Ep 250: The Walkthrough: From First Call to Contract

Your sales process shouldn't require you to give away your design expertise before a client has even committed to working with you.

In this episode of The Walkthrough, Michelle Lynne takes you through the sales process she uses at ML Interiors Group, from the very first client conversation to the signed contract. And she's sharing why the traditional discovery call might actually be costing you more time, energy, and money than you realize.

Instead of spending an hour gathering project details and potentially solving problems for someone who may never become a client, Michelle breaks down a four-step sales process designed to protect your time, build trust, and help clients feel confident moving forward.

You'll learn how to use a brief qualifying call to establish budget and timeline expectations, a virtual meet and greet to showcase your firm's process, a paid initial site visit to gather the information you need, and an in-person scope of work presentation that makes it easier for clients to say yes.

Michelle also explains why presenting your scope of work and contract face to face is so important, how detailed scopes help prevent scope creep, and why the follow-up between appointments can make or break a potential client relationship.

Because a great sales process isn't about being pushy. It's about giving clients the guidance and confidence they need while protecting your time and your profitability.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why the traditional 45–60 minute discovery call may be working against you.

• How to structure a 10–15 minute qualifying call around budget, timeline, and overall project fit.

• Why you should address the financial investment early instead of dancing around the budget conversation.

• How to use a virtual meet and greet to educate prospects and showcase your firm's process.

• Why a paid initial site visit helps establish value and ensures everyone is invested.

• How to create a detailed, room-by-room scope of work that establishes boundaries and prevents scope creep.

• Why you should present your scope of work and contract face to face instead of simply emailing them.

• How automated confirmations, reminders, and follow-ups keep clients engaged between appointments.

• Why having someone else handle qualifying calls can protect you from taking on projects that aren't the right fit.

Your takeaway: Write down every step your clients currently go through between their first inquiry and signing a contract. Identify where you're giving away your design expertise, where you're spending too much time, and where clients tend to stall. Then start building a repeatable process that protects your time and makes the experience better for everyone.

Ready to improve your sales process?

Want to see where your business could use a little restructuring? Schedule a Business Walkthrough with Michelle and the Sidemark team. You'll walk away with a roadmap and a summary of what needs attention in your business.

Interested in working through your sales process with Michelle one-on-one? Private coaching can help you customize the process, implement it, and make it work for your firm.

Find both links in the show notes!

Coming Up Next: The contract is signed. Now what happens the week after? Who's responsible for what, and how do you keep the momentum going before the project officially begins? Join Michelle for the next room of The Walkthrough.

Transcript?

MICHELLE LYNNE (01:02)

Welcome to the walkthrough, a series here on Design for the Creative Mind. I'm Michelle Lynn. You already know how to walk through a client's house, right? You notice the

light, the flow, the room that isn't working, and why? Well, in this series, we're doing the same thing with your business. We'll follow one project from the first inquiry to the final punch list, and we're gonna walk through every quote unquote room along the way: marketing, sales, operations, design development, sourcing.

procurement, installment, and closeout. Some rooms, y'all, some rooms are going to feel great. And some of them are going to feel like you might need a little bit of work. So let's take a look.

Last time in episode two of this series, we covered the inquiry, the follow-up it takes to book that first appointment, and the client who isn't ready yet. Now, today the client's ready to talk. And this episode is what happens from that first call to the signed contract. This was originally part of the last episode, but y'all, there was just too much to cover in one sitting. So

I made a executive decision and split the content into two. And just as a reminder, if you didn't catch the last episode, I would definitely recommend going back and listening to it. But as a reminder that I referenced in the last episode is that today's clients, y'all, they need more guidance than they did a a few years ago. they also have less.

patience for a process that feels unclear. So the sales process that I'm going to walk you through is how you give them the guidance without giving away your time, okay, and your design genius.

And my background prior to starting my design business, I was actually running a sales team and I was doing sales as well. And I took a lot of what I know worked there and applied it to this business and of course elevated it because it's a luxury service that we offer.

So my process looks different than other designers on purpose. My my process probably looks different than any other coach you're gonna meet for interior design business. And I did that on purpose. What I've seen in the past is that most designers run one long discovery call and then send a proposal.

Process we're going to cover today has four clear steps. We're going to have a short and brief qualifying call. Okay. Internally, I call it a qualifying call. Externally, if you looked on my website, ML Interiors Group, it's called a dis a discovery call.

