Designing Success: Why Designers Need a Great Sales System
Sales is just one part of a designer’s job. That isn’t to say designers aren’t motivated to do sales, because that is how they get paid. But it isn’t their core skillset. They are a designer because they love creating innovative designs that turn unfunctional, blah kitchens into wowza spaces that are an incredible experience.
In this episode we’ll be looking at a sales system from the designers perspective. Embracing the unique position of the salesperson in a Kitchen & Bath design business is essential to first, getting designers to use the system, and also setting up the system to work best for when designers are wearing their sales hat.
Understanding the Unique Needs of Kitchen & Bath Cabinet Buyers
Not only are the sales people unique in this industry, but so are the buyers. Buyers for kitchen & bathroom cabinets need oh-so-much more than a price list and a way to pay. They need someone that can assess their needs, apply creativity and expertise to create a cabinet design that realizes their desires and accounts for the complex reality of everything a kitchen or bathroom requires.
Because sales success, especially in the realm of designer sales systems, is dependent on the designer being a consultant, and designers being the creative type, sales systems for this industry work best when they can simplify the sales part of the designer’s job and make it easy to do the “leg work” of lead engagement.
Streamlining Designer Workflows: Balancing Creativity with Sales Efficiency
Taking on the role of a designer for a moment, any week is likely filled with client meetings, design creation, working out kinks with orders and project timelines, chasing down missing parts, interfacing with installers and design iterations. Oh, and sales. Engaging in regular sales activities is likely falling into the important but not urgent bucket, so they struggle to prioritize it. And when they do turn their attention to working leads in the pipeline and maybe even prospecting, the easier it is, the more likely it is to actually get done.
When the designer fully utilizes a well-architected sales system, they are able to minimize their time doing sales tasks because they are working at maximum efficiency and effectiveness. Not only is this great for profitability, but it is also a huge boost to morale because designers want to be designing, not selling.
Another challenge with designers in the sales role is that they don’t know what to ask for when it comes to understanding their sales performance. The sales system can help here by providing the right leading indicators and giving designers an overview of the leads in their pipeline and visual indications of where action is needed.
Key Features for an Effective Designer Sales System
To help the designer make the most impact in their sales role, the sales system needs to give them:
- Maximum efficiency and effectiveness – easy to access on any device, clear lists of the leads they own with views or lists that help them batch activities like followup or prospecting. Also tools to reduce time-intensive, low-value tasks like scheduling meetings, sending reminders and creating emails by providing email templates.
- Understanding of their performance – scorecards, dashboards or meters that show their progress on key metrics can make it easy for them to stay on track with their sales activities.
- Ease of use – Setting defaults, using integrations and automations can help limit the amount of actions or clicks needed to input or access information in the sales system. Certainly any system will have a learning curve and require training. However, every simplification of their use increases the chance of them engaging with the system and frees up their time & mental space to focus on the designing part of their job.
Understanding the designer’s perspective on the designer sales systems means you are less likely to need to wrestle and nag them to use the system. And when they use the system, they are best leveraging their time and efforts to deliver exceptional client experiences and designs.
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