Perhaps your New Year’s resolution was to work smarter and more effectively this year? How’s that going? Do not fear – we’ve got you covered. Here are six smart questions to ask yourself now as you look to elevate your business in 2023, and discover how other home professionals have answered them, too.
1. Are my clients the right fit?
Last year was interior designer Holley Pokora’s most successful one, but she’s preparing for a possible slowdown in 2023 by focusing on her client niche. Doubling down on her efforts to attract more clients from the luxury end of the market, she removed her lower-end offerings from her website for Holley Pokora Interior Design. Instead, she’s emphasising high-end services with the aim of taking on fewer projects, but higher-quality ones.
“What I've been really focusing on is elevating my client, my type of client, and what they're willing to spend,” she says. “You learn over time, it’s much more productive and a much better reflection of your business when you have a higher-end client who respects hiring a professional,” she says.
Jay Sifford of Jay Sifford Garden Design has a criterion to gauge whether his style and approach to landscape design will fit a potential client’s project: he puts high value on how collaborative the creative endeavour will be. “I'm looking for people who are really engaged in the process, very excited, and open to innovative ideas,” he says. “I want people who are fascinated by what we do and who want immersive gardens.”
Collaboration can be tricky, but it can be made smoother using the Houzz Pro Client Dashboard, which lets pros communicate with clients from anywhere through online messaging, photo and file sharing and design tools. The entire history is saved for easy reference and, even better, you control how much or little you share with others.
2. Is my marketing effective?
For landscape architect Bob Hursthouse of Hursthouse Landscape Architects and Contractors, the client relationship is an ongoing one. “We’re trying to build that long-term client relationship,” he says. “I offer an annual walkthrough of the garden, because it’s organic; it's going to change. The sunny yard becomes a shady yard after the trees mature.”
During the Covid pandemic, he sent weekly emails to clients about his own family garden, including which birds were visiting and barbecue recipes. “I got tons of responses from clients thanking us for the breath of fresh air,” he says.
With a long list of clients and other contacts she’s collected over the years, Holley Pokora is seeking ways to incorporate them into her marketing plan year-round instead of just annually with a Christmas thank you. “I'm (finally) starting a newsletter to reach out to all of those successful past projects and my builder list,’’ she says. “I’m very good at selling the completion of a job to a client – the arc of our relationship is very important to me – because successful completion means great photography and hopefully referrals and general goodwill.”
“I figured if I’m going to dominate this market, I need to be able to market as much as possible,” Entire Home CEO Blake Eastwood adds. He saw Houzz Pro marketing tools as a one-stop shop, just like his own company, which isn’t your typical renovation firm, as it handles not just the renovations, but materials and financing as well.
But how do they know which of these marketing efforts are working? With a virtual success manager as part of Houzz Pro management software, professionals gain the Insights & Analytics to gauge their online impact score. They can determine how their Houzz Pro profile views and lead response times compare to industry benchmarks. By seeing which photos on their profile viewers are clicking on, they also know which ones resonate and which to de-emphasise.
3. Am I at my desk too much?
No one wants to spend their time working on estimates all day, but accurate, professional-looking proposals are crucial for the success of design and contractor businesses.
Drew Romero of Drew’s Drywall made high-quality estimates his differentiator. “I had to find something to set myself apart, to make myself look more legitimate,” he says. “I needed that ease of use and efficiency, because I knew I was getting bigger.” He decided to try Houzz Pro Estimate Builder, using the template, markup and labour tools within the programme.
“Within 15 minutes, I was able to do this estimate,” he says. “I was able to land that job because of this legitimate-looking estimate that had everything laid out for [the clients] on what they were paying for,” he says. “No one wants to give you money and not know where it’s going. I was able to land four jobs in a short period of time.”
Pros create estimates 10 times faster using Houzz Pro and give their clients the convenience of approving them, as well as purchases and change orders, with e-signatures from their mobile devices. The time savings gained by harnessing technology gives them more time to quote on more jobs, find more balance in life and run their operations more efficiently.
Before investing in such high tech tools to run her business more efficiently, holistic designer Rachel Larraine says, “I was literally doing stuff on spreadsheets, creating invoices and trying to track everything. It was just a huge time suck.”
She streamlines her business with Houzz Pro to ensure she’s not needlessly wasting time, helping her to be fully present with her family when she’s away from work. She also keeps client communications in one place using the Client Dashboard instead of having clients email or text her. “I love being able to message directly on the platform, so the client isn’t texting me or messaging me on my personal email,” she says.
4. Am I charging enough?
Even wealthy clients can balk at paying a reasonable fee for contracting work, luxury renovator Jason Bliss of Benchmark Home says. He seeks opportunities to educate them about pricing by making it relatable to their lives. “Tell me how much you’re willing to pay for your Mercedes to be worked on,” he says. “You’re probably paying $400 to $500 an hour for that, and yet for the most expensive asset in your life, you want to underpay?” To underscore the point, he adds, “You have a $3 million home and you want to pay somebody $25 an hour to come in and work on it? No, of course not.”
Bliss also emphasises to clients that they’re paying for a skill set. “I educate clients, and especially now that, with the labour shortage for trades, we’re becoming that specialty skill set,” he says.
Technology has also made pricing information more easily accessible to designers, says interior designer Noz Nozawa of Noz Design, who embraces how pricing transparency empowers consumers. With the ability to easily search online, clients can learn more about the products they’re buying. “I’m a huge believer in [the idea that] more information means more empowered consumers, which means greater spending,” she says. Transparency also fosters trust among clients, which will ultimately benefit a designer’s business, she says.
5. How can I juggle projects?
To keep projects on track, Susan Heinz, who co-founded The Heinz Group with Roger Heinz, spreads them along various stages of completion whenever possible. “We try to have clients in different phases at all times,” she says.
The team manage the varied schedules for their renovation projects and custom home builds through the Houzz Pro project timeline. “Clients can see exactly how their project is progressing – ‘Oh, this is what you’re doing this week on my project’ – or [it allows] us to be able to see which trade we’ve scheduled,” she says.
They streamline their work by empowering their growing team to collaborate from anywhere. Using Houzz Pro to share project files and updates, they keep their internal team in the loop no matter where they’re working from. “We’re working on the go. If we didn't have this central repository, we wouldn’t be able to do that,” Heinz says.
“For Roger, who’s the licensed contractor, as he’s walking around on job sites, he’s got his iPad and he’s pulling up files and is able to show people what they need to see at that very moment,” she says. “He can easily pull up a file such as plumbing specs and review the file with a client or supplier right there on the spot, instead of going through his email and searching through 500 emails hoping that it loads.”
6. How can I stay positive?
One piece of advice that resonates with designer Asisat Edu of DIH Designs is to celebrate even the smallest win. “That’s what keeps me going,” she says. Even if she’s had a horrible day, she says she will “find one glimpse of positivity and use that to be a driving force in me, to continue to push further”.
Edu brings a similar hopeful feeling to clients with her designs for their homes. “We’re letting them know, ‘Your day might have been rough, but when you come into your home, what you see is going to affirm your greatness.’ Affirmation is key,” she says. “It should affirm all of the great things about that person.”
Negativity has no place in Edu’s approach, whether in her design philosophies or her career approach. “I think it’s really important to filter the negativity,” she says. “Filter it and go at it.”
Learn more about how to work smarter in 2023 and make it one of your most successful years yet.