After that qualifying call, we have a free virtual meet and greet, and then a paid initial visit and an in-person scope presentation with the contract. So each step in this sales process has one job. And the client always knows what comes next. Now, y'all, I have taught this process in multiple workshops. If you were ever in my

Rolling in the dough workshop, we went into quite a bit of detail there. And I've refined it in my own firm over the years. So today's gonna be the walkthrough version, not the full training, but it's gonna give you enough to be dangerous.

The

Traditional discovery call, in my opinion, it y'all, I think it works against us.

And then each step of the process is what we're going to cover today. And then a little bit about what happens in between these steps. So to dig into it, what I mean by the traditional discovery call working against you is that if if you're spending an hour or more on the phone gathering information from the client,

like

What rooms we're gonna be ta we're addressing, your style, your family, your pets, maybe some inspiration photos, and how they use the space. Like, y'all, that feels really generous, right? But and and thorough. It feels thorough because there's a lot of information that we need to get.

And I think that most designers were taught that this is what good service looks like. So they've kept doing it. But what my take is, and it might be I don't know, you might you you may agree with it, you may not.

What I think that if you do it that way, what it costs is a lot of your time before anybody is committed to anything, right? So if you're spending 45, 60, 90 minutes on the phone with somebody doing this call, you're also potentially already working your design genius, okay, your brain, because it's almost impossible to gather that much information without potentially, you know, thinking it through, offering ideas.

And starting to work on solving the problems. But there's still a lack of information. So to provide a thorough scope of work,

I I I feel like you're walking in with guaranteed scope creep because you can't capture everything.

And then you can capture that, or or maybe you have a consultation built in. Okay. And so it's not like Michelle, I'm I'm talking to this person for 60 minutes and sending them a scope of work. Okay. Although I will say there are some people still out there doing that. Okay. If that's you, you're in the right place. If you are still doing the consultation after that initial discovery call, I'm going to show you a different way to look at it. So

The conversation, if you're just taking all that information on the front end, and even if you're doing an on-site consultation, the conversation's all about them. You're solving their problems. They they never really get to see your process. Okay, which is a really key, a really key point to helping them make a decision to work with you. So and

Here's something funny. I we were doing a discovery call the old school way. Okay. I yeah, I used to do the same thing. I would do a discovery call. It was probably 30 to 45 minutes, just getting the overall gist of things and hearing what they have to say. And then moving them forward to the consultation and then giving them a proposal. Okay. I really I was I got so frustrated one time. We were dealing with this client.

And she took the call from the car. She had just picked up her young children from school. Okay. So it was like it was mayhem trying to get the information extracted from her, trying to understand this, you know, her expectations and so forth. Well, her kids were in the background screaming on her way home. And her drive home.

Took her probably about 30 minutes. We still needed information. So she had to get in, get the kids settled, and try to have the conversation at the same time. I was just fit to be tied, wasted so much of my time, didn't get the information that I really wanted. And then we we couldn't even move her towards the consultation. It it was just it. So I at that point, that's kind of where I had it up to here, right? Like up to my eyebrows.

And thought there's got to be a better way. So here's what we've come up with. Instead of a discovery call, okay, as I had mentioned on my website, if you go there and you're like, Michelle's such a hypocrite, shit says just it says discovery call. Well, yeah, externally it's still called the discovery call. Internally, I call it the qualifying call. The qualifying call exists to find out the budget and the timeline.

Nothing more, okay, and and and the overall, so I take that back. The overall 30,000 foot view of the project, and then I want to find out if the budget is reasonable and the timeline is reasonable. It's it it's it's straight and to the point, okay. The deeper conversation has a place, but it comes later in the process because if they can't afford to work with us.

Or their timeline is out of out of attainment, well then why would I want to move forward for them and spend 45 minutes or an hour with them on the phone call? Okay, whether it's Zoom or telephone. So it it protects our time, it protects my team's time, it saves the client time too, because nobody wants to fall in love with a firm that's out of reach. Okay. Does that make sense? So

What we do then is while we're on this call, we're also outlining what the rest of the process is. So this clear, brief initial call signals that my firm has a process. And this is reassuring to clients who've never hired a designer or who worked with a designer who had no processes or procedures and was just fly by the seat of her pants.

