From contact to client… - Design Business Council

From contact to client…

So you have a client contact list as long as your arm. All ready for that day when you get around to sending them something to try and get more work.

STOP.

You don’t need contacts. You need clients with ongoing work that suits your offering. The type of design everyone in the studio likes doing; with a client that pays for value.

There is a way to achieve this.

The first step is to define the client sectors you know the most about. This is the area where you have a depth of knowledge and some client testimonials as part of case studies. With this refined list you need to do some research on the contact. LinkedIn is great for this.

From your research you build a profile of that person. This profile answers the question. “What job does this person really need done?” This is a Jobs to be done exercise.

Then you walk a mile in their shoes through empathy. You analyse what it is that pains them and what they stand to gain if you use your design skills to relieve that pain. This is empathy mapping.

The final stage is to understand how they make decisions. What type of decision maker are they?

Ultimately we are doing all this to get to know the client and their business.

In post-pitch interviews clients very rarely talk about how great the ‘About us’ and case studies sections were. There is a general impatience for agencies to talk about the client, not the agency.

What clients think survey

Sound simple?
It is a simple process with a very complex set of actions. You could research all this and develop your approach or you could grab it all in one masterclass.

How to gain the right type of client for your studio

This full day masterclass shows how to develop relationships that gain, retain and grow the right type of client for your studio.

Clients in a recent DBC UNseminar titled ‘What clients think’ all said they wanted a relationship with the designer. They weren’t just looking for a supplier; they wanted someone they could trust to understand their business and work with them. So how do you develop client relationships? It begins by understanding exactly what job they need done and then developing empathy that shows how design will give them gains while relieving their pains.