Welcome to A Well-Designed Business! Terri Taylor joins LuAnn on today’s show and she’s going to be walking you through how she calculates budgets on the fly. You’re going to learn what a powerful tool it can be for your design business!

One of Terri’s passions is helping interior designers get their firms organized and profitable. Make sure you take notes because Terri’s going to detail how she does this in an understandable, doable way! Hopefully, it will inspire you and give you the courage and language to have that tricky conversation about budget with your next client.

Terri Taylor is a frequent speaker and guest lecturer at design conferences and showrooms throughout the country. She speaks on a number of topics related to the business of interior design, including: business practices, sales, marketing, motivation, leadership, success, and personal growth.

Ms. Taylor is nationally known as an interior design business expert and coach who teaches and mentors interior designers to help them create successful design businesses.

Terri has over 32 years in the interior design and construction business. She holds both residential and commercial general remodeling Arizona Contractors Licenses, and qualified for her NCIDQ certification in 1991. Terri is a professional member of ASID, IDS, and NCIDQ.

Terri connects with heart-centered designers to help grow their business strategy, accountability, and profitability all while undergoing a beautiful personal transformation.

Show Highlights:

• Using an Excel spreadsheet with the items found in a room and broken out by a room during a consult is simple and efficient.
• If you can get a client to agree with you on the price of furniture pieces three or four times, the client is going to say yes to you when you ask to be hired.
• You have to do your homework and know how to figure these prices out beforehand.
• When you get all the prices on your yellow pad, add it up using easy, rounded-up numbers, and write the total. Hand this to your client, and don’t say anything.
• They might say they didn’t know it was going to be that much, and Okay. Then you’ve just sold the whole job.
• If they counter with a lower price, agree with them, then ask them which parts they would like to take out?
• This is not the time to educate your client on quality and value, you’re just determining their thoughts on prices.
• Once you agree on the total of the furniture, you can pull out a design fee based on 15% - 20% of the furniture budget. This is a small number and easy to sell, but keep your percentage private. Terri offers more details on how to do this.
• There is a way to create revenue of millions of dollars a year, but it’s about team and organization.
• When you actually design the room, you don’t pay attention to the individual pieces but are just keeping the overall budget in mind.
• You have gotten the agreement based on concept and budget.
• What you can learn by floating good, better, and best prices for individual pieces.
• Your answers have to make sense and you need to speak with confidence.
• Tips on collecting your design fee.
• Although you charge a flat fee, you still have to plan your hours and know how much time each part of the project you have to complete its so that the flat fee you charged is profitable.

·         As you gain experience (meaning as you have perfected your back end, your process, your efficiencies as well as your budget and sales presentation), in order to make more money you should be striving to earn more money on the furniture items (instead of raising your design fees above 20-25%). ·         Terri shares information on her various online courses and the services she offers at Interior Design Business Academy.

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Terri’s Email: Terri@InteriorDesignBusinessAcademy

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For More Shows About Fees & Budgets:

Sandra Funk #520, #145, #02

Sarah Magness #384

Cheryl Clendenon #482

Laura Michaels #372

Sally Williams #496

Other shows mentioned:

Nancy Ganzekaufer:#389, #256, #159, #15

Brad Leavitt #542

Traci Connell #525