It pre-screens people. Okay. Imagine if you're on a dating app and they called you, you want to take a look and say, am I going to swipe on this person because they they can't afford the timeline or the or the budget? Like, sounds good, but maybe they're just really ugly. Anyway, I haven't been on a dating app, thankfully, in 20 years. So I don't know what that looks like anymore.

But I thought that that might be a little bit relatable. I don't know. I could have, I could have tanked my my analogy there. But the timeline is super helpful. And so does the budget, because a lot of clients don't understand what a realistic timeline looks like for the kind of work that we do, right? They see it on HGTV, they start 30 days later, they have a whole new kitchen and it's been installed. It's like you guys know that's not realistic.

So we ask about that so that we're also not going to disappoint them or embarrass ourselves. We walk them through what this actually looks like because clients underestimate how long the design process takes. In fact, when I was starting my business, I underestimated how long the design process took. Okay. And then you've got procurement, and then you've got the lead time for the for the purchases.

So this is just a great chance to set those timeline expectations early. And same thing with the financials. You know, how much do you have set aside for this investment? And it's it's something that we want to hit head on and address it and not not dance around it. And if they have an idea and it's unrealistic, well, then we can advise them on that based on the data.

From our previous projects. If y'all don't have any data, here's how you can get it. Okay, sidebar. Ready? Come over here with me. Okay, so here's how you can get some data if you're brand new and you haven't had a lot of projects is go to rh.com, fill up a cart. Okay, fill up a cart with low end, doesn't have to match, but everything that goes in a living room. Fill up a cart with high end everything that goes in the living room, and there's your range.

Okay, do that room by room by room and you've got it all covered. Okay, so you can use that data coming back to the this main topic. Okay, you can use data to advise your client on the reality of their budget and letting them know that does not include your design fee. So if they say, Yeah, I want to get my master bedroom or my primary bedroom completely redecorated and I have $2,200 to do that.

Well, it's pretty apparent that that's not going to work, but you need to tell them what it will cost. So what will it cost? Well, we don't know because we haven't been to the house. We don't know if your room has, you know, seating area or if it's just room for a bed and some nightstands and so forth, but you can tell them that it will be, you know, on average what you've seen is between X and Y dollars. If they fall out of their chair.

then you know that they're not going to be for you. If they take it in stride and say, okay, well, $2,200. Yeah, I can see how that'd be really low. You know, they have to bump it up to $22,000, $62,000, like whatever that looks like in your area. So that way you can offer the range and the example.

And and y'all, you know what else? Most clients really appreciate the directness. And the ones who don't usually aren't the right fit or they're real cagey thinking, okay, well, I can't tell her how much money I have to spend because she's gonna spend it all. I wanna hear what she has to say.

That's just kind of starting off the relationship on the wrong foot. So that's that's exactly what I say. How much do have to spend? Like what or what do you have set aside for this investment? And again, if clients don't know their number, I'll tell them on the call what they can anticipate. And then we provide a more accurate range once we've seen the once we've seen the project site.

So this call, I've got to tell you, if you have somebody who can do this call for you and it's not you, I would highly recommend that you train them to do these calls. And here's why. And I'm guilty of it. And in fact, I was talking to my friend Dee Dee. We were having lunch the other day, and she's the firm owner and she's taking these calls.

And she's finding these clients that suck. And I'm like, okay, well, who's ta who's taking these calls for you? She's like, I still do it. And I'm like, okay, find somebody else. Find somebody else to do it because

As designers, we hear this project and like, yeah, we can fit this in. I can get that done. yeah, I could probably get that kitchen renovation designed in four weeks. Okay, y'all, we are the ones who bend our own rules before anybody else. If I'm taking the call, I'm protecting my

In at at my firm, Juliana is my principal designer. I'm taking the call and I'm protecting her. I say no to more clients to protect her than I would for myself. Okay. Hallie takes the makes these calls for us. I'm I'm training her on that so that she can help us in the side mark training and stuff like that. But my point is, is if you have somebody that can be that.

intermediary between you and you giving away your services, go get that protection layer.

So please, if you can, stop making these calls. Dee Dee, if you're listening, stop making these calls. so if it's not a fit, whoever's making the call, okay, if it's not a fit, end the call kindly and quickly. If you can, point them to a resource that would be helpful so that they have, you know, at least a good impression of your firm and and of you that you want to be helpful, but you're not gonna be the best fit for

it.

