. Working with those people, I never had to put much of an effort into selling my services because they were already comfortable working with me. As time goes on, and your skills progress, you start to expand your network new [potential] clients are referred your way. This is when you need to know how to sell yourself.

This doesn’t mean that you need to turn into some expert salesman, however, your potential clients need to know that they’re investing in the right person for the job. In all of the projects I’ve won with both freelance, and Tridea is confidence. You’d be amazed at how many people admire those who are very confident about the services that they would provide. Don’t just think you can design them something great, know that you can design them something great. If you communicate that effectively, it goes a long way. Confidence always wins.

Another tip that helps a ton is actually being interested in your clients’ business. A client will know whether or not you’re really interested in them and their business, and I’d be willing to bet that they’d rather choose the designer that’s interested in them, over the designer that’s just looking to make some money. So be interested, do some research on their industry, and ask tons of questions.

Keep it simple, keep it clear, and keep it calm, so everyone understands what is happening and feels safe. via

Knowing how to communicate without the use of industry jargon is huge. More likely than not, your potential client will not be a designer or web developer. So when talking to potentials, leave the technical jargon at home. They will not understand it, nor will they care. If they have no clue what you’re trying to say (because of tech jargon), then why should they feel comfortable spending money on your services?

In my opinion, a big part of selling is the talking that you don’t do. It’s easy, and effortless, but listen to your potential clients. Hear what they have to say about what business problems they’re facing and/or what they’re looking for. This possible project will be about their business and consumers, so let them tell you as much as possible about it, then respond.

And the last tip I have should be a no-brainer, but have a portfolio. Remember that confidence thing I talked about earlier? Well, showing off your work helps establish that you’re the right person for the job. I wish I didn’t have to mention this item, but it’s shocking how many designers don’t have portfolios to show off their work. Can’t build one? Then use a hosted service. Don’t like the hosted option? Then take pictures of your work and put them on Flickr. Whatever you do, always be ready to show potential clients the amazing work that you’ve done in the past.

Those are a few tips that I think are very useful, and have helped me out quite a bit in the past and present. What other tips would you say are essential when selling your services?

The Challenge of Quoting Projects

As I was going through reading some of my old blogs posts from this site, I came across 5 Things I Learned Starting a Business. As I was reading those, I felt that I’ve only gotten better at those 5 things, but also tried thinking of things that still need to be improved on, and the first thing that came to mind was quoting projects.

We have tried different approaches and we have far from mastered being consistently right on our quotes. At first we tried doing the hourly thing. This proved the be the worst solution for us because it was very challenging tracking hours to the minute. At one point or another, I always went over the hours specified for the project, which ends up in us losing money and having issues staying within the project budget.

Our next approach was, which we’re still using is just giving the project a total price, loosely based on an hourly rate. This has worked for two reasons. The first is because we’re in a different mind state in not having to stress over every hour spent. This allows us to be as creative as we need to in our research/design/development and not short ourselves because of the limitation on hours.

The second reason this has worked, is because when we meet and go over a quote before sending to a client, we all make sure we’re in agreement on the price tag. When we get to a point that we feel that we can crank out a project for a certain amount, then we are comfortable on whatever time we spend on the project. Again, this isn’t the best solution, but it’s worked for us lately, and we’re still working on refining this as well.

It’s not easy quoting projects, however, I imagine that the more we get used to working with each other, the better we will be at estimating the costs of certain tasks of a project. But it seems like only time will get us better at quoting.

How do you normally quote projects? Has your method been effective for you?