Now, on the other hand, if there are no red flags and it is a fit, the next step is our virtual meet and greet. If you can get it booked before you hang up, rock on. There's no gap for the client to drift. And y'all, the virtual meet and greet, it does not have to be with all decision makers. It's free. Just get the person on the phone. Okay, you can involve the other decision makers in future appointments.

And this this virtual meet and greet, it's free. Okay, it's virtual, so it's not gonna cost you time and energy to get to a central location.

The purpose is simply to educate the client. It is not to interview them about the project. It is not to go into details of who sleeps on what side of the bed in this primary bedroom redecoration. A lot of times, this is the conversation that designers try to have on that very first call.

But what I've done is I've moved it to the point in the process where it belongs so that you don't waste 45 minutes on the call. Instead, the qualifying call is 10 to 15 minutes tops. You don't get sucked into this vortex of stories before you understand that this is not a project that you want to take on. And what we do is on that virtual meet and greet, I have a presentation deck. Okay.

It's created in Canva. You can create it on Google Slides, whatever that's called, sheets, some, I don't know what it is. or you can put it in PowerPoint, whatever works. But what it does is it walks them through how your firm, my firm, delivers a design. Okay. I'm not using their house and their goals as an example. No, uh-uh. This is a pre-built presentation with work that I've already done.

And I tell them this, this may not be your style, but I want to share with you how you can sleep easily knowing you're gonna like the design. I walk them through our and just like that, I just touch on the process, the what is it, the research, development, procurement, installation, but I share with them that every project is different, but the process should be the same. So the clients are gonna understand a process much better when they can see themselves in it.

Because I'm sharing with them this is a project that we did with a client.

Here's the before. Here's the, you know, portions of the design presentation that we gave them. Here's a snapshot of what the what the scope of work looks like. Here's a snapshot of the pr purchasing proposal. Like they get to see it. I don't go into a ton of detail, but a picture's worth a thousand words, y'all.

So clients, I in fact, I'm recording this and I just had a virtual meet and greet this morning with a prospect. And her feedback, and this is standard, her feedback is wow, this is fantastic. You answered all my questions before I even had a chance to ask them. Some of them, Michelle, I didn't even think about.

Like this is what I consider the secret ingredient. And then a lot of times, and I'm generalizing here, y'all, so please don't DM me and say that I'm being discriminatory or whatever. But oftentimes it's the wife that shows up for this and she says, My husband's gonna dig this process. Okay. And I'll I'll share with you where oftentimes we bring the next person in and share with them this a lot of the same content. But

Within this deck, I share with them how we organize the project from start to finish. I outline for them how my pricing works. I have a an illustration of my flat design fee, the furnishings. This is where I tell them where I make my money. Y'all, my profit margin is being the retailer of your furniture and my design fee. These other things are all based on retainer and it's not, you know, it's it's not gonna make me rich.

And in my humble opinion, and it's been proven over and over, so I guess it is just a really good opinion, is that the transparency here it builds trust. It it lets them know that you're gonna be guiding them throughout the entire process. And if they've never hired a designer before, it's huge. It's huge.

And I think that the our our our clients, our prospects have changed, but I think there's always been an underlying want to be guided before they commit. And then they want to be guided throughout the process. So if you're giving them that confidence and that security in your sales process.

You're setting expectations for your your when you are hired and the management of the project. So they're not getting in and trying to take to make a left turn when you're trying to make them take a right turn. So this is the hand holding that I have found that our market is asking for, but it's delivered in a way that protects our time as business owners. Y'all like there's not enough time in the day to get half the stuff done that we really want to get done, right?

Wouldn't you rather be designing a project versus on a 45 minute to an hour discovery call that doesn't go anywhere? So you're eliminating that with your qualifying call. And then what you're doing is your clients are going to self-select. The right clients are going to lean into this virtual meet and greet. The wrong ones usually step back on their own because they're like, no, I, you know, I'm a bossy.

Person and I want to be involved in the process. Okay, well, either outcomes a good one. Either you've dodged a bullet or you're starting to get some really sweet clients. So if they're ready after this presentation, what I do is I outline like my background, why it's important to them, how it benefits them, my team, how we run the team, and then talking about their project, and then we talk about.

I show them a design example, and then we talk about the actual phases, and here's how we navigate this, and here's how our milestone meetings build on each other. Do I go into a lot of detail about that? I'm like, no. What I tell them is like, all of this stuff is going on in the background. I am not going to test you over all of this. You don't need to know it because we're handling all of this stuff white glove. You just need to know that it exists. We have the scaffolding for really.

solid project management.

And again, this meet and greet, I've heard from more than one prospect turned client that this meeting is really what hooked them in. So I highly recommend the the virtual meet and greet. As we're wrapping up the meet and greet, the the transition is truly along the lines of okay,

so

If this is how you want your project to be managed and you feel confident that my team can navigate it, what our next step would be is going to be I'll send you the questionnaires, okay, just some initial questionnaires. And then we have a site visit, the initial visit to your home. We spend up to two hours getting the information that we need. Of course, it depends on the size of the project, how long that visit actually is.

And then we go back to the desk and put together your scope of work. It's very extensive. You s and then I've already showed them a screenshot of an existing scope of work. Remove the payments. and so they've seen how extensive that document is. And then we will create the scope of work and have the contract on hand for signature during the meeting in our studio.

That again will last up to two hours. Now, if you don't have a studio to take them to or to bring them to, you can take them to a local showroom. You can get a conference room from a co-working space. You could go to their house, but I really prefer to, I would incur the expense for the for renting a conference room so that it's there on my territory. Okay.

You're giving up some of your power when you walk into their house. But I'm charging for the visit. So it's not like it's going to cost me an exorbitant amount of money. I'm not going to lose money even if they don't hire me. So charging for this visit also changes how the clients value it and how prepared they are when you arrive. I explain it to them that they're not getting any design solutions. Okay, there's no design solutions in this initial visit.

It will give them a roadmap of everything that needs to be done. So whether they hire me or not, they have that roadmap.

But I do explain to him, it's like it's $1,200 because we all need to be invested in the process. The ones who say, nope, don't want to do that. I'm not, I don't want to pay because I talked to, you know, Debbie Designer the other day down the street and she doesn't charge for it. So I'm going to go with her. Okay, y'all, they just told you that they don't value your time and effort. So do you really want to work with them? Like you're not losing anything at that point. You're just gaining some insight and again, dodging that bullet.

So like I said, on site, I'm not sharing a lot of design ideas. I might give them a, you know, s some thoughts and I just tell them, Hey, I'm just bouncing this off, you don't fall in love with the idea.

Okay, I'm not giving them a free design session or even a charged design session. I am there to gather information so that I can provide them the most detailed information possible. And and to do that, I need to see the space in person. I want to understand how the family lives in it and and also noticing a lot of things that they don't they didn't mention on the phone. Oftentimes we'll go out there and they want to do this room and that room and

You know, the back of the house and the front of the house, but they never talk about the entry or the powder room. So are we going to address that too? Let's talk about these things and clarify that.

So again, it gives me the opportunity to write an accurate and detailed scope of work and price it accordingly.

So if the client's out there and you're like, so what do you so what would you do in here? Tell them, I'm not sure yet. I need to see a little bit more of your inspiration. I need to put a floor plan down and see what's gonna fit.

So I will describe all of that in my scope of work. Okay. Or you can say, you know what, I'm wondering if, and you can give them a potential idea just to kind of test the waters, but you can also tell them, don't fall in love with that because there might be a better solution that I come up with when I'm actually doing the

design.

So that's while you're on site, but I want to go back to right after the meet and greet. And when you schedule your your initial visit, schedule the scope of work presentation at the same time. I aim for seven to ten business days later, no more than 14, because by then the enthusiasm and the excitement goes away. Plus, you might not remember what was what fully was discussed. Okay.

So if you book those two appointments at once, the sc the initial visit and the scope of work presentation, signing of the contract, it also keeps the momentum so that you're not going back and forth trying to get the second s appointment scheduled.

Let's talk about that second appointment, the scope of work presentation and the contract walkthrough. This, y'all, if you're sending it via email, stop. The scope of work needs to be presented face to face. Even if they are a virtual client and you're designing for them in a different location, Zoom, Google Meet, Teams Meeting, whatever works.

You need to be walking them through and controlling it, not just sending it and hoping you don't get crickets. This way the client can ask questions as you go. You can read their body language and see how they're reacting in real time.

The scope itself is outlined room by room. Okay, and it's it's it's all of the deliverables, y'all. So it's room by room by room, every single thing that will be included. So it could be cohesive color palette. Line it out. Think about this, y'all. If you're gonna be charging them thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars.

It needs to be detailed and it doesn't need to be short and sweet. You need to make it feel valuable. 3D renderings, floor plans, samples, selections of, design of, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Get granular. Feel like you're being ridiculous. Because when you have everything on the scope of work,

These boundaries will prevent scope creep later.

Okay, this is gonna come up in the design development episode too. So hang tight. We're gonna go into more detail, but the scope creep, boundaries will prevent it.

Then once we go through that, if they need to edit it, if they're like, I didn't want to pay fifty thousand dollars in design fee, I didn't want to pay five thousand dollars in design fee, can you lower your price? Well, here's the deal, babe. Yeah, which room do you want to remove? Because it's room by room by room pricing.

Once you come to that conclusion, like okay, we're gonna take out these two rooms, we're gonna do that in phase two. So here's the design fee for everything that we just agreed upon. Rock on. Then what you're gonna do is you're gonna present the contract just right beside the scope of work, and you explain everything clearly, and it's in context because you're referring back to their spaces.

And then there are so many nuances in our industry. Like, y'all, there's there might not be returns on some of these things. And if we do, there may be a restocking fee if that vendor even does. And I'm not responsible for the fabric if it pills three months later. As I was the designer, I'm your retailer. I am not the actual vendor. So they just need to explain this. How many revisions do they get? What does the change orders cost?

Clients are going to be much more comfortable signing something that they've they've had walked through and explained to them than something that just shows up in their inbox. So this in-person presentation builds so much trust. And today's clients, and especially at this concierge white glove luxury level, that's what they're looking for before making a big financial commitment.

Because y'all, an emailed proposal, like you email the scope of work and the contract, the client's gonna sit on it until they get around to it. Okay, or they might compare it, but it's never gonna be apples to apples, or they might forget it. Here's the thing: interior design is not a must. It's not like their car broke down on the side of the road and they need to buy a new one. This is a luxury that is not a requirement.

So we want to make it easy for clients to say yes. Okay. And I'll say many clients are ready to sign in the room. So have a pen handy.

Okay. You could do the e-signature. Okay. If they need to go home and think about it, but that can stall a decision because it's sitting in their inbox. You need to make sure that you put a price as valid for expiration so that they don't come back 30 days later when you have stacked three other clients and expect the exact same thing.

I used to be scared. I would send them home. Go ahead, take it home, take a look at it, see what you think, see how it feels, and then give me a call in a couple days if you have any questions. Now it's like, you know what? They're here because they're expecting to be sold to. They're here because they're ready to move forward. So now I have that pen ready and I lean towards sign it now. We can get the and then we can get this rolling. What I do now.

Because yes, they still oftentimes will take it home because they need to sit on it and just think about it. I've given them the total for my design fee, but I've also given them a potential purchasing fee. So they will be able to say, okay, so the my purchases should be between X and Y for each room. They can calculate that. Okay. Or we've calculated it for them. We put it there. And then the design fees, this, so they should have a rough estimate of what the overall investment is gonna be.

It's a big investment. Like we could be talking million dollar, two million dollar projects. Okay, but even if it's a twenty thousand or thirty thousand dollar total investment, it's still a lot of money to be thinking about.

So in that respect, I can I can regard that, but I don't want them coming back 30 days later. So I put 10 days, like this price is good for 10 days, and then we crank it up substantially as a penalty if they can't make a decision. So

Excuse

me. The space between the appointments, I had alluded to talking about that. The steps themselves are only part of the process, y'all. The time between them is where your clients are going to drift. Second guess or go quiet.

So go back to episode two. Today's clients, y'all, they need more follow-up. They need more hand holding and more attention. It doesn't stop once the first appointment is booked. What we do now, and we do all of this through our our software, so it's automated and I'm not having to remember it, is we confirm with them via email.

Here's here we go. We've got you locked in for this. Here's what you can expect. And then before each appointment, we're sending them a series of confirmations and getting them excited. Hey, we're going to come out for the initial visit. We're so excited. Don't pick up your house. I want we want to see how you live it. Don't worry, it's a judgment-free zone. Hey, if you have dogs, don't they don't need to leave the premises. We love dogs. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We just talk about it.

And it's for every single appointment. We have a different series for all of them. And then with AI these days and the note takers you can use, you can give them a short meeting that recaps what was covered and what happens next. Okay. That's above and beyond because that isn't necessarily something that's automated and pre-programmed. It's an option. But what this does for the client, y'all, is they always know where they are in the process.

And that is going to subconsciously build trust before they've signed anything. And it's a preview of what working with you will feel like.

So you get the sales process down. You need to make sure that you have the project processes down so that it's not like a bait and switch. Okay. I I I can help you with that. But

Like this this sales process is this is part of what my sidemark team can set up and run for you through our done for you build program. It's called the build program. Okay. We can write the emails, we can we can schedule the automations. Okay. We'll teach you how the how to do it. So it's the booking, the confirmations, the reminders, the follow-up.

E-signature if needed, all in your voice. We actually in Sidemark 2.0, which is released this month, which is November, it's coming out. We've already got some people signing up. We also have the scope of work template and the contract template in there for you. A lot of it pre-populates. And then you can customize all of it. So if you're a designer who can hire somebody to do it and expedite that process, rock on the build program.

Is there. If you want to build it yourself, we can guide you through it through our blueprint program. Okay, that's that that's the service side. The software side is where what it's built in. Okay. And then also I can one on one coach you on the sales process if it needs to go further into detail. But this is all pre-programmed into the software too.

So we have the prod the process tasks that go with each step of the way. And you can totally customize that. I have it programmed all the way through. Once the contract is signed, who puts the sign in the yard? Okay. I mean, it's granular so that I'm not laying awake at night wondering who's getting what done and when. And if you're a solopreneur, you still put it in there so that if you are having a rough day.

You have it pre-scheduled for you. You don't have to think. So each step in your sales process has one job, y'all. The client always knows what's coming next. And that kind of structure, y'all, clients dig it. It's what they're looking for. It's that human connection, too. It everything does not feel automated. It feels human.

And what it does is it protects your time at every stage so that you can stay, you can maximize your profit. So a takeaway from today is write down the steps that your clients go through today. From the first call to the signed contract. Do you have a standard operating procedure?

If not, you're going to create it right there. Use this episode as your framework. But notice where you're giving away design genius, okay, where you are spending time that is not most efficient. And where does your process or where do your clients stall in between these steps?

You can schedule a business walkthrough with Sidemark. You you'll be talking to me. Okay. I'm the one who's holding these calls. And what we do is we look at your business as a whole, okay, from how clients find you to how projects close rather than one segment of it. Now, some walkthroughs do cover all areas of the business. Others is like, holy crap, I don't have any client, I don't have enough clients and good projects coming in to really be addressing a lot of the other stuff.

In the design development, sourcing, procurement, and stuff like that. Sometimes we just focus on the one need that needs the most attention. We solve it and find where else we can help you along the way. But like I said earlier, this sales process from this episode is built into sidemark software. We'll train you on it. Okay. Both the services that our team provides and the software so that the structure is there from the start.

Sales and marketing side, including follow-up and email marketing, is something that we can take on right now. So you have the pipeline building towards it. Because if you don't have anybody calling you, you don't have you don't go through these steps, right? So if you want your sales process built into how your business runs, we can give you that format, or you can customize it. Maybe it's a combination of my sales process and what's been working for you.

But let's let's

Let's have a talk. Let's schedule a walkthrough. I've got the link is in the show notes. And then if you want to learn this sales process and all of the, you know, some other things that go along with your business, just a reminder. I I've been so focused on Sidemark right now that if you want to learn this process in depth, make it your own. Anything else that you want to talk about, that's what private coaching is for. Okay. And I can help you.

Navigate it inside Mark. I can help you navigate it in your own system, whatever you're on. We can work through your qualifying call. We can walk through the entire process all the way to your punch list. Whatever. That's what we're here for. Okay. So if you want me in your corner while you put this process or other things into place, book private coaching. That link is in the show notes too.

So next episode. The contract is signed. Now what happens the week after? And who's responsible for what? Okay, or maybe you're not gonna start their project for a month or two.

So that's it, y'all, for this episode of the walkthrough. If you'd like to do this for your own business, there's a link in the show notes to schedule the business walkthrough, as I mentioned before, with our team at Sidemark, which would be actually me. Okay. We'll go through your firm phase by phase, fit ever, whatever we can. It's 45 minutes. But what you'll do is you will walk away with a roadmap.

And a summary of what needs to be done.

So I think that's it. I'm Michelle Lynn. And this has been Designed for the Creative Mind. I'll see you in the next room of our series.